Study tips

Quicksearch

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Friday, September 10. 2010

NYT: Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits.

That might be good advice. I am not sure. What always worked best for me in college and in law school was a ration of 2hrs/studying in the library to 1/hr discussing and mutual quizzing with somebody in the course.

From the latter, I learned to interrogate my own understanding after I read anything. It's become a habit for me. If I can't explain back what I've read after I have read it, I've gotten nothing from it.

Posted by The Barrister in Education, Our Essays at 12:05 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

One point the NYT article made was that testing is also a form of learning and reinforcing learning.

My first semester in PChem I had a 70, after acing Organic. Study habits for Organic didn't work for PChem. One adjustment I made was to go over the practice tests the prof had left in the reserve room of the library. I raised my test average by nearly 20 points. To show that was not merely getting accustomed to the prof's tests, I did even better on the standardized test the prof gave us for the final.

The NYT also cites research that shoots down some ed school fads, such as "learning styles."

Good article.

#1 Gringo on 2010-09-10 12:27 (Reply)

Study habit effectiveness varies from person to person. I found that my best results were garnered by studying moderately in the week up to a test, then taking a break the day before, going to bed early, and waking up very early to study from about 5am until test time.
Studying late at night or "cramming" was always counterproductive and any knowledge "gained" was easily lost.

One of the things I learned by doing it this was was this - as I studied, if something was still unclear, eventually I'd have a "moment of clarity". I still remember the most significant one, regarding interest rates and Keynesian Economics, as I rode an early morning train to Washington, DC. I'd struggled with the concept of the "liquidity trap" and the problem of "pushing on a string with interest rates". How they played into his macroeconomic framework just baffled me.
Then, that morning, BANG! it hit me like a ton of bricks. I aced the test, and the concept has stuck with me forever....which is why what we're going through now just baffles me even further. I can see we're IN that position - yet politicians don't get it.

#2 Rick on 2010-09-10 12:56 (Reply)

I have always thought that old-time teachers had something when they corrected bad habits by insisting that you write something (I will not draw in my history book) 100 times. Richard Mitchell (The Underground Grammarian) has some brilliant insight into the different forms of language--printed, spoken and written. The business of writing, he said, was to stay put on the page so that you could see where you have been stupid.

Writing it down is the basis of much testing. I suspect that multiple-choice tests where you fill in a bubble are useless. And why essay tests are so dreaded?

#3 The Elephant's Child (Link) on 2010-09-10 19:22 (Reply)

" If I can't explain back what I've read after I have read it, I've gotten nothing from it." mirrors what I've read of the late Mr. Feynman, especially regarding lay people.

Relative to RF, virtually everyone else was a lay person.

#4 Ron Snyder on 2010-09-10 19:57 (Reply)

He could explain things to people with very little specialized background, in part because he never kidded himself about what he knew and how he knew it.

#4.1 Texan99 (Link) on 2010-09-11 09:54 (Reply)

While I was regional instructor during my orchid judging years, I followed the 'rule of three' that my father taught me. He had gone to China right out of college to teach English at Shanghai Baptist College, now called Shanghai university. He trained his students to research the assignment, then to take extensive written notes, then to write an essay answer to the question. By the time the students had completed those three tasks, the information was pretty well embedded in their brains, and they could extrapolate from it into other areas.

I think this is perhaps why the old one-room schoolhouses worked so well. All grades were included in the one room, and when the older students had read about the history, or math, or English assignments, the poor, overworked teacher drafted the older students as teaching assistants for the younger ones. That way the older students further imprinted the information in their memories.

Worked that way with the orchid judging students too.

Marianne

#5 Marianne Matthews on 2010-09-10 22:53 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email	(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications. Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u], [url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here. Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications. To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: BBCode format allowed
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry

Maggie's Farm

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

RSS Readers

Friday, September 10. 2010

Study tips