Where and When to Study
The effective learning process requires specific circumstances: for instance, a library, silent room, or other spots where interruptions would not occur. A student should minimize distractions such as TV, social media, or chatting in messengers. Concentration is crucial for studying because it helps avoid procrastinating behaviors and manage the workflow. Indeed, procrastination needs to be eliminated because it wastes the time and energy necessary to learn new information. To avoid it, planning can be implemented with deadline setting, scheduling, and strict schedule adherence. A suitable strategy to improve studying quality is to consider the lighting, temperature, and the risk of distractions in a room. Besides, learning in the most alert time or selecting specific periods of maximized concentration can help improve new materials comprehension. Furthermore, it is worth exploring personal strengths and weak points that influence the studying process because certain characteristics require adjusting the range of tools for learning.
Learning Styles
Educators have identified multiple intelligences that influence how individuals acquire knowledge and distinguished learning styles to help students improve their effectiveness. There are kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, logical, rhythmic, verbal, visual, auditory, and naturalist manners of studying, and they differ in how information is remembered. Respectively, a person’s learning style can be characterized as physical, solitary, social, mathematical, musical, linguistic, spatial, listening, and observing. A student needs to identify at least two preferable ways to enhance their educational processes.
The most common learning styles are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic, and selecting the most suitable one would be beneficial for students to speed up their work on processing new knowledge. The first type perceives information through seeing; they think in pictures, take detailed notes, and interpret messages through body language and facial expressions. The best approach to learning for them is through imagery, such as videos or presentations. Auditory style learners benefit from listening; they interpret their thoughts through tone of voice, pitch, or speed; therefore, they learn best through lectures and discussions. The Kinesthetic type is characterized by processing information through touching or doing; thus, individuals need to engage with what they explore, use a hands-on approach, and avoid distractions. My two styles are visual and social as I acquire knowledge in a group more effectively than on my own and think in pictures.
How People Take in Information
People’s approaches to perceiving and analyzing information can be categorized by the general questions they ask when obtaining knowledge:
- Why? – reflective and concrete thinkers;
- What? – reflective and abstract ones;
- What if? – active and concrete thinkers;
- How? – active and abstract ones.
The first type is also named the Diverger, and such people tend to brainstorm different ways of thinking about a subject matter, would choose to study with others rather than alone, and prefer humanities and liberal arts. The second one is the Assimilator, and these persons are solo students who are good at remembering the applications of theories and would select courses that involve research. The “What if?” people are also named the Accommodators, and their approach to taking information in is through trial and error; thus, they are commonly patient and study courses where experimenting is available. The “How?” type are the Convergers, and their learning process must include laboratory work and building models. Absorbing and processing information approaches also vary: practical, intuitive, doer, and reflective patterns are followed by reflective, active, concrete, and abstract thinkers.
Hands-On Strategies
The listed types can separate the best workarounds to enhance studying because the recommendations include the common ways to acquire knowledge. Sensory learners should use their senses, relate information to the real world, ask for examples and diagrams or create their own. Intuitive people should rely on their intuition, link the new knowledge into one concept, and carefully read or check their works. Active learners require doing or putting information to use for better perception and should take advantage of lab classes or collaborative work. Reflective students might need time to think the knowledge through; therefore, they should give themselves more time to process and take notes to analyze materials.
Sequential learners should create a step-by-step plan to follow while studying and practicing, keep the notes logically ordered, and check their approaches’ comparability to the big picture. The global type of individuals studying perceives the knowledge through analyzing its relation to general reality and seeking the details; therefore, they need time, previews, and abstracts about a subject. Visual learners should implement videos, schemes, and associations to proceed with new information, while the verbal ones might need to discuss it and analyze different opinions.
Recommendations suitable for all learning styles are related to reading, note-taking, memorizing, and group studying. Indeed, a student should clarify all confusing information with classmates or professors, always retrieve the most important subject matter, and consider what would be asked during the exams. Furthermore, reading strategy is the primary aspect of effective studying, and adjusting the approaches to a particular learning style would be beneficial. The profound techniques are to scan for keywords and take notes with details about a text, review its general topic, underline primary information, and connect the content to a subject. The notes taken at classes should be re-checked within 24 hours and critically analyzed to make a student better understand the concepts. Factual , triggers, and recalling. Furthermore, memorizing improves through looking for patterns, grouping the data, rhymes, flashcards, verbal explaining, and acronyms or certain phrases. Group studying recommendations are to learn in units with no more than four people, be prepared, clarify the details, ask and answer each other’s questions, and consider that such style is not suitable for everyone.