Study strategies

Novices' problems with scientific text
This is the last part in my series on understanding scientific text. In this part, as promised, I am going to talk about the difficulties novices have with scientific texts; what they or their teachers can do about it; and the problems with introductory textbooks.
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Metacognitive questioning and the use of worked examples
The use of worked examples We're all familiar, I'm sure, with the use of worked-out examples in mathematics teaching. Worked-out examples are often used to demonstrate problem-solving processes. They generally specify the steps needed to solve a problem in some detail. After working through such examples, students are usually given the same kind of problems to work through on their...
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Notetaking examples
Here are some notes on the water cycle: Hydrological (water) cycle Precipitation & flow: “whether they are typhoons or Scotch mists, mountain torrents or field ditches or city sewers, they are simply water sinking back to base level, the sea.” Evaporation = the act of passively presenting water to the atmosphere to be soaked up + vaporized by the sun...
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Asking better questions
Consider our facts about blood: arteries are thick and elastic and carry blood that is rich in oxygen from the heart. veins are thinner, less elastic, and carry blood rich in carbon dioxide back to the heart. We could, as is often advised, simply turn these into why questions. And we can answer these on the basis of the connections we’ve already made: Why are...
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Successful Transfer
Transfer refers to the ability to extend (transfer) learning from one situation to another. For example, knowing how to play the piano doesn’t (I assume) help you play the tuba, but presumably is a great help if you decide to take up the harpsichord or organ. Similarly, I’ve found my knowledge of Latin and French a great help in learning Spanish, but no...
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Reading Scientific Text
There are many memory strategies that can be effective in improving your recall of text. However, recent research shows that it is simplistic to think that you can improve your remembering by applying any of these strategies to any text. Different strategies are effective with different types of text.
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Understanding scientific text
In the last part I talked about retrieval structures and their role in understanding what you’re reading. As promised, this month I’m going to focus on understanding scientific text in particular, and how it differs from narrative text.
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Regulating your study time and effort
In general, the weight of the research evidence suggests that college students tend to have a poor sense of how prepared they are for testing, and having been tested, they have a poor sense of how well they did! (This, of course, is even more true of younger students). Does it matter?
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Elaborating the information for better remembering
Elaborative interrogation is a strategy to help you remember meaningful information. The idea behind the strategy is that relevant prior knowledge is not always readily activated when you are trying to learn new information, and sometimes help is needed to make the right connections. The strategy requires you to go beyond the information given...
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About expert knowledge
Do experts simply know "more" than others, or is there something qualitatively different about an expert's knowledge compared to the knowledge of a non-expert? While most of us are not aiming for an expert's knowledge in many of the subjects we study or learn about, it is worthwhile considering the ways in which expert knowledge is different, because it...
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