The study habits you use are one of the important factors that can give your academic performance a huge setback and a really tough fight. So, whether you are a college or university student, a high school or secondary school student, lectures, seminars, and classes will be ineffective if you stick to and follow the standard self-study procedures and research methods that produce very little results.
However, the vast majority of Nigerian students make a critical error in this scenario. Most students’ study patterns have been evaluated by educational researchers, who have published their findings in academic journals. In terms of outcomes, only a few students live up to their expectations and reputations. Many students practice low-utility habits such as highlighting, re-reading, and summarizing, which have a significant impact on their performance.
Reading Two Times Will Help in Understanding
The question is whether it actually works. Somewhat! Several studies have shown that re-reading aids memory and is beneficial for students who must work with two-dimensional data such as grammatical rules, terminology, structural details, formulas, and so on. It is different in terms of comprehension. When it comes to the criterion task, you can say that the effect of rereading will be long-lasting. However, researchers believe that the majority of the effects are related to recall-based memory steps, while the benefits to comprehension are still unknown. That is why it is critical to distinguish between your analytical and mnemonic abilities. You must consider whether extensive regurgitation of the material is required. Sometimes you’ll get a positive response, but other times you won’t. As a result, you may be squandering your time.
Highlighting the Content Will Help in Understanding
Now, you must fully comprehend the concept of underlining and highlighting. Unless the argument is properly mapped in the passage, you are simply distorting it. This is why highlighting is not only a waste of your time, it also serves as a detriment to your performance.
Researchers have concluded that highlighting does very little to improve student performance in the majority of situations. It may be advantageous for students who have the necessary knowledge to highlight contents more effectively or when the given text is difficult. However, on higher level tasks, it will have a significant negative impact on performance and will necessitate inference making.
While reading in sequence, it is critical that your highlights do not form disjointed in-depth details and instead provide a bullet point summary of the passage. Otherwise, your brain will be following two different versions of the same text. Proper highlighting, along with the provided commentary and annotation, demonstrates an important aspect of the transition from high school or secondary school academics to the next level known as higher education.
Summarizing Helps in Improving Retention and Comprehension
Summarizing, like highlighting, is an example of metadata. This metadata is the holy grail of all academic analysis and the foundation of all scientific investigations. Simply put, restating a standard chapter from a textbook for a central argument is difficult and should be avoided until your final year of college. Unless you are a graduate student, this will almost certainly result in misrepresentation of the passage’s various aspects or internal logics. And professors can be unforgiving sticklers for logic because they frequently teach from their own textbooks or resources.
As a result, rather than simply providing your own verbal summary, it is preferable if you can interact with and interpret the argument in a variety of ways. Schematic representation, case applications, and other effective study habits are some of the best examples.
