Study techniques

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY Study techniques: Materials

Organization of the study

Gloria Marseille Umbert

1. Introduction and objectives of the study

2. Environmental conditions of the study
3. Study organization and planning
4. Preliminary factors for active study
5. The five steps of the study
6. The review and the forgetting
7. Knowing how to listen and take notes
8. How to develop a topic in writing

1. Introduction and objectives of the study

Some people may be surprised by the fact that you have to learn how to study, but
in reality that is what you have to do in many cases. The error probably lies in the
definition of "studying," which for many is synonymous with cramming, that is,
memorizing without understanding. However, this is not studying. Studying is a
professional job on the one hand and an art on the other. An art understood as the
mastery of a series of skills, abilities and techniques, which are learned through
practice and which allow the achievement of the proposed objective, in this case
the study.

There are two essential objectives that are intended with the lines that follow. On
the one hand, the acceptance of the responsibility that comes with being a student
today who is preparing to be a good professional and, on the other hand and
depending on the above, understanding the need to master the aforementioned
techniques to achieve quality in our work in less time.

The study pursues two fundamental objectives:

1. The acquisition of knowledge.

2. Putting this knowledge into practice.

From the point of view of cultural and human development, the essential goal of
study is the comprehensive formation of the person, enabling him or her to lead a
full life, both individually and collectively, an active, conscious existence. This
perspective encapsulates the idea that life's acts are not contained in closed
compartments but are openly related to one another. Therefore, studying cannot
be separated from the vital continuum, but rather it can be involved in personal
philosophy, helping to achieve the physical and psychological well-being to which
we have a right. To achieve this, however, it is necessary to take responsibility for
this task.
Thus, it is not only about offering a work methodology but it is necessary to
provide it with human quality, creativity and incorporate it into the dynamics of our
lives. Studying, seen from this perspective, cannot be about stuffing our brain with
data, but rather acquiring good mental training that enables us to understand the
world and interpret reality. This mental ability could be defined with the following
characteristics: flexibility, agility, critical capacity, creativity, intellectual curiosity

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and sensitivity, capacity for analysis and synthesis, and ease of reading and
expression. These characteristics can be enhanced and organized so that our
objective, studying, is fully met.

From what has been said so far we can conclude that what is important is not the
quantity of study, but its quality. Knowing how to study means knowing how to
think, observe, concentrate, organize and analyze; in short, being mentally
efficient.

2. Environmental conditions of the study

People who live with the student will exert influence because they will put more or
less pressure on him, depending on their own expectations and desire for success.
On the other hand, the general tone of family harmony will either promote better
academic performance or not.

Peers and teachers also have an influence that will increase or not the desire to
learn more, to communicate this new knowledge.

The personal environment must also be taken into account, that is, the internal
conditions of the person, which would include: level of motivation towards studying,
final objective that one wants to reach and why, the ability to face problems and
solve them, the conviction that studying is a real profession and has its difficulties.

And finally the physical environment, that is, our physical conditions and the place
of study. You should make sure that your body is in good shape before you start
studying, for example, do not study after a heavy meal, an emotional event,
drinking alcohol, smoking a lot or drinking a lot of coffee. It is also not suitable after
sleeping too much or too little. In short, you have to keep your body in shape by
exercising and practicing good breathing, following a healthy diet, getting enough
sleep and not abusing so-called "soft" drugs.
The place where the student's real work takes place is in front of his or her work
table. It is there that, if you have managed to create the conditions of silence, good
light, comfortable furniture, materials within reach, and have given it that personal,
warm touch, you will be able to really concentrate and, forgetting precisely those
physical conditions, dedicate yourself to your intellectual work. Also, if you get into
the habit of studying in the same place, the concentration process will be faster
and more effective.

3. Study organization and planning

Having a plan for our work is the first step to take. The reasons that justify the
existence of a schedule are:

• It provides psychological relief.

• Avoid wasting time and studying more than necessary.
• Allows concentration.
• It helps create the habit of studying.
• It allows you to study just what you need at just the right time.

To create our personal schedule we must take into account the following elements:

• It should be structured weekly.

• We must take into account the timing of all our activities.
• We must make a self-assessment scale of the subjects according to the
enjoyment and degree of difficulty they represent for us.

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• Both subjects and tasks must be distributed as specifically as possible.

• Subjects that are similar should never be studied one after the other.
• Leave some time for leisure every day.
• Exercise regularly.
• Be realistic and adjust to our pace of life.
• Its character is provisional.
• Once determined, it must be fulfilled.
• We must always have it on hand.

There are two main causes of schedule failure:

1. Distraction, which can be internal (thoughts) or external (noises, family,

friends,...)
2. Failure to value the schedule as important, which leads to non-compliance.

The strategies that we can implement to facilitate compliance with the schedule
are:

• Carry out shorter study periods, but maintain the established level of hours.
• Having goals and purposes as clearly as possible.
• Take more breaks.
• Better adapt the study location.
• Perform concentration exercises.
• Study at the best hours for each one.
• Controlling thought.
• Make family and friends understand the importance of studying, so that they
respect this activity.
• Making the place where we work "our own."
• Go to a library regularly.

Studying properly is tiring and there are some techniques that help you rest from
intellectual work and at the same time promote concentration. There are two times
when it is convenient to rest from work:

1. When we stop work and take the corresponding breaks, there are three
progressive levels: change of intellectual work, complete mental change and
change of total occupation. There are also a series of relaxation exercises
that can be practiced: Physical relaxation of the senses (for example, 20"
looking at something at a distance of two or more meters. Quietly, passively,
with your thoughts focused on what you are seeing as if it were being seen
for the first time. Relaxing the muscles of the head (for example, moving
the muscles of the forehead several times until they become tired, letting
them go and feeling them relax). Changes in physical posture to mobilize
inactive muscles during studying and breathing exercises.
2. When we feel tired for intellectual work: If you think you are tired you will get
more tired, therefore you have to distract yourself from tiredness, you
have to observe if there are internal tensions that take away our energy,
you have to observe if we are applying the reading techniques well and relax
our eyes. If we still cannot continue working, we should postpone it for 15 or
20 minutes, during which we will do activities completely different from
studying.

4. Preliminary factors to active study

We have already analyzed our personal circumstances and the environments in

which we find ourselves; we have organized our time, we have observed how much

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and how we are distracted and we are ready to actively approach the study.
However, there are still some elements that we must know and master in order to
successfully undertake the task. These elements are attention and concentration,
learning and memory.

Attention and Concentration

We can define attention as the application of the mind to an object exclusively and
for a certain time. Its objective is to understand, know in depth and record in
memory the acquired knowledge.

There are two types of care:

1. Involuntary, that is, one in which we do not put intention. For example, a loud
sound, a familiar voice, a light.
2. Voluntary, which requires a choice and as such an effort to overcome the
conflict of attraction exerted by other stimuli in a different sense. This type of
attention is essential to achieve performance when studying.

Concentration is the prolonged maintenance of attention.

To increase attention span, you need to work on five points:

1. Exercising the will and interest in studying, that is, being motivated towards it.
A person is motivated when his or her action is initiated and sustained from
within and outside help is only a momentary incentive. So: think often about
why you study, look for the concrete use that what you are doing now can
have, always return to the task without getting nervous and reinforce yourself.
2. Deal with personal matters appropriately in two ways: write them down and
postpone your attention until after studying, or, if it is an important or irritating
matter, give yourself 15 minutes to think about it and then return to studying.
3. Be enthusiastic about what you are doing, taking into account the power that
thoughts have, so they must be positive about the task so that we can feel
comfortable.
4. Try to stay physically fit and stress-free when studying.
5. Do specific exercises to improve attention. For example: Count all the "a"s on
a page of a book, taking into account the time it takes you to do it. Observe
any object for a minute trying to remember it in the smallest detail. Draw it
without the model, trying to find the accuracy of the details.

Learning

It is a change in human dispositions and capabilities, with relative permanence, and

which cannot be attributed only to the person's development process. It depends
on personal circumstances and the evolutionary moment in which one finds
oneself.

There are four basic conditions for optimal learning:

• Wanting to learn, that is, the will freely exercised.

• Having motivation to learn, that is, knowing the effort it requires and being
willing to make it.
• Method that systematizes knowledge.
• Proper distribution of time, which prevents wasting it unnecessarily.

In addition to these basic conditions, it is necessary to know a series of learning

functions:

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• Every image evokes those that resemble it (Law of similarity).

• One image evokes its opposite (Law of contrast).
• An image evokes another one close in space or time (Law of continuity).
• One image evokes other related images (Law of intimate relationships).
• An image binds to an effect very strongly if the emotion felt is pleasant (Law
of interest).

Thus, the more we relate what we learn to these laws, the more we will retain it.
Meaningful integrations are a further step from the previous laws and consist of
combining, integrating and extracting from the data, the fundamental character,
which is independent of the first data. It is the work of synthesis.

From this, some mental laws emerge, which must be put into practice when
studying, and they are:

1. Law of Effect: try to associate pleasant feelings with everything related to

studying, since it will be remembered better.
2. Law of Exercise: continued repetition and review makes the connection
between the elements studied very strong, greatly reducing forgetting.
3. Law of Predisposition or of the End: once a goal is accepted, the path
towards it becomes pleasant, therefore we must clarify our goals in the study
as much as possible.

Memory

Memory is a set of processes designed to retain, evoke and recognize past events.
It is closely related to interest and attention, as well as to the proper functioning of
the brain. It is essential for life, since without it existence would develop in a
present devoid of meaning. Memory uses the senses to collect facts and data that
will then be processed again by the mind.
Memory effectiveness depends on the following factors:

• Physical factors: a balanced diet, sufficient rest and correct breathing.

• Psychological factors: being realistic in our goals and aspirations, controlling
our thoughts and facing problem situations and solving them.
• Intellectual factors: there must be true motivation and interest in learning to
achieve understanding of the data, an essential factor in memorization.

To facilitate the process of effective memorization we can use the following:

- Association of ideas: Organizing data into meaningful units, grouped

according to a general basic principle, since in this way one idea will evoke
another.
- Recoding the material: Imposing our own structure on the material, ensuring
that this structure is appropriate to the content and using our sensory capacities in
an interrelated way.
- Fragment the material: The material to be memorized must be fragmented
into meaningful units that we will memorize one by one. When we are done, we will
globalize the fragmented.
- Use the interest of the stimulus: Curiosity and true interest, good
concentration, absence of nerves and super learning will help the memorization
process.

- Regular repetition: This is the best way to ensure the strength of the
stimulus.

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- Personal characteristics: The intention to learn and the will to assimilate are
necessary, so it is convenient that our studies coincide with our personal tastes.

There are a series of mnemonic rules (symbolic method) that are applicable
to very specific volumes or materials and do not avoid the essential fact of
memory, which is understanding.

5. The five steps of the study

We will call them like this:

• Pre-reading
• Underlined
• Analytical reading and summary
• Scheme
• Active mental repetition

Pre-reading helps us get a general idea of what we are going to study. It is

necessary to prepare our intellect to receive data. We must take into account the
following steps:

1. Know the level of knowledge exposure.

2. Author's style
3. Careful reading of the title
4. Meet the author
5. Publication date
6. Careful reading of the index
7. Reading the prologue
8. Reading the titles and subtitles of the chapters
9. Mentally relate new ideas
10. Memorize the overview.

These steps are progressive and do not always need to be done all at once. They
must be done using speed reading techniques.

Underlining is used to express the main ideas of a text. To do this we must master
reading comprehension, knowing how to search for and distinguish those main
ideas and only underline the words necessary to express the idea, not entire
sentences.

Once the underlining has been done, we already know what the text wants to
express and it is time, taking a critical attitude, to understand, assimilate and relate
the new ideas with our previous knowledge and mentally create a scheme in which
to place them, while we ask ourselves questions about them to confirm or not the
hypotheses presented. This will allow us to summarize what has been presented,
in which:

• We will explain it in our words

• We will be faithful to the text
• We will differentiate our opinion from that of the author.

As we have been understanding the text, we have been prioritizing and

outlining the concepts and this is the time to transcribe them on paper. The outline
will always be personal in form (abbreviations, classification system) but must be

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faithful to the author's idea and differentiate our opinion; it will consist of a series of
stimulus words that are meaningful to us and that will allow us to "fill in" the full text;
it is also a good aid for visual memory. The main ideas will be expressed on the left
and the secondary ideas will be placed on the right. Once we have it set up, we
must read the outline slowly and quickly, along with the underlined section, to see if
we understand it. If there are repeated concepts, they will have to be eliminated
and if there are gaps, they will have to be consulted again to complete them.

Active mental repetition is the decisive point for success. If, once active study has
been carried out, we do not take care of consolidating it in memory, it will be
practically of no use. Thus, using only the outline, I repeat to myself, preferably out
loud, the entire content of the text, consulting where I do not remember well and
repeating it as many times as necessary until I feel that my knowledge is well
consolidated.

6. The review and the forgetting

Reviewing allows us to have available the things we have learned previously and is
necessary because things are forgotten over time.

The ideal time to do the first review is after 8 hours and the second review 8 hours
after the first. Thus, it seems that the possibility of recalling what has been learned
after a month is 60%. For this to be true, the reviews must be well done, which
means that once a review has been carried out, the contents are 100% back in
memory.

To review you have to:

1. Writing the memory outline

2. Do active mental repetition by looking at it (oral or written)
3. Check the summary for possible gaps
4. Once this is done, repeat it mentally again
5. Although it is optional, it is advisable to ask and answer exam questions.

The fastest method is oral (which has the advantage that you learn by "hearing
yourself"), but if it is written it helps with over-learning, which is so useful for
memorizing.

A mistake is to review everything just a few hours before the exam. The ideal would
be to review the previous ones either every day, one day a week, etc.

If we go blank during an exam, we should:

• Don't get nervous (this is due to an inhibition that paralyzes the memory
function).
• Leave that topic and tackle another.
• Look for related ideas that bring us back to the topic.
• Don't stop writing or talking, even if it's just rambling.
• Knowing that it will only last a few minutes and then we will recover.

7. Knowing how to listen and take notes

All the steps we have explained for reading a book apply equally when listening in
class. There are some factors that must be taken into account when listening:
having the material ready, having an attitude of interest and acceptance towards

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the teacher, maintaining a correct physical posture and being silent.

Other intellectual factors are also necessary, such as knowing what the class will
be about, taking notes and reviewing them in the appropriate period of time.

To take notes effectively, we must adhere to the following rules:

• Visually sort notes

• Write only the main ideas
• Take clean notes: order, clarity and underlining.
• Order for each subject
• Handwriting that is legible to us (we must be able to read them as quickly as a
book)
• Before each class, you must review previous notes.
• Write only the definitions literally.
• Note down the bibliographical references.

8. How to develop a topic in writing

A written assignment can help a student in three ways:

• It forces you to organize your thoughts

• It enables you to measure your strengths and discover your weak points.
• You can practice writing, which is so useful in exams.

Many of the difficulties that arise when writing a paper arise from the fact that the
student has not carefully planned what the written topic requires. This planning
consists of the following steps:

1. Collection of material
2. Work planning
3. Drafting
4. New writing
5. External presentation

Once the nature and objective of the work has been decided, it is necessary to
think or write down some questions about the topic that will guide us in our search
for material. You have to start working quickly and have a notebook where you can
write down as many ideas as you can think of regarding the case. The main source
of information will be reading, but we must not neglect other sources such as
conversations with colleagues, seminars, etc., which can make important
contributions.

Before proceeding to the preparation of the work, it is necessary to select the

material and draw up a diagram. With a well-planned outline plus notes from
research, you can begin writing. One way is to start it with the last paragraph of the
paper, because it gives good direction to the writing by knowing exactly what
conclusion it leads to and ensures that the paper ends in a firm and decisive way.

In writing, you have to write as well as possible but thinking about correcting what
is necessary. The style should be direct and clear. The composition of the writing
must reflect the structure of the outline and for this we will use titles and subtitles.
We must not forget the help of graphics and, importantly, distinguish clearly
between our own ideas and those of other authors. At the end, attach an extensive
bibliography.

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Once this first draft has been made, it is advisable to let a few days pass before
returning to it and making a critical assessment of it and even giving it to a person
to read.

colleague to also make an assessment.

As a guide to making a critique, here are these questions:

• Does the work answer the question of the topic?

• Does it cover the essential points in sufficient depth?
• Is the content correct and meaningful?
• Has the material been used logically?
• Is each point well illustrated with examples?
• Are your own ideas distinguished from those of other authors?
• Are all sources cited?
• Is the scope of the work appropriate to its objective?
• Is it written simply?
• Is it grammatically correct?

In no case should the external presentation of the work be neglected. One way to
motivate ourselves to do our work is to think of work not as an obstacle to
overcome, but as a means of sharpening our wits and a personal expression of our
level of knowledge and understanding.

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