Smart Studying
For yourself
● Be proactive
● Dialogue
● Ask questions
● School is a game
How do you interact with your materials
● Read the assigned in advance
● Review your notes before the class
● Bring the notes from the last class
● Pick a space that you can concentrate
● Summarize the important parts after the lecture
Q1: What’s the purpose?
➢ Your purpose will dictate how are you going to get the information
➢ Be specific to your purpose
Q2: What you already know?
➢ To know where you gonna start to study
➢ To generate questions based on the things you didn't know
Q3: What's the big picture?
➢ See the general structure
➢ See the main points
➢ The building blocks
To get the big picture, you need
★ Main Ideas
★ Themes (Types)
★ Terms
★ Concepts
You’ll get the big picture in (Books)
★ Introduction
★ Preface
★ Author Biography
★ Table of contents
★ Chapter Summary
○ Especially the first and last paragraph of the summary
You’ll get the big picture in (Chapter)
★ Chapter Title
★ First and last paragraph of the chapter
★ Section headings
★ Tables, Graph, Charts, Pictures, and Diagrams
★ First sentences of each paragraph
○ Especially the first and last sentence
★ Chapter summary
★ Questions at the end of the chapter
The point here is to get the framework
Tips: Books
★ Seek out different sources of information
★ More than one point of view is an enormous advantage
○ Where to get
■ Ask your prof
■ Find a book that has a lots of examples, detailed explanation and
questions with answers
■ Choose an expert
Q4: What's the author/teacher going to say next?
➢ Anticipating
➢ Expert the author to answer your question
➢ Reading to answer your question
Q5: Expert Questions
➢ the questions an expert asks — if you want to understand a subject the way an expert
does, you'll have to ask them, too.
○ Where to find it?
■ Introduction
■ Chapter summary questions
■ Question recurs frequently
➢ Orientation Questions
○ What's the definition?
○ What's the example?
○ What are the different types of this?
○ What's this related to?
○ What can this be compared with?
■ Ask the expert and orientation questions repeatedly
Q6: What questions does the information raise for
me?
➢ Creating questions that are uniquely your own
➢ The goal is to see how many questions you can ask
Q7: What information is important here?
➢ Concentrate you efforts on the few important things
➢ Seizing on the few general ideas that illuminate the whole
➢ 80/20
➢ Read at the least a few paragraph ahead to see whether something is important before
taking notes on it
Where to find the most important?
★ Beginning and the end
★ Emphasized graphically
○ Bold or Italics
★ Chart or Diagram
★ Chapter summary
★ Key terms, concepts or ideas
○ Each subject has important terms
In class and lectures
★ Beginning and the end of the lecture
○ Teachers often summarize the entire lecture at the end. Take note the major
points
★ Anything that's on the board
★ Anything your teacher repeats, emphasizes, or stresses
★ The response of your teacher to questions or comments from the class
★ An noteworthy questions or insightful comments of your classmate
★ A long pause, long time to explain, or has difficulty express of your teacher
★ Your teacher discuss not covered in the textbook and disagree with
○ Teachers offer you their personal views
★ Teacher concentrates on details or tries larger themes and big picture
★ Teacher keeps referring to material
★ Questions but does not answer
★ Handouts
Mindlessly rereading your old notes over and over, update them.
Information that answers expert or orientation questions are important.
Q8: How to paraphrase and summarize the
information?
➢ Use all your senses in talking notes
➢ Use your own words, but don't change the meaning
➢ Use few words only
○ Squeeze, condense and compress
Taking notes on your reading
★ Dialoguing first before deciding what's important
★ Organize your notes
★ Translates any diagrams, graphs, tables, and charts into words
○ Express the main idea conveyed by the graphic in your own words
Taking classroom notes
★ Terms, buzz words, and pet phrases your teacher uses
★ Put “Q” that you’d like to think about
★ If you missed the lecture, borrow notes from a classmate who takes down everything
than decide what’s important
Taking textbook notes
★ Underline as few words as possible
Q9: How can I organize this information?
➢ Collecting information into groups or categories allow us to see different patterns,
connections, and relationship
➢ How
○ Similarities
○ Differences
○ Items that depend on each other (Linking)
➢ The purpose of organizing information is to help you answer expert questions/orientation
questions
➢ There is no right way to organize a subject
➢ Organizing the information is just one more step in mastering your subject