| Popis: |
As each grading period draws to a close in our nation's schools, teachers are besieged with students asking, "What can I do for extra credit?" "Can I make a display?" "Write another term paper?" "A collection?" Unless previous arrangements have been made, the worried student is often admonished to study more before grades are determined. The teacher may suggest that better use of the "extra credit" time would be to study. I maintain that to ask a person to study is to ask that person to do one of the world's toughest jobs. Many would gladly spend a great amount of time, energy, and money on various extra credit projects to avoid study. Some will resort to cheating. It is not difficult to understand what lies behind this reluctance of many students to study: Study requires self-discipline, and self-discipline is a rare characteristic in today's society of convenient distractions. To study well, one must study effectively and efficiently. Tomes have been written on how to achieve efficiency in study. For instance, the student is advised to lessen distractions by turning off the radio, television, or phonograph, to study in the same place and at the same time, to avoid putting off even for one day the copying and expanding of class notes. These suggestions, and many more, are valuable advice on more effective study. However, they are disquietingly analogous to dietingin this case mental dieting. And we are all aware that diets are difficult to stick to for a long period of time. In a like manner, good study habits are difficult to maintain. What may be needed more than broad admonitions are frank artifices that reduce the trauma of learning. During my education and teaching career I have, through personal experiences and through feed-back from students, noted that certain techniques, some quite unorthodox, were effective in helping make study more agreeable. One such unorthodox approach to study is making a pony. A pony is simply a diminutive cheat note to help one "gallop" through an examination. Let us analyze what goes into the making of an efficient cheat note: The potential cheater has at his disposal texts, references, notes, and other resources from which to gather the important material to be learned. He then must abstract the key points of the course and carefully organize and condense the material to a manageable form. Prior to an examination the potential cheater, by preparing a cryptically written, efficient guide to the course, has studied in a most efficient manner. The suggestion is, therefore, to use the ways of a cheater as a method of study. The very act of sorting out key ideas of a course and organizing them on paper is a powerful study method. Once the student has gone through the process of this special type of note making, he can memorize the cheat notes and leave them home. This method of study was dramatically revealed to me when a classmate and I were talking after an examination. He was straddling a bicycle with one foot high on the pedal, and protruding from his stocking were some cheat notes. When I startled him by pointing them out, he quickly explained that he never used them, but took them to class for security. After having gone through the laborious process of making them, he said he could mentally visualize them during the examination and draw upon them in this manner. They were nearly works of art, having been done with a special fine-tipped pen. A word of caution is perhaps apropos: If a student makes cheat notes and they should ever be discovered by someone with a suspicious mind, no amount of explanation will ever exonerate the student. He may thenceforth unjustly earn a stigma of being dishonest. I suggest that such notes, if they are made, should be incorporated into larger notebooks that cannot be hidden easily. A second study technique is grounded on observations by educators and psychologists that the more senses we involve in the learning process, the better and longer lasting the learning will be. We also know that some learn best by hearing, others by seeing, and still others by handling objects. Some students have taken these ideas to heart in a very determined way. They have been amply rewarded in learning, and incidentally, in grades. This method utilizes an unoccupied classroom equipped with a chalkboard; if such a room is unavailable a small lap held blackboard may be substi |
