Question

A. You are hired to teach a struggling student more effective study skills. Drawing from research findings regarding effective study strategies, identify five strategies that you think would be beneficial for the student to develop. Then, in five short paragraphs, describe the approaches that you might use to help the student acquire each of the strategies you’ve identified.

B. Linda approaches you before class and expresses her frustration about having done so poorly on yesterday’s exam. “I studied for hours and hours,” she tells you. “I guess I’m just not a very good test-taker.” You know that your test was a good measure of what you taught your students. You also know that students seldom do poorly on your tests simply because they are poor test takers. Considering the textbook’s discussion of study strategies, what other possible explanation might you give Linda as to why she thought she knew the material well yet earned a low test score. And with your explanation in mind, describe two strategies you might teach Linda to help her improve her performance next time.

C. The German word for “rabbit” is Kaninchen. Develop two different mnemonics for remembering this vocabulary word, one using each of these two techniques: a. Verbal mediation b. The keyword method

D. The eight planets of the solar system, in order of their distance from the sun, are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. (Pluto has recently been demoted to the status of dwarf planet.) Develop two different mnemonics for remembering this list, one using each of these two techniques: a. The pegword method b. A superimposed meaningful structure

E. Distinguish between general and specific transfer, and give a concrete example of each to illustrate the distinction. Describe the four perspectives of transfer listed below in terms of their views on general and specific transfer: a. Formal discipline b. Similarity of stimuli and responses c. Information processing d. Situated learning

Answer 1

A. For effective study, the following approaches would be suggested to the student to help her achieve her learning goals:

1. Elaborative interrogation — encouraging the student to look for or generate a reasonable explanation for why an explicitly stated fact or concept is true, would help to go beyond the banal factual information And spend relatively more time with the study material in a way that it will be processed at a higher level of analyses and become relatively stable rather than mere rote memorywhich is relatively more prone to forgetting.
2. Summarization — Writing summaries of to-be-learned texts can help in taking short hand notes and reducing the amount of information to be remmebered. The student can use the approach of highlighting or underlining the key points so that they are remembered and recalled more easily later. Moreover, by reading and writing the summary of the contents, the student would have already had experience with reading and practising the information by writing about the key points. This is often a quick method for learning a large piece of information such as an essay, a theory, etc.
3. Keyword mnemonic — Using keywords from the text and mental imagery to associate verbal materials has been shown to be an effective learning strategy for tests and examinations. Keywords involve taking the first letter of each major concept or idea present in a reading material and then combining them into a comprehensible shorter interval. For instance, if the assessment is based on a four paragraph essay on human Rights, then the student could read the essay and summarise the key concepts such as suffrage, equality and liberty, anti-discrimination laws,etc evolving the keyword approach where each of the four concepts can be summarised into the acronym SELA wherein they can be more easily recalled.
4. Imagery — Another effective study approach is to form mental images of text materials while reading or listening. Research Work in the area of memory has shown that people adopt an use highly visual cognitive maps in remembering pieces of verbal information. Mental imagery for confusing abstract and logical concepts which may be otherwise difficult to understand and remember can be better learned if they are associated with a metal image. This leads to a multiple level processing of the information by converting an abstract information into a more concrete and thus easily remembered material. For instance, the student could develop an approach to understand Bentham’s complex notion of a political theory such a state Utilitarianism by imagining afarmer trying to exchange his surplus produce of apples for another desirable commodity like eggs so that s/he can maximise his/her own personal gains and avoid aversive experiences such as having excess of damaged apple produce. By generating the mental image of a farmer, the student could conceptualise the philosophical concepts in a more concrete and relatable way and would thus be better able to explain the idea during exams.
5. Rehearsal and Practice tests- Finally, once the student has read the material completely, s/he can consider reading the text material again after an initial reading so that it will be remembered better. During this technique, the student can benefit more if s/he takes a practice test and questions his/her knowledge of to-be-learned material. Asking question to oneself can help to get some prior experience to the actual test situation and thus reduce any anxiety about the upcoming tests. By raising his/her own set of questions about the study materials, the student would be able to relate to the material in a more in-depth way.