It’s pretty interesting that while we teach students a lot of things, one thing we tend not to teach is how to study. One would think that this would be a natural topic to cover, but as far as I can tell, it is not widely taught.

Just yesterday, we had the first day of classes in the new semester, and I went over this topic with my students. By chance, LifeHacker linked to a web site that touched on the same topic–how to raise your GPA. Now, such a list could relate tricks that are not necessarily related to study habits, but this list sticks to advice for actually learning. The problem is, I don’t think it’s a very well-put-together list.

A few points are rather obvious, so obvious that they don’t warrant mentioning: “Go to class,” “Sit in the front row,” “Don’t do group work with slackers,” and “Don’t slack off and then pull all-nighters.” These go along with a whole list of other obvious pieces of advice not on the list, such as “Pay attention in class,” “Get enough sleep,” and “Study hard.”

One point on the list is not stated clearly: “Take notes by hand.” By reading the details, one understands the author to mean that many teachers now supply PowerPoint summaries of their lectures which the students use in lieu of notes. The author says to take your own notes instead, but “by hand” is not clear; it seems to suggest writing with a pencil and paper instead of typing into a laptop. Taking notes is good advice in general, but does not go far enough; I will elaborate more below.

The two remaining suggestions are solid enough: “Do a weekly review” is not a bad idea, and “Go to office hours” is one that few people seem to take advantage of. Most times, as a college professor, I have office hours to myself; my students rarely come and take advantage, even though I remind them that they are getting free one-to-one tutoring from an experienced college professor; the equivalent at a language school is not cheap, and they have all this access just for the asking. Many schools also provide free tutoring, which is good to take advantage of.

But there are study techniques which are even better which I share with my students, and figure that it might not make a bad blog topic for the day. So here are my own tips for studying.

1. Read the assignment before the class. A surprising number of students prefer to do the reading for a chapter after they attend the lecture, not before.

The idea here is to maximize comprehension. If you go to a lecture first and read later, you will be ill-prepared. You won’t be ready to ask questions in the right places, or you might assume that things you don’t understand from the lecture will be made clear in the reading. But later, when you go through the reading, if there are things you don’t understand, you cannot ask the textbook questions, or request that it clarify.

If you read the assignment before going to the lecture, you can go at your own pace, take the time necessary for comprehension, get to know the terminology, and understand the subject matter fairly well. Anything you don’t understand, you add to a list of questions. Later, when you attend the lecture, the teacher will probably explain the subject matter you have questions about, and so you can cross those off your list. Whatever the teacher doesn’t cover, you can then ask about in class–just read the questions off your list, already prepared. If you need clarification, the teacher can provide it readily.

Furthermore, this allows you to ask questions intelligently and economically; if you don’t read beforehand, you could wind up asking a lot of questions that are made clear in the reading, thus wasting class time and annoying classmates.

Not to mention that you’ll be prepared for any pop quizzes the teacher springs on you!

One more benefit to reading ahead: it helps you cut down on lecture note-taking. If you know the information is in the textbook, you don’t have to include it in your lecture notes when the teacher covers it in the class.

2. Summarize your pre-class reading. This one may be hard to get used to; it may seem like a lot of extra work, but the payoff can be huge. In the reading assignment, every paragraph or set of paragraphs which encapsulate a concept or chunk of information should be written in your notes with a single sentence, more than one sentence if necessary. Do not simply copy down the topic sentences; re-express the information in your own words. In the end, you’ll wind up with a one-page summary of the entire assignment, written in a style native to yourself.

The first benefit is comprehension. Have you ever read ten pages of a textbook, and then realized that you do not recall or understand a single thing? Sometimes we can go through the mechanical process of reading, but somehow our retention just switches off. Summarizing forces you to focus on the meaning; you have to understand what is being expressed in order to re-word it coherently. It will also force you to learn better how to decode and comprehend the sometimes atrocious writing styles of many textbook authors, and better see the structure and substance of textbook writing.

Summarizing also benefits retention; you are far more likely to remember something you have thought about and written than something you just read as part of as large reading. And finally, at the end of the process, you have a great, concise summary of the reading which will help enormously when you need to study for the test.

3. Take lecture notes. An obvious point, granted, but it is surprising how many people don’t do this, or don’t do it well. You should always take lecture notes.

First, write down everything the teacher writes on the board, unless you observe that your teacher writes meaningless stuff all the time. Usually, teachers write information on the board which they feel is significant, that you should pay attention to–so pay attention to it.

Second, learn how to filter information in the lecture, and distinguish between note-worthy information and non-essential filler. If you try to write down everything the teacher says, you will fall so far behind that you won’t catch most of what the teacher is saying.

Third, develop a shorthand. Writing even just the high points out fully will again set you far back and make you miss subsequent information. Work out abbreviations, and decide on graphic representations of ideas and actions. An obvious example of the latter would be to use an arrow to represent cause and effect.

4. Type out your lecture notes after class. Here’s another thing most people don’t do, but should. When we take lecture notes, we often use shorthand devices that we make up on the spot; it’s hard to have a shorthand squiggle prepared for every eventuality. We can read our own lecture notes and understand them if we review them quickly, on the same day they were written. But come back to your lecture notes after a whole week, and you will find that a big chunk of what you wrote now appears as nonsense to you.

So as part of your daily ritual, sit down and type out in longhand everything you took notes on in class. In the end, you’ll have another set of clean, concise notes that will nicely complement your reading summary. Furthermore, re-typing (and having to translate from shorthand to longhand) again aids comprehension and retention.

You might think that all of this note-taking will be time-consuming. It may be so, but you will get a better payoff in terms of improved grades, and in the end, you might even wind up saving time otherwise spent re-reading the textbook or otherwise trying to understand something you missed because you didn’t take such notes. And with experience, the time needed to take notes will decrease as you become more efficient at both note-taking and at comprehension.

5. Join a study group. Again, it may seem obvious, but a lot of people don’t do this. You should have a study group for each class that requires you to acquire information. If possible, form a study group with people who share several common classes, so you can condense the sessions. Study groups should ideally be between three and six people. You should meet at least once a week, with perhaps special sessions before exams.

First, everyone in the study group should have enough copies of their reading and lecture notes to pass around to everyone. That way, you wind up with three to six sets of notes. Studying other people’s notes (if they are well-prepared) can reveal information you may have missed, and otherwise will offer a fresh perspective and style that may make reviewing more pleasant and informative.

Second, everyone should ask questions on points they still don’t understand, or which they don’t understand as well as they would like to. There will likely be someone in the group who knows the information and can explain it to you. Questions asked by others may highlight information you should know but had missed or neglected.

And third, everyone should close their notes and have one member of the group quiz everyone else, everyone taking turns. Each question should be targeted at a specific member of the group, else one or a few members will answer most of the questions and defeat the purpose for the slower members. When another person is asked a question, see if you can answer it in your head. If someone gets an answer wrong or doesn’t answer it fully, don’t put them down or blurt out the answer yourself. Instead, try to supportively prod them for the correct or full answer–but don’t push.

6. Don’t insist on studying with people who are smarter than you are. This is advice on study groups, but I feel it’s important enough to have its own header. When choosing your study group, you may feel like joining one that is populated entirely with people who are ahead of you in the class, thinking that their smarts will rub off on you. This is not necessarily true, and may backfire.

First, you may lose confidence; if everyone is way ahead of you , you might start to feel that there’s something wrong with you when nothing is wrong with you.

Second, you may miss information you need to know, if others in the group feel it is obvious or assumed as known by everyone else.

And third, you may find that it is far more beneficial and enlightening to answer questions than it is to ask them and have things explained to you. I found this out in my post-graduate studies at San Francisco State, where I formed study groups primarily with Japanese students, due to my background in Japan. Since they were non-native speakers, they naturally caught a lot less than I did, and during study group sessions, they peppered me with questions. I gradually discovered that explaining the information to the others led to much greater comprehension on my part. This is because explaining something forces you to organize and process the information in your own mind first–something you don’t usually do when it is simply explained to you. Being in the role of tutor also gives you motivation to study harder, knowing that others are depending on you. And finally, taking on the role of tutor to classmates gives you greater confidence and a sense of pride; your classmates will likely see you in a better light as well.

7. Set up a study schedule. I will freely admit that I was the kind of student who waited until Sunday evening at 11:00 pm to start working on assignments. Needless to say, this is not a good study technique, unless you perform exceptionally well only when under time pressure. The thing is, just saying “I have to start studying earlier” usually doesn’t do the trick; you have to have a method.

You should set aside times which are dedicated to study, and treat that schedule as seriously as you would a job or an assigned class. Work out a schedule which works best for you, depending on your personal habits and quirks. General scheduling advice might include points such as studying before meals rather than after them, when you are sated and more inclined to doze off. You might want to break up your study schedule into two-hour pieces, giving yourself intervals to rest, relax, and enjoy yourself so you can return to your study refreshed.

But the core idea here is to respect the schedule and stick to it religiously. Feel free to study longer than the schedule dictates, but never shorter, unless you are assured that all your work has been completed, and effectively so.

8. Finish assignments early so you can wait and then review. One of the biggest problems with completed assignments that I see as a teacher is the lack of proofreading and review. When you finish an essay or other assignment, you tend to be tired of it and eager to set it aside, without proofreading it. Even if you do take the time to proofread, you are probably “too close” to the work and will have difficulty seeing its flaws.

Make sure that you finish an assignment at least a day before it’s due, preferably two. Then set the assignment aside at least overnight, and then proofread it the next day. You will find that you have distanced yourself enough from the work that you can look at it more objectively, and note the errors in it.

Proofreading might seem like a pain sometimes, but it is probably one of the easiest ways to hike up the grades you receive.

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I hope that this list has helped you out some, if you’re a student. Even if you’re not a student, a lot of the principles here may help in other endeavors. Cheers.