EXAMINING PROFESSIONAL WRITING

The following textbook excerpt, “Secrets for Surviving College and Improving Your Grades,”
is taken from the introductory section of Psychology, fourth edition, by Saundra K. Ciccarelli
and J. Nolan White. It offers a variety of strategies for learning from and studying college
textbooks. This excerpt will be used throughout this chapter to demonstrate techniques and
give you practice in reading and learning from college textbooks.

1150L/1859 words
Secrets for Surviving College and Improving Your
Grades

1 I want to make better grades, but sometimes it seems that no

matter how hard I study, the test questions turn out to be hard and
confusing and I end up not doing very well. Is there some trick to
getting good grades?
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Many students would probably say that their grades are not what
they want them to be. They may make the effort, but they still don’t
seem to be able to achieve the higher grades that they wish they
could earn. A big part of the problem is that despite many different
educational experiences, students are rarely taught how to study.

STUDY METHODS: DIFFERENT STROKES FOR

DIFFERENT FOLKS

WHAT ARE SOME DIFFERENT METHODS OF STUDYING?

3 Most college students, at one point or another in their educational

experiences, have probably run into the concept of a learning style,
but what exactly is it? In general, a learning style is the particular
way in which a person takes in, or absorbs, information.
We learn many different kinds of things during our lives, and
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one method of learning probably isn’t going to work for everyone.
some people seem to learn better if they can read about a topic or
put it into their own words (verbal learners). Others may find that
looking at charts, diagrams, and figures help them more (visual
learners). There are those who learn better if they can hear the
information (auditory learners), and there are even people who use
the motion of their own bodies to help them remember key
information (action learners). While instructors would have a
practical nightmare if they tried to teach to every individual

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 student’s particular learning style, students who are aware of their
own style can use it to change the way they study. so instead of
focusing on different learning styles, this section will focus on
different study methods. Take the opportunity to try them out and
find which methods work best for you. Table A lists just some of
the ways in which you can study. All of the methods listed in this
table are good for students who wish to improve both their
understanding of a subject and their grades on tests. see if you can
think of some other ways in which you might prefer to practice the
various study methods.

WHEN AND WHERE DO YOU FIT IN TIME TO STUDY?

WHAT ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR TIME
MANAGEMENT?
5 One of the biggest failings of college students (and many others) is
managing the time for all the tasks involved. Procrastination, the
tendency to put off tasks until some later time that often does not
arrive, is the enemy of time management. There are some strategies
to defeating procrastination (The College Board, 2011):
o Make a map of your long-term goals. If you are starting here,
what are the paths you need to take to get to your ultimate
goal?
o Get a calendar and write down class times, work times, social
engagements, everything!
o Before you go to bed, plan your next day, starting with when
you get up and prioritizing your tasks for that day. Mark tasks
off as you do them.
o Go to bed. Getting enough sleep is a necessary step in
managing your tasks. Eating right and walking or stretching
between tasks is a good idea, too.
o If you have big tasks, break them down into smaller, more
manageable pieces. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at
a time.
o Do small tasks, like answering emails or writing the first
paragraph of a paper, in those bits of time you might otherwise
dismiss; riding the bus to school or work, waiting in a doctor’s
office, and so on.
o Build in some play time—all work and no play pretty much
insures that you will fail at keeping your schedule. Use play
time as a reward for getting tasks done.
o If your schedule falls apart, don’t panic—just start again the
next day. Even the best time managers have days when things
don’t go as planned.

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TABLE A MULTIPLE STUDY METHODS
Verbal Methods Visual Methods Auditory Methods Action Methods
o Use flash cards to o Make flash cards with o Join or form a study o Sit near the front of the
identify main points or pictures or diagrams to group or find a study classroom and take
key terms. aid recall of key partner so that you can notes by jotting down
o Write out or recite key concepts. discuss concepts and key terms and making
information in whole o Make charts and ideas. pictures or charts to
sentences or phrases in diagrams and sum up o While studying, speak help you remember
your own words. information in tables. out loud or into a digital what you are hearing.
o When looking at o Use different colors of recorder that you can o While studying, walk
diagrams, write out a highlighter for different play back later. back and forth as you
description. sections of information o Make speeches. need out loud.
o Use “sticky” notes to in text or notes. o Record the lectures (with o Study with a friend.
remind yourself of key o Visualize charts, permission). Take notes o While exercising,
terms and information, diagrams, and figures. on the lecture sparingly, listen to recordings you
and put them in the o Trace letters and words using the recording to have made of
notebook or text or on a to remember key facts. fill in parts that you important information.
mirror that you use o Redraw things from might have missed. o Write out key concepts
frequently. memory. o Read notes or text on a large board or
o Practice spelling words material into a digital poster.
or repeating facts to be recorder or get study o Make flash cards,
remembered. materials recorded and using different colors
o Rewrite things from play back while and diagrams, and lay
memory. exercising or doing them out on a large
chores. surface. Practice
o When learning putting them in order.
something new, state or o Make a three-
explain the information dimensional model.
in your own words out o Spend extra time in the
loud or to a study lab.
partner. o Go to off-campus areas
o Use musical rhythms as such as a museum or
memory aids, or put historical site to gain
information to a rhyme information.
or a tune.

6 Another problem that often interferes with time management is

the enduring myth that we can effectively multitask. In today’s
world of technological interconnectedness, people tend to believe
that they can learn to do more than one task at a time. The fact,
however, is that the human mind is not meant to multitask and
trying to do so not only can lead to car wrecks and other disasters,
but also may result in changes in how individuals process different
types of information, and not for the bet- ter. One study challenged
college students to perform experiments that involved task
switching, selective attention, and working memory (Ophir et al.,
2009). The expectation was that students who were experienced at
multitasking would outperform those who were not, but the results
were just the opposite: the “chronic multitaskers” failed miserably
at all three tasks. The results seemed to indicate that frequent multi-
taskers use their brains less effectively, even when focusing on a
single task.
Another study found that people who think they are good at
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multitasking are actually not (Sanbonmatsu et al., 2013), while still

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 another study indicates that video gamers, who often feel that their
success at garning is training them to be good multitaskers in other
areas of life such as texting or talking while driving, are just as
unsuccessful at multitasking as non-gamers (Donohue et al., 2012).
In short, it’s better to focus on one task and only one task for a short
period of time before moving on to another than to try to do two
things at once.

READING TEXTBOOKS: TEXTBOOKS ARE NOT

MEATLOAF

HOW SHOULD YOU GO ABOUT READING A TEXTBOOK

SO THAT YOU GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR READING
EFFORTS?

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No matter what the study method, students must read the textbook
to be successful in the course. (While that might seem obvious to
some, many students to- day seem to think that just taking notes on
lectures or slide presentations will be enough.) This section deals
with how to read textbooks for understanding rather than just to
“get through” the material.
9 Students make two common mistakes in regard to reading a
textbook. The first mistake is simple: Many students don’t bother
to read the textbook before going to the lecture that will cover that
material. Trying to get anything out of a lecture without having read
the material first is like trying to find a new, unfamiliar place
without using a GPs or any kind of directions. It’s easy to get lost.
This is especially true because of the assumption that most
instructors make when planning their lectures: They take for
granted that the students have already read the assignment. The
instructors then use the lecture to go into detail about the
information the students supposedly got from the reading. If the
students have not done the reading, the instructor’s lecture isn’t
going to make a whole lot of sense.
10 The second mistake that most students make when reading
textbook material is to try to read it the same way they would read
a novel: They start at the first page and read continuously. With a
novel, it’s easy to do this because the plot is usually interesting and
people want to know what happens next, so they keep reading. It
isn’t necessary to remember every little detail—all they need to
remember are the main plot points. One could say that a novel is

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 like meatloaf—some meaty parts with lots of filler. Meatloaf can
be eaten quickly, without even chewing for very long.

The SQ3R method

WHAT IS THE SQ3R METHOD?
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With a textbook, the material may be interesting but not in the same
way that a novel is interesting. A textbook is a big, thick steak—all
meat, no filler. Just as a steak has to be chewed to be enjoyed and
to be useful to the body, textbook material has to be “chewed” with
the mind. You have to read slowly, paying attention to every morsel
of meaning. (see page 22–23 for an explanation of the sQ3R
method.)
12 So how do you do that? Probably one of the best-known reading
methods is called sQ3R, first used by F. P. Robinson in a 1946 book
called Effective Study.
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Some educators and researchers now add a fourth R: Reflect. To
reflect means to try to think critically about what you have read by
trying to tie the concepts into what you already know, thinking
about how you can use the information in your own life, and
deciding which of the topics you’ve covered interests you enough
to look for more information on that topic. For example, if you have
learned about the genetic basis for depression, you might better
understand why that disorder seems to run in your best friend’s
14 family.
Reading textbooks in this way means that, when it comes time
for the final exam, all you will have to do is carefully review your
notes to be ready for the exam— you won’t have to read the entire
textbook all over again. What a time-saver! Re- cent research
suggests that the most important steps in this method are the three
R’s: Read, Recite, and Review. In two experiments with college
students, researchers found that when compared with other study
methods such as rereading and note-taking study strategies, the 3R
strategy produced superior recall of the material.