Study Tips

When you think about it, we do critical writing almost every day. When I see a movie my habit is to email a friend of mine in another city and tell them exactly what I thought of it. She gets to hear all about whether the characters in the story acted the in a realistic manner, or what I thought of the ending. That is the essence of critical writing. It’s the ability to analyze some piece of information and created conclusions based on reasonable assumptions, argumentation and facts. Almost every class you take in your college degree will put you through the same exercise in thought and communication.

Critical writing first involves critical thinking. You have to be able to take an experience, art work, essay or event and analyze it with precision. Your writing should not be, “that story made me happy”, but rather, “what it was about that story that made me happy.” In the 5 W’s of writing (who, what, when, where and why) it’s the “why” that makes your criticism valuable. College level writing is about meaning making and sustaining your opinion with examples, reasons and rational. It is never enough to say, “That book was stupid.” What a critical writer would do is talk about why the characters didn’t act like most people would, and how the plot deviated from an intelligent point of view into a hopelessly jumbled resolution. Analysis and explanation are the bones of critical writing.

Critical writing is also technical in nature and follows an organized thought flow and pattern. A critical essay sets out the thesis of the thought clearly in the first paragraph then uses the rest of the essay to develop supporting ideas and evidence to support the thesis. The sign of someone with a college degree is their ability to reason and use reasonable judgments in the determinations that person makes. Every time you review a new song with a friend or write a letter about meaning in relationship, art or faith you are engaging in a critical enterprise. Learn to do it well and with this skill and your college degree you can write your own ticket to anywhere you want to go.

Realizing that being in dorm rooms with 3 other girls was not always conducive to good study habits or quiet time; my college had placed study areas all over the university grounds.  There where study carols in the library, tables in the commons, a study hall in the union and private rooms in the dorms.  I could always tell where a study area was, because it was always empty.  People simply don’t know how to study.  However, for success in pursuing your college degree finding the best method of study is going to be a life-saver.

If you really do live in a dorm with other loud people, you may want to take advantage of your college’s study areas. If not, the best way to study is devising your own study area. Get a desk with space to write (your computer desk will be fine as long as it has space for books too) and keep a jar of pens, highlighters and other necessities.  Once your mind connects that place as a study place it will help you get in the mindset to study.  Concentration is the key to effective study time.  Efficiency experts have said that every time your concentration is broken it can take up to 8 minutes of time to get refocused.  So turn off the TV, and don’t study in an area where people will talk to you intermittently.

Many people cannot study in silence because our culture simply isn’t used to quiet anymore.  The best thing to do is play music, particularly classical music, in the background.  It becomes a kind of “white noise” which blocks out distractions and gives you the ability to think more clearly.  Have a goal in mind for what you want to accomplish in the session and set a milestone.  If your goal is to read two chapters, don’t get until you have done so.  If you are working on a paper, don’t leave until you have 3 pages written. Decide for yourself a reasonable goal and stick to it.

Every person is unique and has unique study habits.  Find the method that works best for you, and stick with it and your college degree will be done before you know it.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people will say, “I don’t like to read.”  My first thought, that I am usually lucky enough to stop before it comes out of my mouth is, “then how did you get through college?”  College degrees are nothing but classes made of subjects made of reading.  Even the math classes involve some amount of text comprehension.  Reading for a degree course isn’t an option. It’s a requirement.  For each type of subject there are different types of reading that can be used.

College classes with high volumes of textual reading (from text books) can best be served by speed reading.  Speed reading is the art of controlling your eyes in such a way they pick up more of the content without spending time on the nuances of writing such as the articles or adverbs.  Speed reading trains you eyes to skim over material picking out important words and leaving the rest behind.  For history book chapters or long essays on philosophy, speed reading is best.

Critical reading is much slower. It takes every word, setting and phrase into account to make more meaning about the text being read.  Critical reading will be used in most of your upper division courses you take getting your degree. Classes involving poetry, case studies, statistics or analysis of any kind will likely require critical readings.

Comprehensive reading means you take in the whole text and use it to understand the whole of what you’re reading.  A comprehensive ready doesn’t get just the facts like a speed reader and doesn’t have to know all the why’s like a critical reader. A comprehensive reader just takes in all the material at face value and creates an understanding from it.  Classes where you read novels, theories or instructional documents are a good place for comprehensive reading.

In the in course of obtaining a full college degree, you will do many types of reading for different classes and when its all done and your diploma is framed on your wall, then you can go back to your life as you knew where reading was for pleasure and only something you wanted to do.