STUDY HABITS

Studying can be simply defined as applying the mind to learning and understanding a subject or several subjects or issues -especially by reading- in other words it is the process of acquiring knowledge.
And it is for the reason of STUDY that you are here in the University (or you are planning to enroll in a university).

In making your effort at studying worthwhile you should consider adopting the following principles.

1. PLAN AHEAD
Planning gives you focus and help simplify things. In planning to study you need to decide:

§ what to read

§ how long you will spend studying and

§ gather all necessary materials

§ select the appropriate time for your study

2. MOOD
Set a positive mood, i.e. a characteristic (habitual or relatively temporary) state of feeling conducive for you to study in. a good mood aids your concentration trust me you need absolute concentration to really understand.

3. STYLE
There are several study styles however you could employ the style SQR&TR2W,which is my variation of the traditional SQ3R system which I have also included.
Each letter stands for a step in the process as follows:
Survey and overview: This involves skimming through the whole text to be studied or considered. Read the Introduction and the concluding paragraphs as well as a few paragraphs in between, to get the gist of the text.
Question: quickly consider the question(s) you are expected to provide answers to upon studying the text, as well as other questions that might come to mind while surveying the text.
Read & Take notes: now you read as carefully as you can, going over ambiguous words again and again to get their meaning in context of the text you are studying, and checking for the meaning of difficult words in an English Dictionary as well as in a specialized dictionary for the area of study in which you are confronted with the difficult word, e.g. you may have look up the word POWER from an English dictionary as well as in a dictionary of Science (or Physics),Politics or Economics likely fields where you may have been confronted with the word. While reading, you should take notes of important points or underline such points for easy reference if and only if the book or material you are reading is your own. (It is an offence to deface library materials and sheer irresponsibility to mark books and materials that belongs to others).
Recall at this stage you cover the text/material and then try to recall the points you had noted or the general gist of the text, you may write this on a separate sheet and then compare with the notes you took while reading.
Revise: This step of the process involves you going over the text one more time to see if you have left any part of the text uncovered.
Write: Write down the key points (or steps of a formula) on a 3” by 5” card or piece of paper which you can easily carry about and quickly review, in between lectures, on the bus ride to school and other short breaks you may have during the day, this helps you concretize what you have learnt and makes forgetting difficult. These cards may come handy when revising for an assignment, test or examination.
You could use mnemonic devices e.g. the use of first letters of points, to help you remember easily what you have read .E.g. M T W T F for days of the working week.