Critical Learning Strategies for Students

Question: Discuss about the Critical Learning Strategies for Students. Answer: Introduction: The ability to develop good note-taking and paraphrasing strategies, to effectively summarise academic resources, is the most important and useful writing skill a student can have. In note taking, a student can remember what he or she was taught; this would be possible by taking few of the relevant information given in class or lectures. Through note taking, one can paraphrase the main information in their own words and put it in a manner that is easily understandable when going through your work for the purpose of texts or assignments (Bui Myerson, 2014, p.14). Therefore, when taking notes, it is not advisable to copy and paste all the information given by a lecturer or the instructor, but it is required to summarize, for example, notes from a lecture so as to avoid writing everything that was said. Therefore, it is evident that the three writing skills depend on each other. It is more important to integrate all of them in learning. Note taking is an essential academic activity, it can occur when attending a lecture or a seminar. Note taking involves listening and writing skills. It is because one has to look to the source of information and thereafter, write the key important points. In the case of note taking, it demands someone to be active through writing and listening rather than being a passive reader or a listener (De Brito, 2015, p104). One should be very critical when taking note so as to make the credible points you need later in your reading or referring in the case of an assignment or reading for an examination. Note taking take few principles in its writing. One should be brief. This is to avoid making a lot of notes that you may not require, therefore, it is advisable to write down some skimmed points. Secondly, it is compressive so as to avoid missing any important detail or relevant information. Thirdly one should be selective to only pick the relevant and useful points (Ruby Ruby Jr, 2013, p.12 8). Note taking helps a student to arrange his or her ideas in an orderly manner to understand without struggling. It also assists a student to recall what he had read or heard, thus, enhancing understanding. Note taking also encourages attentiveness of a student as it helps one to be keen so as to understand the important point without missing out points. It also helps us to focus on your subject area. Careful note taking should minimize the period of study and increase the time of keeping certain information in mind without forgetting. Also, a student can maintain the skill of listening throughout the lesson hence facilitating proper participation during the lesson. In this case, the student will seek clarification on the issue which they did not understand. The teacher may also be in a position to answer questions from the learner. The instructor would measure the extent to which the objectives are met in the classroom as the student would reflect them on the notes that they would have taken (Peverly, Garner Vekaria, 2014, p.6). Note taking act as reference materials thus enhancing good remembrance to the students. Paraphrasing Paraphrasing is a learning strategy which involves the following steps; reading an original text, picking notes on key facts in your words, selecting the verb that you can easily use, reading twice the original text to make sure that your notes are similar. Therefore, complete your sentences by adding your phrases, for instance, by changing the arrangement of facts, sentences structure, grammar and changing phrases rather than changing single words. Paraphrasing helps one to develop and show understanding and elaboration of a certain text so as to avoid plagiarism. In paraphrasing, words do not match the source words. It involves putting of words from another source into your words, but the intended meaning from the source should be retained and still communicate the original message (Schmeck, 2013, p.19). Paraphrasing must be mostly directed to the source. It enables students to develop creativity so as to enhance originality on the given topic. Through this, student can understand their work properly as compared to when the notes were not paraphrased. It also creates good reference materials because the notes are readily available and easy to comprehend. Students are able to learn from each other as they engage themselves in group work discussion thus promoting good interaction among the learners. Paraphrasing strengthens the language of the students as one can learn new words as well as able to construct grammatically correct sentences. These in return makes the student to comfortably speak frequently (Grabe Zhang, 2013, p.10). Summarizing Through Note Taking and Paraphrasing Strategies Effective summarizing of academic resources is also necessary for all students in their learning. They should engage in this form of skill so as to ease their understanding. Summarising comes up with less information than it is in the source text. For example, in biology a student can do the summary by picking up the most wanted statement, this prompts to minimizing the interpretation to the greater extent that would make complete sense to the students in their revision. When reading a book, you avoid picking up all the events that took place in a certain story but only select the important key point of what happened. It enables the student to study systematically as well as he or she can measure his level of understanding. Note taking helps the learner to save much time while revising for exam thus making the learner to cover a lot in a short period. Therefore, this builds confidence to the student during the exams, thus, encouraging good performance (Marn, Osa Garcias, 2014, p.64) . In every educational process where the three writing skills are required, they take place one after the other. For example, in a lecture, a student first listens to the lecturer's information, then internalize the given information and summarize it by picking the important points. He is guided to put them down on a piece of paper or on an electronic gadget and that is what we call note taking. In this, paraphrasing comes in when you put the lecturers words in a different phrase but possess the same meaning as that of the lecturers or the source information (Sikhwari, Pillay Grobler, 2015, p. 115). Therefore, these academic skills are related to one another in one way or another. These three skills enable the learner to develop courage especially in debates because he or she will have excellent communication skills and can support his or her point clearly. The skills characterize a good student thus making the work of a teacher easier as the teacher will be able to detect the level of understanding of the students (Olson, 2015, p.23). They promote a good conducive environment for learning since the student is busy listening thus preventing the learner to be disturbed while reading or when being taught by the teacher. The combination of these skills makes the student use his or her learning materials maximally these ensure that the learners utilizes the resources materials well. They also assist the student to develop good speech whereby, the student can express his or herself freely without fear. It can be negated whatsoever, that the three academic skills are not essential for the student to learn because, through note taking, paraphrasing and summarize may be biased because it simplifies the student work, and this may make students leave out the important key point that may be useful in one's studies (Keck, 2014, p.22). Conclusion It is therefore, evident and genuine that the three skills; careful note taking, paraphrasing strategies and efficient summarizing are necessary to the student for the reason that, they aim at easing the work of a student for easy understanding. They develop the ability of good listening thus encouraging keenness of the learner. They as well improve the activeness of every student for they ensure that the student is keenly listening so as to hear the source information then summarize it by paraphrasing and putting them in simple phrases that a learner can understand later when learning (Deller Price, 2013, p.63). For these skills to be maintained, a teacher should encourage students to use them so as to develop the interest of learning in the presence of the teacher and even in the absence of the teacher. It is advisable for all students to adopt these important skills because they play a great role in students performance (Oxford, 2016, p.93). I can therefore agree that developing good note taking and paraphrasing strategies, to effectively summarize academic resource, is important for students in learning processes. References Bui, D. C., Myerson, J. (2014). The role of working memory abilities in lecture note-taking. Learning and Individual Differences, 33, 12-22. Ruby, P., Ruby Jr, R. (2013). Note Taking: An Important Part of the Learning Process. Charleston, SC: Southeast Decision Sciences Institute. Peverly, S. T., Garner, J. K., Vekaria, P. C. (2014). Both handwriting speed and selective attention are important to lecture note-taking. Reading and Writing, 27(1), 1-30. Keck, C. (2014). 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