Study Skills Hints and tips for effective study

Study Skills ~ Hints and tips for effective study ~

Contents • Working your way up – incremental skills • Reading skills • Dealing with timing • Making notes • Quotations

Working your way up • In all of your studying and revision, don’t jump in at the deep end. You wouldn’t try to bake a cake without first making sure you have all of the ingredients. • When you’re studying, work your way up to more complex skills like analysing or evaluating. Begin by making sure you can remember and understand the building blocks. ØIn studying Critical Essay texts and the Scottish Set Text, this would be things like the plot, key character names or vital moments. ØIn RUAE, it might be making sure you can remember the different question types and the steps involved in responding to these.

Working your way up • This pyramid is a useful way of thinking about the different layers of skills involved. Make sure you are confident with the bottom layers before you start moving up.

Study Timetable ~ breaking your tasks into manageable chunks • It can be overwhelming if you try to think about everything you have to do at once. So don’t. Break your revision into chunks, subject by subject, and then by each part of each paper. • Use this to make yourself a study timetable. Identify the times in the week you will be able to study and then break them into 30 minute chunks. Allocate one thing to focus upon per chunk of time. This will help you to focus and avoid feeling overwhelmed.

Reading Skills • Reading is the vital building block in developing your skills in English. It helps you to expand your vocabulary and range of expression, it helps you to develop more subtle understanding of concepts and ideas, and it helps you to challenge your own critical thinking. You should aim to read consistently, and to think critically about texts. • The next few slides suggest ways to train yourself to critically engage with texts.

Regular reading ~ developing the habit of active reading • Choose two or three articles from a quality online resource to read per week. • Summarise the key ideas in three bullet points, using your own words. • Identify two words which were unfamiliar to you and look them up in a dictionary. • Identify any ideas or information you found particularly interesting. • Write down three questions that you have about any ideas in the text, or anything that puzzled you. • Follow up on these! Either by doing a bit more research, or by discussing them with others.

Asking Questions ~ becoming a critical reader • As you read, engage your brain by asking questions. • These could be things you’re not sure about. Making a note of the question you have is a good way to make sure you follow up on it. Maybe you’ve worked out the answer by the time you’ve finished reading, or you’ll need to give it more consideration. Either way, you’ll have been more proactive in your reading than just letting the question wash over you. • You could also ask questions based on the format of the questions in RUAE papers – this can develop your familiarity with the question types, and you can double up by answering them afterwards. While you’re reading, you could have a page for notes set up like this one. You could note your questions in the column on the left hand side, and then answer your questions in the column on the right. The box at the bottom could be used to note down your final response to the passage, any questions that are still unanswered or any thoughts or ideas it generated for you.

Reading Response Questions ~ becoming a critical reader • https: //www. teachthought. com/literacy/19 -reading-response-questions -self-guided-response/ • This is a useful overview of the kinds of questions you could consider in your responses to texts. You wouldn’t need to answer all of them, but you could pick a couple to consider after you’ve read something. This will really help to develop your independence of thought and evaluative stance in Critical Essays. This is particularly important at Higher.

TAP ~ taking an overview of the role of a text • TAP stands for Type, Audience and Purpose. It’s a good way of beginning to think critically about a text, considering what type of text it is, who might be interested in it and what it’s trying to achieve (to inform, persuade, reflect, or entertain). • When you think about the TAP of a text, you should aim to be specific (e. g. What is it trying to inform you of) and to consider what clues there were in the text that helped you to come to that conclusion. This could be to do with the ideas/information covered in the text, the way the text is laid out, or the type of language used in a text. • You could also consider how effective you think the text has been in appealing to its audience or fulfilling its purpose. Justify your ideas with evidence and examples from the text.

Reading for enjoyment ~ developing your own identity as a reader • Reading isn’t something that should be a chore. Choosing to read things you enjoy, or trying to find out what kinds of things you might enjoy reading, is more likely to mean that you’ll carry on doing it. It can take a bit of time and effort to work it out, but it’s worth it in the end. • Reading develops your perspective about the world, your ability to empathise, your insight into complex ideas, and abilities to construct clear and convincing arguments. These are all important life skills. • You can talk to other people to see what kinds of things they read and if they can recommend anything to you. Mrs Barry, the Librarian, is always happy to talk about reading, and so are your English teachers. Ask teachers in other subjects what they are reading, if you enjoy their subject, then there’s a chance they might be able to recommend some reading for you.

Dealing with timing • Most exams in English happen in timed conditions, up to 90 minutes. There are few situations in life in which we have to focus exclusively on one thing for this amount of time, so concentrating like this is a skill you have to practise. You will need to get familiar enough with the requirements for each assessment that you are able to work quickly and efficiently.

The Pomodoro Technique ~ If you’re the kind of person who struggles to concentrate for long periods of time. • The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method. The technique uses a timer to break down work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. Each interval is known as a pomodoro, from the Italian word for ‘tomato', after the traditional tomato-shaped kitchen timers. • If you struggle to concentrate for the full 25 minutes, start off with smaller chunks of time and slowly work your way up. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Choose a task to be accomplished. Set the timer to 25 minutes Work on the task until the timer rings Take a short break (5 minutes) Every 4 sets, take a longer break (15 -30 minutes)

Timed Practice with Past Papers ~ to make sure you are familiar with the papers and how much you can do in the time • There’s really no substitute for practice, especially in English, which is mostly a skills based subject. Using past papers and completing them in timed conditions is the most effective way to make sure you are able to complete papers within the time given. • It also has the benefit of allowing you to look through mark schemes, to selfevaluate your answers and identify areas of strength and weakness. This also allows you to see how much you actually need to write to score highly, helping you to identify whether you need to answer in greater detail, or to cut down overlong responses. https: //www. sqa. org. uk/pastpapers/findpastpaper. htm

Making the most of Timed Practice ~ use your timed practices as valuable learning opportunities • Make sure you get the most out of timed practices by taking the opportunity to target set and improve on weaker answers. • Once you have used the mark scheme to self-assess, you should identify which questions/areas have tripped you up and set them as targets for revision. • Once you have looked over these, redo your original answer, writing it out as a perfect version. • If you’ve scored highly with very long answers, but the answers in the marking scheme are very brief, go through and delete what wasn’t necessary. Next time, you’ll be able to improve on your timing because you’ll have a better idea of how much to write in order to gain the marks. https: //www. sqa. org. uk/pastpapers/findpastpaper. htm

Making Notes • Your teacher will have given you lots of resources to use, from notes taken in class to revision booklets and study guides. This is a wealth of information, but you still need to be proactive. Using these materials and distilling them is a key part of your revision process. Making your own notes is key in digesting the learning, and ultimately having valuable resources to revise from.

Making notes ~ making good notes is key in having valuable resources to revise from. • One page revision – this is a good way to have a clear overview of the key elements of a Critical Essay text you have studied. Setting Themes Characters Summary – as you Key moments would write it in an essay introduction Techniques (eg Symbolism) • Use a large sheet of paper. • In each section include key points and key pieces of evidence. • Use subheadings within each section to keep your notes clear. • You might want to colour code your sections.

Making notes ~ making good notes is key in having valuable resources to revise from. • Mini revision booklet – this is a good way to make sure you are confident with the different question-types of the RUAE paper. Here's how to make one • The booklet will have eight pages. You could make a booklet for each grouping of question-types: Understanding, Analysis, and Evaluation. • On the front page, write a title (U, A, or E) and give an overview of general rules for that grouping of questions, what key skill they are asking you to demonstrate and what general rules there are (e. g. analysis = you must quote and comment). • Each of the other pages is for one of the question-types. You should include the steps for answering that question and a worked example. You can find these things in your class notes, in the RUAE homework booklets, and Master Your Learning.

Making notes ~ making good notes is key in having valuable resources to revise from. • Annotating– this is a good way to become a more active and evaluative reader. It also helps you to focus on the details of the texts you have studied in class or to pull apart RUAE passages. • https: //www. texasgateway. org/resource/annotating -deepen-understanding-english-iii-reading • Your teacher may have already helped you to annotate some texts in class, focusing on techniques and possible comments. If you have missed things then you could use resources on Microsoft Teams to fill out your annotations. • You should also annotate based on your personal reaction to the text, including questions, associations, and ideas the text triggers for you.

Quotations • Quotes are the evidence you need to support the points you will make in a Critical Essay, and to support your answer in the longer final question of the Scottish Set Text. You will need to make sure that you know enough quotes to be able to support your ideas, and that you are able to explain where in the text they are from, and why they matter.

Collecting Quotes ~ you will need a bank of quotations for your Critical Essay and the final question of the Scottish Text. You will need to collect a range of quotations to support different ideas or points you might need to make in different elements of the exam. Try to be economical about the quotes you choose; one quote can be used in many different ways. Context Write your quote on one side, and on the other describe the context (where it is from in the text you have studied) and any techniques it uses you might need to comment on. Quote Comment Making a quote bank like the one in the table above is another way to make sure you are familiar not just with the quotes, but also where they are and why they matter. Your class teacher will have pointed out key quotations as you went through each text. Look back through your notes and highlighted sections to find these again.

Learning your Quotes ~ you will have to memorise your quotations in order to use them in timed conditions. Key advice: • Don't try to remember too many at once. Pick out five quotes at a time to work on. • Choose quotes for the main characters and themes. Whatever text you're studying, start by learning the quotes that you seem to use most often. • https: //lifemoreextraordinary. com/revision/how-to-memorise-quotesfor-your-closed-book-english-exam/ Useful Apps – like digital flashcards i. Memorize – For Android Eidetic – For i. Phone

Good luck!