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Cognitive Study Methods
Learning is more engaging if we are active learners. This means building into the learning process thinking as a way of dealing with concepts, ideas, experiments, that in turn are linked and unlinked and reconnected. Study techniques that promote thinking are considered cognitive in nature, as opposed to rote memorization. Encourage students to use the categories in Bloom's Taxonomy to devise study goals.
Generally, cognitive study methods involve thinking through the material repeatedly.
When reading an assignment, study plans might include:
- list important concepts
- mark most
important lines
- answer questions
orally or in writing
- explain text
in own words
- look for
examples out of your own experiences
- make an outline
or table of contents
- write out
subtitles
- identify
concepts and compare with each other
- define words that are not defined
- write summaries
- write words
down from memory and discover relationship between them
- find main
themes
- discover
author's viewpoint
- write a sketch
as an aid in memorizing; reproduce text with the help of your
sketch
- make comparisons
with previously learned material and concepts, ideas, relationships
- answer questions
with the help of a dictionary, but without recourse to text
- read to understand material; study to understand (as if you need to teach it to someone else)
List other ways to engage actively with your reading material: