Introduction to study skills in English – I [Archives:2006/924/Education]
Dr Jayashree Mohanraj
Faculty of Arts
Taiz University
Knowledge is vast. Learners are at the threshold of this wide and exciting world of knowledge. They should learn to enter it with a sense of exploration and enthusiasm. Exploring the world of knowledge through books and other sources should be an enjoyable experience and not a daunting task. How do we make it so? In this article I will discuss what makes learning a difficult task and how to turn it into a pleasurable experience.
In the first place, we should develop a positive attitude towards learning and set our goals clearly. All of us like to be achievers and not losers. We should have 'learning' as our long term goal and not have the short term goal of 'examination'. Once we work towards the long term goal the short goal will take care of itself. An achiever sets up goals and systematically works towards it. 'Systematical' is the first word we should remember. Anything that follows a system makes it more efficient. We should develop a skill to study in a systematic way. We can call this 'study skills'. What are study skills?
Before discussing let us understand how we get information in any subject and what are the sources of knowledge. The main sources of information for a learner are : a) books, and b) classroom lectures, and c) the world at large. Learners have to internalize the information provided by these sources in the most efficient way in order to retain and retrieve it when necessary.
While in school learners mostly depend on reading the textbooks and listen to teachers explaining the contents of the textbooks. When they graduate to college, their horizon of knowledge is expected to expand. They are expected to take down notes while professors lecture in the classroom. They are also expected to seek information from various other sources and read more than one book for any given subject and assimilate the information presented in them. This requires efficient ways of reading. They need to organize this information and present it in their assignments, examinations and projects.
Unfortunately learners in colleges don't receive enough training in these basic skills and are made to receive dense information in a short time. The sense of insecurity thus gives rise to diffidence and makes them take recourse to 'memorization' without proper comprehension. Such cramming makes the knowledge received short lived and haphazard. What is required is not learning long texts by rote, but developing an ability to take down notes in the classroom. For, certainly the professor's lectures contain more details than what is given as 'handouts'. Interestingly, though reading, summarizing, writing paragraphs, information transfer skills are included in the syllabus in the first two years in the college, these skills remain confined to the specific papers only and are not extended to use in general learning programme.
Studying efficiently includes seeking information from dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses, and web-directories on one hand, and efficient ways of taking notes and summarizing on the other. The first set of skills can be called reference skills while the second is called study skills.
Dictionary skills are the first of the basic reference skills. We have various types and sizes of dictionaries like bilingual dictionaries, monolingual dictionaries, dictionaries of abbreviations, dictionaries of quotations, biographical dictionaries, dictionaries of idioms and phrases, dictionaries of technical terms and other specialized dictionaries. To add to the list we have the Reverse Dictionary. The first dictionary in English was compiled by Dr Samuel Johnson in 1755 A.D. After seventy years later in 1828 Noah Webster compiled a dictionary of American English. Both scholars living on two sides of the Atlantic had worked on similar projects independently. Over the years the dictionary has undergone several phases and changes and now it has evolved as a virtual knowledge house of language. In school the learners are encouraged to use bilingual dictionary as the primary objective at that stage is to learn meanings of words. But when one graduates into college one should use a monolingual dictionary. We can use a dictionary for improving vocabulary, not only for meaning of words, but also for pronunciation, spelling, grammar, use and usage as well. Latest editions of Cambridge International Dictionary of English (CIDE), Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (OALD) and Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE) have also come up with small workbooks to practise language. A good dictionary can be a very faithful helpmate for a second language learner of English. It can help the learner to pronounce words correctly. Sometimes the spelling of the word does not help us pronounce the word correctly. For example the word 'penchant' is not pronounced as pen-chant but as 'pa-shan'. A printed dictionary gives phonetic transcription and the stress on the right syllable. Now almost all publishers of dictionaries have come out with CDs. As far as pronunciation is concerned these act as virtual language laboratories helping the learner with models of British and American pronunciation of each word. It also helps in giving practice in pronunciation as well as exercises in vocabulary and grammar for practising language.
A thesaurus is another excellent source for improving vocabulary. It helps us to choose the right word to be used in the right place. While in the dictionary words are arranged alphabetically, in a thesaurus we have to use the index at the back and refer back to the lexicon to learn all the synonyms and antonyms of the words. In thesaurus words and phrases with similar meanings are grouped together. This is called a lexicon. If we are not sure of the appropriate use of a particular word in a particular context and want to choose from a number of words and phrases with similar meanings we can use a thesaurus. It helps the learners develop a penchant for words. One of the most ancient and best Thesauruses to date is Roget's Thesaurus.
The encyclopedia gives us a very comprehensive information on any subject. It is a book or set of books containing many articles which give us a large number of facts about many different subjects may it be about an author, a topic or a place or an event in history. It is therefore a set of volumes and the topics are alphabetically arranged. Each volume is numbered according to the letter with which the first entry begins and ends with the first letter of the last entry. There are several encyclopedias, Encyclopedia Britannica, Chambers Encyclopedia, Everyman's Encyclopedia, The World Book Encyclopedia to name a few. Each of them has an index to help us get the information we need. There are also useful compendiums (ready reference books) like Book of Facts.
The present generation is lucky in the sense that they can have a world of knowledge at the click of a button. The Internet can offer information on any subject under the sun. But one should know how to get this information without wasting a lot of web time. Web Directories with names of all the websites are available now. A Web Directory provides addresses and catalogues, and also summarizes information available on the web pages. It may also tell us which are the most frequented/popular sites on the Internet. It organizes web sites into subject categories giving the cyber surfer at-a-glance browsing. For example we know that there are more than 400 dictionaries in more than 130 languages available online. Point the browser to Bucknell University Web Online Dictionary website http:/www.bucknell.edu/rbeard/diction.html/. From this site we can access thesauruses and other vocabulary aids including phrases and quotation dictionaries on specific topics.
All these books mentioned here are placed in the Reference Section of the library. That means these books are not normally issued home and are meant to be referred in the library only. this brings us to the question of how to locate books in the library. Every library uses the internationally accepted mode of classifying the books called the Dewey Decimal Classification. The numbering begins with 000 and ends with 999. According to this books are classified into 10 categories, and a group of numbers are given to each category. For example books pertaining to 'General Works' like libraries, journalism, dictionaries, encyclopedias etc. can be located in the numbers between 000 and 099. Though the learners need not know how books are classified, they need to know how to locate books on the shelf using catalogue cards. All the particulars of the book like the title, author, publisher, accession number etc. are written on the catalogue cards. There are three types of such cards. Cards which are arranged as per subject are called 'subject index' and cards arranged as per the authors are 'author index' cards. Cards are also arranged according to the titles of books and are called 'title index'. Knowledge of these cards helps the learner locate a relevant book in a huge library without wasting time. These days most of the libraries are automated, i.e. the information about the books placed in the library and their availability are computerized. We can locate the books with the help of the computer placed at the counter. Even here, we can go by the author subject or title of the book.
In this part of my article I have discussed some basic aspects of reference skills. In the next part I will discuss study skills per se.
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