Why Study?

Throughout your college career, you’ll be responsible for completing various types of “assessments": pretests, essays, group projects, tests, exams, etc. Teachers assign these assessments to check your understanding of the course content. To prepare for these assessments, it's important that you study—and study effectively. Many of your instructors believe that studying is the first step to learning, and if you don't build that foundation, you'll likely struggle with the other course content.

Reading in College

As a college student, you will eventually choose a major or focus of study. In your first year or so, though, you’ll probably have to complete “core” or required classes in different subjects. For example, even if you plan to major in English, you may still have to take at least one science, history, and math class. These different academic disciplines (and the instructors who teach them) can vary greatly in terms of the materials that students are assigned to read. Not all college reading is the same.

So, what types of reading materials can you expect to encounter?

• Textbooks

• Academic and News Articles

• Literature and Nonfiction Books

• Preview: Even before you begin the reading assignment, read the title and subtitles, the summary at the end of the chapter, and any images. Scanning this information can give you an initial idea of what you’ll be reading and some useful context for thinking about it. You can also start to make connections between the new reading and knowledge you already have, which is another strategy for retaining information.

• Skim: Skimming is a technique where you scan content for major themes and ignore the filler. (Hint: Although your PDV textbook has been heavily revised from its original to remove filler, you still should be using the skim method to scan for the major points.)

• Read: While you are reading, you should have a pen or pencil in hand, ready to circle or highlight key concepts. Write questions or comments in the margins or take notes in a notebook. This will help you remember what you are reading.

• Summarize: After you read, it’s worth taking the time to write a short summary. The exercise of jotting down a few sentences or writing a short paragraph capturing the reading’s main ideas is enormously beneficial—it not only helps you understand and absorb what you read but also gives you ready study materials for exams and other assignments.

• Review: It may not be practical to thoroughly reread assignments from start to finish, but you can go back and review any summaries you've written along with any questions or comments you made in the book's margins or a notebook.

Reading Strategies for Online Resources

Reading online texts (like this one) presents unique challenges for some students. For one thing, you can't readily circle or underline key terms or passages on the screen with a pencil. For another, there can be many tempting distractions—just a quick visit to Amazon or Instagram.

While there’s no substitute for self-discipline, you can take advantage of the following tips to make online reading more efficient and effective:

• Where possible, download the reading as a PDF, Word document, etc., so you can read it offline and add your comments.

• Get one of the apps that allow you to disable your social media sites for specified periods of time.

• Adjust your screen to avoid glare and eye strain, and change the text font to be less distracting.

Vocabulary-Building Techniques

Gaining confidence with unique terminology used in different disciplines can help you be more successful. The following are a few vocabulary-building techniques for you to try:

• Read Everything and Read Often: Reading frequently both in and out of the classroom will help strengthen your vocabulary. Keep a running list of new and unfamiliar terms within your notes for each class.

• Make Connections to Words You Already Know: You may be familiar with the “looks like . . . sounds like” saying that applies to words. It means that you can sometimes look at a new word and guess the definition based on similar words whose meaning you know. For example, if you are reading a biology book on the human body and come across the word malignant, you might guess that this word means something negative or broken if you already know the word malfunction, which shares the “mal-” prefix.

• Make Index Cards: If you are studying certain words for a test, or you know that certain phrases will be used frequently in a course or field, try making flashcards for review. Writing and reviewing your flashcards will help you to retain the information. While writing out the information can be beneficial, you can also use apps, such as cram.com, to create electronic flashcards. Use these to drill yourself, and then ask your friends to help quiz you.

Testing Strategies

Testing is a part of the learning cycle and everyday life. Common life situations such as participation in athletic events or simply answering a child's question are forms of tests because they measure how much we know about a specific subject at a single point in time. They alone are not good measurements of how smart or gifted you are—they show only how much you know or can do at that moment. We can learn from how we have performed, and we can think about how to apply what we have learned to do even better next time.

Academic tests are similar to real-life tests in the following ways:

• They help us measure our progress toward mastery of a particular skill.

• They are not a representation of how smart, talented, or skilled we are but rather are a measurement of what we know about a specific subject at a specific point in time.

• They are extraordinary learning opportunities.

Academic tests in college are different from those you took in high school. College instructors expect to see much more of you in an exam: your thoughts, your interpretations, your thinking process, your conclusions. High school teachers usually look for your ability to repeat precisely what you read in your text or heard in your class. Success on high school tests relies much more on memorization than on understanding the material. This is why you need to modify your study habits and your strategies for taking exams in college.

Test Anxiety

For many test-takers, preparing for a test and taking a test can cause stress and anxiety. Most of us have experienced this. It is normal to feel stress before an exam, and in fact, that may be a good thing. Stress motivates you to study and review, generates adrenaline to help sharpen your reflexes and focus, and may even help you remember some of the material you need. But suffering too many stress symptoms or suffering any of them severely will impede your ability to show what you have learned. Test anxiety is a psychological condition in which a person feels distressed before, during, or after a test or exam to the point where stress causes poor performance. Anxiety during a test interferes with your ability to recall knowledge from memory and your ability to use higher-level thinking skills effectively.

Below are some effects of moderate anxiety:^[1]

Other factors can influence test anxiety, too. Students with disabilities and students in gifted education classes tend to experience high rates of test anxiety.

If you experience test anxiety, have hope! Experiencing test anxiety doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you or that cannot perform well in college. In fact, some stress—a manageable amount of stress—can actually be motivating. The trick is to keep stress and anxiety at a level where it can help you do your best rather than get in your way.

Strategies for Preventing and Controlling Test Anxiety

There are steps students should take to help eliminate stress getting in the way:

• Be prepared. A primary cause of test anxiety is not knowing the material. If you take good notes and review them regularly, have confidence in the knowledge you are developing and the steps you took to prepare.

• Practice! One of the best ways to prepare for an exam is to take practice tests. Practice staying calm, relaxed, and confident. If you find yourself feeling overly anxious, stop and start again.

• Avoid negative thoughts. Your own negative thoughts—“I’ll never pass this exam” or “I can’t figure this out, I must be really stupid!”—may move you into a spiraling stress cycle that in itself causes enough anxiety to block your best efforts. When you feel you are brewing a storm of negative thoughts, stop what you are doing and clear your mind. Once your mind is clear, repeat a reasonable affirmation to yourself—“I know this stuff”—before continuing your work.

• Visualize success. Picture what it will feel like to get that A. Translate that vision into specific, reasonable goals that you can work toward. Take one step at a time and reward yourself for each goal you complete.

• It’s all about you! Don’t waste your time comparing yourself to other students in the class, especially during the exam. Focus on your work and your plan. Also, exams are not a race, so it doesn’t matter who turns in their paper first.

• Have a plan and follow it. As soon as you know that an exam is coming, develop a plan for studying. Don’t wait to cram for an exam at the last minute; the pressure you put on yourself and the late-night will cause more anxiety, and you won’t learn or retain much.

• Make sure you eat well and get a good night’s sleep before the exam. Hunger, poor eating habits, energy drinks, and lack of sleep all contribute to test anxiety.

• Relax! You perform best when you are relaxed, so learn some relaxation exercises you can use during an exam. Before you begin your work, take a moment to listen to your body. Which muscles are tense? Move them slowly to relax them. Tense them and relax them. Exhale, then continue to exhale for a few more seconds until you feel that your lungs are empty. Inhale slowly through your nose and feel your rib cage expand as you do. This will help oxygenate your blood and re-energize your mind.

• Come early and prepared. Come to the exam with everything you need like your pencils, erasers, calculator, etc. Arrive to class early so you aren’t worried about time. Try to avoid the pre-exam chatter of your classmates, as this may contribute to your anxiety.

• Put it in perspective. Take a minute to think about the three most important things in your life. Will you lose any of these things as a result of the exam? An exam is not life or death, and it needs to be put in perspective.

Health and wellness cannot be overstated as factors in test anxiety. Studying and preparing for exams can be easier when you take care of your mental and physical health. The following are a few tips for better health, better focus, and better grades:

• Try a mini-meditation to reduce stress and improve focus. Breathe in deeply, count to five, and exhale slowly. Watch your lower abdomen expand and deflate. Repeat five times. (Learn more about how to proactively manage stress from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.)

• Know when to stop. Although some students may stay up until 4 A.M. studying, it’s not a healthy habit. Your mind is more efficient when you get enough quality sleep, so make sure to schedule enough time for rest.

• Don’t try to be perfect. You’ll alleviate a lot of anxiety by learning that just “doing your best” is something to be proud of—it doesn’t have to be perfect.

• Reach out for help. If you feel you need assistance with your mental or physical health, talk to a counselor or visit a doctor.

If you need someone to talk to, contact one of the counselors in our Student Success office by calling 724-925-4000. You can also learn more about Westmoreland support services on the Community Resources page.