Children who pretend to study get pretend results     004

Have you ever closely watched your high school child studying, especially if he or she is in the senior years? Probably what you will see is the child reading pages of material, or sometimes just staring at a particular page.  Unfortunately they are probably learning very little.

These days it seems that there is more to learn than ever. Let’s take Yr 12 English. Here the HSC consists of two exams of two hours each—that’s five long pieces of writing plus five short answers. In total, for Advanced English, there are at least seven texts to be learned. Sometimes one text might be a set of six separate poems!  It’s far more content than in previous times.

If students are to be successful in mastering the material there are three steps to be taken. They must understand the material, organise it and then learn it. This is of course in addition to practising essay writing etc. Unfortunately in many classrooms there is not much teaching going on. The teacher talks and talks and talks, lesson after lesson, giving out piles and piles of notes. Students sit passively and indeed some never even read the text being studied, no, not even once. It may be that some teachers are imagining they are university lecturers. Real teaching, when it does happen, is hard work for the teacher and hard work for the student.

Ideally students studying texts need to read ahead and actually prepare in advance for their school lessons. In this way they can understand far better what the teacher is saying. Lessons should be revised each night. Then there is the student’s own study program of organising the material into one place. The computer can be very useful for this. Notes, summaries, diagrams and tables need to be created. For most texts students need to learn the context, the plot, characters, themes, techniques and quotes, as a start.

Learning simply means putting the material into the brain using principles of educational psychology. Some might call it bashing the material in. The material needs to be broken into meaningful chunks and linked to some sort of structure. Once material has been studied it must be repeated and repeated, using as many different ways as possible such as speaking, drawing diagrams, or writing notes using different pens and colours. Students could learn some material sitting down and some material pacing the floor. Still other material could be taught to the family’s pet dog—well you get the idea, learning must be an active process which continues and continues.

Is this pleasant?  Of course not, but students will be pleasantly surprised at just how much material they can remember and recall in order to answer examination questions. Unfortunately not many students have an active program of learning and this is one reason why so many students choose to use prepared answers in their tests.

How can parents help?  Students should be provided with some peace and quiet, the materials they need to study, computers, trips to the library, cardboard and other project material, and car trips to exercise and sporting venues. Oh, and toner cartridges for the printer, please.  Be aware of what your child is doing. Sometimes parents can assist by ‘testing’ facts orally if children want this.

All content copyright—Mark Thackray—Australian Educational Services