Reading questions related to Foundations – Chapter 1: • Name one external factor that undermines your ability to concentrate and name one possible solution you can put in place to solve this problem. • Do you have a time scheduling? If so, name one thing you can do to improve your time management. If not, what is your plan to establish a time schedule? • What to do you when you feel overwhelmed by a task? Name one strategy you can put in place to increase your ability to complete the task. • Have you ever fallen behind? What did you do to catch up? Is this solution listed as one of the principles of a catch-up schedule? • Are you an active listener? If yes, name one characteristic of an active listener listed in the chapter. If you are not an active listener, name one of the characteristics listed in the chapter that you want to implement to become an active listener. • Name one of the 5 tips of note-taking that you usually do and one you want to implement. Reading questions related to Foundations – Chapter 2: • Name one of the 7 tips to improve your memory that you usually do and one you want to implement. • List three examples (you have read in the book or saw somewhere else) of noninclusive language and provide an inclusive word to replace each of them. • What is plagiarism? Provide a brief definition in your own words and give one example of it. • Explain what is your plan to implement 3 of the 8 tips to success in distance learning course. Reading questions related to Foundations – Chapter 4: • Name one tip of skimming listed in the book that you already know or use and name one other tips that you think may help you and give a brief explanation about your choice. • Are you an active reader? If yes, name one characteristic of an active reader listed in the chapter. If you are not an active reader, name one of the characteristics listed in the chapter that you want to implement to become an active reader. • Describe three steps you will do to implement the SQ3R method and name the first mandatory reading in this course that you will read with this method. • Name one annotating method you will try during your next reading activity in this course. Chapter One: Survival Skills 15 Above all, you need to be realistic in setting out your academic goals and fixing your timetable to achieve your objectives. Your schedule is not a wish list but rather a map to help you chart your way to your goals. Your schedule will also change from week to week and month to month as the demands of your coursework change. So, you should be pared to be flexible about what you can accomplish. pre- READING AND COMPREHENDING ASSIGNED TEXTS From the first class, your professors start assigning readings: the quantity may seem over- whelming (a whole book in one week?), and a student often does not know what to read for-you may have a few frames of reference to relate different texts but, at the beginning of the course, may be at a loss about what is important. Students ask whether they have to know all of the detail in a text and, if not, how they should separate what is essential from what is not. These questions are all perfectly fair, and are going through the minds of most students in the course. Rest assured-in most courses, these frames of reference will emerge more fully throughout the term. So, do not give up at the beginning, but do all that you can to keep up. Learning to read and understand assigned texts becomes a survival skill from the first week. We deal in Chapter 4 with reading and critical skills in more depth. Our concern here is to get you started with some methods that will help you through the first weeks. In a large Psychology class at Harvard, students were told to take 10 minutes to read 20 pages of the textbook, a tall order in itself. Then, they had to shut the books and take a test in which they had to write out the main argument, describe the supporting arguments and evidence, and finally state the author's conclusions. Only about 10 percent were able to complete the last requirement. Most students began at the beginning and read as far as they could in the allotted time, but they failed to come close to completing the reading. Those who completed the last requirement had learned to read for an overview, to skim, and then to fill in the gaps. These are essential survival skills in the first weeks of classes, and they can be broken down into a number of steps: 1. Look over the whole book, chapter, or article before you begin to read it. See how it is set out and what its divisions are (parts, chapters, sections, sub-headings, and so on). Sometimes, the table of contents is much abbreviated, so look over the parts or sections to see what each really contains. 2. Look over the sub-headings in the parts of the book, chapter, or article that you are going to read. If you will be reading it all, look at the other kinds of information, such as illustrations, graphs and diagrams, charts, and summaries. 3. Read at least part of the preface or all of an article's abstract or opening summary. Here, an author usually sets out his or her goals and a summary of the literature in the field, how this text relates to it, and how the argument is organized. You often get a use- ful summary of the whole reading in the preface of a book or the opening paragraph of a book or article. 4. Look to see whether the book, chapter, or article has a bibliography or list of works cited. Skimming it will help you learn which kinds of authors and authorities are referred to in the text and what they were writing about and will also give you a greater TABLE 1.1 Example of the Charting Method Period of History Countries Involved Issues or Problems Act Major Events Major Figure Effects Significance 1917-19 Allies → Germany (same) Treaty of Versailles unworkable solution settlement of blame, debts, land Revolution of 1917 Russia overthrow of Czar Lenin feudal → modern rise of Communism 1920-29 debt → inflation Weimar Republic Germany war reparations Munich Putsch fails Hitler jailed von Hindenburg resentment Hitler anti-Versailles writes Mein Kampf helps Hitler rise of Nazis Germ. Workers Party Mussolini 1930-39 Italy overthrow of monarchy re-militarization Hitler loses election to political instability von Hindenburg Hitler Germany rise of Fascists appointed Chancellor 1933 President 1934 Führer 1935 territorial expansion leads to anti-Semitism Holocaust re-militarization Hitler Example of the Charting Method to Show Comparisons and Contrasts TABLE 1.2 URBAN RURAL CANADA USA Chapter One: Survival Skills 31 MEXICO USA CANADA MEXICO Hist. Period [fill in details here) [fill in details here] 1750 1880 1980 Chapter One: Survival Skills 17 active listener and note-taker. Both listening and note-taking are learned skills. These skills are vital to your success in the course, since you will need these notes later to complete the course readings, write your essays, and study for the tests and final examinations. To develop critical listening skills in lectures and seminars, that is, to become an active listener, you need to choose where you sit in the classroom. Sitting in the middle and near the front positions you to see and hear best, with fewer distractions from your classmates. It also helps to be aware of the many activities that take place when you become an active listener: understanding what is being said, summarizing it for your notes, shifting attention between the lecturer and the notes, analyzing what has been said and evaluating it, and anticipating what will come next. Of course, you cannot undertake all of these activities all of the time with equal balance, but trying to stress two or three in any given lecture will help you improve your skills. The Lecture The structure of a lecture lays out its direction, the material to be covered and most impor- tantly, the larger frame of ideas of a discipline to which the material in the lecture is related. Lectures in most disciplines are set up using a model that lays out a series of ideas or concepts with a related set of applications, examples, or elaborations. Students may get lost in understanding the concepts and then find the examples con- fusing, considering them repetitious or unnecessary. Hence, one of the most difficult and important skills for students to acquire is to separate a lecture's main backbone—its main concepts—from the details that elaborate or illustrate each of those concepts. Both are cru- cial: the first gives the frame of ideas, and the examples are its application. Listening for the structure at the outset of a lecture and being able to differentiate between main ideas and details will help prevent you from getting lost. To help you make these distinctions from the first day of classes, in what follows, we break down the formal parts of a lecture along with the ways lecturers use language to persuade you or to emphasize their main points. The Structure of a Typical Lecture Some lecturers write out the structure of the lecture on the blackboard week by week and then follow it in the course of their remarks. Recording this outline at the beginning of the lecture, before the lecture actually starts, is a good way of preparing for the content of the next hour. Outlining the structure enables you to see the transitions and to anticipate where the lecture is going and, to some extent, how it will get there. Sometimes, there are key concepts or ideas in the outline. Finally, the outline will greatly help you in your short review of the lecture after it is over and in the more extensive review of your notes that you will have to undertake in preparing for your final examinations. Other lecturers do not write an outline on the board, and so, you have to listen actively for the shape of the lecture as it proceeds. Many lecturers list or enumerate the items they are covering: "First... second... finally." Or they may say, "There are three reasons for such a reaction..." indicating a cause-and-effect relationship that you should be aware of as a crit- ical listener. If you do not get the structure clearly when you are listening to it, you can try to note any of the transitions in the presentation and any ways in which points are enumer- ated, and then, after the lecture, take a few minutes to look over your notes and try to iden- tify the structural elements, marking them in your notes (1, 2, 3; A, B, C, and so on). 6 Part One: Shifting Gears this special time. Physical hunger is a sure source of distraction; soft drinks, beer, or snacks will tempt you to turn away from the books to indulge yourself (or , in the case of beer, fall asleep). It is best to have a deliberate snack before you start studying and to do a little phys- ical exercise as a tune-up. Studying when you are drowsy will not produce good results. Your Mental State Good study habits depend upon a positive mental outlook. But for most of us, there are any number of inhibitors of good study habits, including boredom, anxiety, personal worries, and poor study methods. The greatest deterrent is the notion that studying is a chore that must be performed, when you have to summon every ounce of will power to open the book and get through that first paragraph. Here, the problem is primarily one of attitude. Success in studying depends on getting the work done efficiently, block by building block. It helps to shift your attitude to find a reason that satisfies you for taking a class, such as that you are interested in the materials covered or that success in this course will make achieving other goals possible. Talking to your professor or to other students will some- times help. Getting the readings done for the next lecture so that you see for yourself how much more you get out of it when properly prepared will also result in a lot of satisfaction. If you are anxious about the difficulty of the course, you can try to solve the particular problem that you are stuck on, or you can talk to your instructor to sort out the problem. Or, if this course is more demanding than others, you can find ways of putting its demands in perspective, such as the following: • Using a notebook to write out your tasks and striking them out when they are accomplished Identifying your problems in a particular project or reading and addressing each of them systematically Breaking up large tasks into their component parts Doing the most difficult task first, when you are most alert Daydreaming or Mind-Wandering When you find your attention slipping, you need to note what is distracting you. If it is part of your environment, you can take steps to correct it. If it is daydreaming that is pulling you away, you might write down the interrupting thought and turn back to the books. The point is that if you objectify the thought, you will be able to set it aside and regain your direction more easily. Another trick is simply to make a check mark on a piece of paper whenever you catch yourself daydreaming and to try to reduce the number of checks in an hour. On the other hand, you can turn deliberately away from your books, daydream freely for as long as you wish, and then return to your study. The idea is to try to avoid studying and daydreaming at the same time. Personal Worries You might be troubled by other problems that interfere with your academic study. You may have withdrawn from study for several months or years to work and now wonder if your old skills are rusty. You might be worried about how to finance the costs of spiralling tuition and so have taken a part-time job that cuts into your study time; you might be anxious about Part One: Shifting Gears were not well 32 started Disadvantages . belc can revise your chart later. pag line top tur . chosen at first, and it is difficult to change them during a lecture once you are s You might categorize information incorrectly because your categories you should leave space at either end of your chart for new categories if needed, You might also have to force some materials into categories where they do not fit . After you have selected some working categories for the first points of a lecture, you arrangement of information. In that case, either move to a different category instead of might have difficulty filling in subsequent points if a lecturer follows a different taking method. Once you get this information down in the other format, you can retun progressing systematically from left to right or abandon your chart for another note well, losing some subtlety. ma do tic A later to complete your chart. and The Concept-Mapping Method The indent-outline, line-sentence, and Cornell methods of note-taking are linear depend on your ability to perceive the linear arrangement of a lecture. The concept. mapping method, like the charting method, maps out the lecture in terms of a graphic ar diagram and allows you to draw connections that you did not see before or that the lectura may return to later in the lecture . Maps also can capture a lot of information on a single page and are excellent for showing relationships among concepts and data. For instance, a map of the first point in the lecture on the causes of World War II might look like Figure 1.3. FIGURE 1.3 Example of Concept Mapping Method Resentment- Hitler: German army in WWI Failed Munich Putsch + writes Mein Kampf Nazis Succeeds as chancellor 1933 Militarism Inflation Debt / Repayment Military Limitations + 100 000 President and Führer 1934 1 Develops army and territorial expansionism Theory of Blood & Soil; anti-Semitism GERMANY Treaty of Versailles, 1919 Land Loss to France Alsace-Lorraine AFTERMATH OF WWI ITALY Weimar Republic RUSSIA Rise of Fascism Rise of Communism Mussolini Land Constraints Problem of Debt Relations with Allies Political Failures Lenin & Stalin
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