Group Study Method Is Simply Good

Learn and communication

Sometimes group study can be a productive thing, and sometimes, not so much.  Group study becomes less than productive when your study sessions turn into occasions for friends to get together to have a good time and share gossip.  Often, there’s little actual study that goes on during these sessions. However, that doesn’t have to be the case.  With a little planning and hard work, your study group can really help each other master your course material.  One of the best ways of doing this is through what’s called the Study Guide Exchange.

The Study Guide Exchange means this:  Each of you in your study group (an ideal number is 4 to 6) is responsible for creating a study guide for the class chapter or unit, based on your own notes.  That is, you should put your notes into a logically-flowing order and type it out in such a way that it can teach OTHER people what you’ve studied during the past few weeks.  After each of you has produced your study guide, you then make copies and share these with the other members of the group.  Let’s look in more detail at the steps involved in your Study Guide Exchange.

1) First, be sure that you have what’s necessary to make your study guide. This means your class notes and textbook, computer, and computer paper.

2) Decide which subject you’re creating the guide for. Most likely, this will be the class that your entire group shares.

3) Now study your textbook and lecture notes, highlighting all key points that you think you’ll need to understand for the test.  This is an important step, because each of you might have slightly different views of what is and isn’t important.  That’s what makes this idea so powerful:  You’re pulling in four or five different ideas about what you should learn.

4) Try to keep your study guide to 8 to 10 pages. More than that, when you consider that everyone will be reading three or four or five of these, will be overwhelming.

5) Emphasize important points through the use of bold-faced or different colored fonts.

6) Throughout the guide, after you go over a couple of important points, include questions with blanks after them. Then in the back of the study guide, have an answer page, so that everyone can check their answers.

7) While you’re working on the answer page, double check to be sure that all of your answers can be found by the others without too much of a strain.

8) To distribute these, you can do one of two things: Either print out enough for everyone, or just get everyone’s email address and email it to them.  Make sure that they have the program that they need to open the file (Word format, or .doc,, is a standard that most people should have, but make sure before you email them).  Either way, everyone will wind up printing one copy.

Theoretically, you can all now study each other’s study guides individually, but feel free to get together as a group and quiz each other on them as well.

As mentioned earlier, this idea works better when you don’t have too many people in your study group.  You can imagine how overwhelming it would be if you have 10 friends in the group, all creating their own 10 page study guide.  This would be a 100 page study guide for each unit in your class, and that’s a bit much for any student to digest.  Keep it to a small group, though, and this method will benefit the class grade for anyone who truly studies the guides.

Communication Tips For Your Confidence

What is communication? Communication is a process of transferring information from one entity to another. It is commonly defined as the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing or signs. It is perceived better as a two-way process, in which there is an exchange of progression of thoughts, feelings or ideas. Good communication tips are most helpful to have successful communication.

Communication is the fastest way to accomplish what you want. For example; in reaching your goals, in learning something and in teaching something; communication is there. Whatever you do in life, you live to communicate. Communication requires that all parties have an area of communicative commonality.
Having a good communication ensures that the other person understands you and you in turn understand them. It can help in resolving conflict since you can tell your needs abd be aware of the needs of others.

During a conversation, stop doing something else because this shows that you are not interested. Avoid things or happenings that may distract you from your meeting. And if your attention is drifting, bring it back to the conversation. Take note of the things that you hear during the conversation. Most importantly, listen very well so that you'll understand the details of the topic. You must think before you speak, it is advantageous to become conscious of what you say. Consider anticipated response of the listener, including possible concerns or objections. Word choice, tone and body language shape your message. Being more conscious helps you to be a better listener, too.

Lastly, always ask and clarify things to make sure that your listener understood what you said. Don't make assumptions of your listener's knowledge or interest in the subject. Give out common examples to aid in understanding the message. Watch for emotional ‘flooding' and take a time-out if needed. Try something different if what you are doing doesn't work.

Confidence is a word which we frequently use in everyday language, yet rarely do we stop and think what it means. Confidence is about being certain of your own abilities. It is about future. Confidence involves the belief that things will turn out well. Confidence may sometimes be used interchangeably with optimism.

Communicate with ConfidenceEffective communication skills are an asset in may life situations. They can contribute to a higher level of success in your career, new friends and give you a sense of confidence when faced with a room full of strangers. Confident communicators are self- confident and have good self esteem. They believe they are worth being listened. They like to hear the views and opinions of others. They are able to take and give criticism without feeling inadequate and hurt.

The only way to improve communication is to change the way you feel, think and act. Inorder to communicate confidently, you need to:

• Mature open minded personality
• Ask the right questions
• Listen Effectively
• Read and interpret body language
• Understand what is being said behind the words
• Use the right words
• Self Confidence
• Genuine interest in other people

Acting more confidently begins with thinking more confidently. Brain is a very powerful organ. It sends messages to people through the body language. If you feel that your point of view is worthless, it will be relayed to other people through your body language. Having confidence is all about believing in yourself and the only way you can build your belief in what you are capable of is by taking action in the world and learning through trial and error.

Focusing on action plans are great, as they help both you and the person you are talking with. It helps you remain focused on identifying actions. When the discussion is done, the other person has action items that they can work on, instead of worrying about how to handle the situation.

To communicate through messages with confidence, the main rule is to separate the situation fr4om the person. The end result desired and required actions are what you are fo9cusing on. The nicest outcome of communicating with confidence is when you see the other person improving and producing good results.