How to encourage good study skills
Part of the role of an effective teacher is to encourage
students to adopt good study skills in order to help
make the learning process more effective, reduce
stress, and improve their chances of success. For young
learners, this might include learning how to listen to the
teacher, how to behave appropriately in class, and how
to get along with other children. Teenagers need to learn
how to manage the demands of studying many subjects
and deal with increasingly complex material. Teenagers
and young adults also need to learn how to achieve
the appropriate focus and concentration, organize their
time, write assignments, take notes, do research, revise,
and reflect.
Eight ways to encourage good study
skills
1 Explore learning
Encourage students to think about their approach to
learning and what works best for them. You can do this
by using questionnaires or brainstorming activities in
which the students share their ideas about studying.
Some possible questions might be: What are your
attitudes towards making mistakes? How much do
you rely on your dictionary? Can you only remember
something when you’ve written it down? How much
reading do you do outside class? How do you make sure
you meet homework deadlines? If you are teaching a
monolingual group, you could conduct this discussion
in the students’ mother tongue. In a multilingual class,
cultural expectations and beliefs about learning may
vary, and it can be interesting and useful to share these
differences.
2 Explain what to do
Many students, especially teenagers and young adults,
don’t know how to plan their time and need explicit
instruction in taking an organized, methodical approach
to their work. You may need to teach your students how
to make a study timetable and how to manage their
time in order, for example, to meet the deadline for a
homework assignment or plan a revision schedule to
ensure they are ready for an exam.
Encourage your students to throw away papers which
are not useful and to be discriminating about the things
they keep. Show them examples of well-organized work,
such as pages from a notebook where the information is
clearly presented or where highlighter or coloured pens
have been used to organize notes. Teach your students
techniques for dealing with stress and distractions so
that they don’t feel overwhelmed by what they have to
do. Encourage them to let you know if they are having
difficulties so that you can help them.
Professional Development  How to encourage good study skills photocopiable
3 Organize and review
Organizing notes and notebooks is a key study skill.
In class, demonstrate different ways that learners can
organize their notebooks or folders, such as by allocating
different parts of the notebook or folder to grammar,
vocabulary, homework, and class work.
When they revise at home, students should review and
read their notes, expand them, summarize them, or use
them to create flash cards to test themselves. Reviewing
and expanding notes, preferably soon after the lesson,
is a very useful study skill. This can help students check
their understanding and organize information in a way
that is most meaningful to them. Similarly, summarizing
key points and devising ways to remember things are
useful techniques.
4 Get visual
Using visual displays of information can help learners to
understand the relationships between facts, concepts,
or ideas. They can help learners to recall things more
easily, are useful when planning writing assignments,
and can help learners improve their thinking skills. These
are often referred to as ‘graphic organizers’ and common
examples are mind maps, word webs, flow charts, pie
charts, and Venn diagrams. You can find out more about
different kinds of graphics organizers online. When your
students are exploring the kinds of study skills that work
for them, encourage them to incorporate visual material
into their approach to studying, taking notes, reviewing,
and revising.
5 Think and predict
Another useful study skill is the ability to think about a
topic and predict what is likely to come next. You can
use warmers and lead-in activities to achieve this, which
help to focus attention on the topic or idea and activate
the learners’ schemata, i.e. any existing knowledge or
experience they may already have about the topic.
Activating schemata in this way enables students to
make connections between what they already know and
what they are about to learn. This helps them to make
sense of any new language and ideas so that they can
take a more active part in the learning process, and so
learn more effectively.
6 Focus on the main idea
Helping your learners to focus on the main idea in a
text can also contribute to their success. Many students
become anxious or discouraged if they can’t understand
every word they read or hear, but first they need to be
able to gain a global understanding of a text. Setting gist
questions at the outset will help students focus on the
main idea and encourage them to become comfortable
with ambiguity and unknown words. A useful strategy is
© Oxford University Press 1
How to encourage good study skills
to ask learners to put away their dictionaries while you
work on reading and listening skills, so that they have to
work out the meaning of unknown words themselves, or
learn how to ignore them.
7 Collaboration and team work
Working with peers, sharing understanding, and helping
each other can be a very effective way for students
to learn – this is often the thinking behind using pair
and group work in class. This approach can also be
used outside the classroom by the formation of ‘study
buddies’ who support each other with homework or
exam preparation. Students can also learn good study
skills from their peers, such as different techniques for
learning vocabulary or how to go about memorizing
something.
8 Set an example
Reinforce what you tell your students about study skills
by applying appropriate techniques in your teaching.
Model useful techniques when you are teaching your
lessons. Ensure that your handouts are well presented.
Use the board in an organized and consistent way, e.g.
set aside one area for new or useful vocabulary; use
another area for current work in class and for generating
ideas; use another area for writing down the homework
assignment.
Five techniques and activities to
encourage good study skills
1 Using the board effectively
At the start of your lesson, divide your board into
sections like this:
Use the right-hand column for the date, your lesson
aims, a list of topics and tasks to tick off as you complete
them, and any notices for the class.
Use the left-hand column for new vocabulary, where
you or your students add new words or expressions.
You might use this area to write up word stress, word
class, example sentences, translation, antonyms, etc. Tell
students that this area will contain things they should
copy into their notebooks.
Professional Development  How to encourage good study skills photocopiable
Use the centre top section for planned board work, such
as answers to exercises, time lines, feedback, or prompts
for speaking or writing tasks.
Use the centre bottom section for impromptu board
work, such as quick notes or instructions, and things that
you don’t want to keep and will rub out when the lesson
moves on to the next stage.
Use these different sections in the same way each lesson,
so that your students become accustomed to the layout
and understand that the vocabulary and planned board
work sections will contain the most useful information
for them to copy down and remember.
If you use an interactive whiteboard, you can use
different pages each time for these sections, and can
download or print them for your students. However, it
would still be useful for learners to spend time copying
down any new vocabulary or thinking up personalized
examples and ways to record them, as this will help
them remember the new language better.
2 Using graphic organizers
To help students understand how to use graphic
organizers and to help them to incorporate them into
their approach to learning, choose one or two methods
to use regularly in your lessons, and gradually introduce
others as your course progresses.
Here is an idea for a simple chart you can use with a
reading or listening text – the KWL chart.
1 Draw this chart on the board or prepare one to
hand out to your students.
What I Know What I Want to What I Learned
about … find out about … about …
2 Start the activity with a warmer or lead-in to set
the context and activate schemata.
3 Put students in pairs to complete columns 1 and 2
of the KWL chart before they read the text, using
the information and ideas activated during step 2.
4 Students read or listen, in the usual way.
5 At the end of the activity, have students return to
their KWL charts to reflect on what they wrote and
to complete the third column.
6 Discuss the completed charts with the whole class.
3 Talking about study skills
Aim To explore students’ study skills and learning
styles
1 Before the class, prepare two sets of questions
about study skills, set A and set B. Design the
questions to suit your learners. You could ask
about their attitudes to translation, the use of L1
in class, whether they use a dictionary or online
© Oxford University Press 2
How to encourage good study skills
translation tool, how often they revise their notes,
how they like to learn new vocabulary, what
memorization techniques they prefer, etc. You
could use ranking statements, in which students
have to agree or disagree with a statement, such
as ‘I enjoy reading activities in class’ on a scale of
1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree); or you
could use more open-ended discussion questions,
such as ‘Do you enjoy reading activities in class?’,
or a mixture of both. The list of questions does not
need to be too long, and could focus on specific
areas that you would like to explore with your
students.
5 Ways of learning vocabulary
2 Put students in pairs. Give each student in the
pair a different set of questions, A or B. Students
should interview their partner using the list of
questions.
3 Have each pair of students compare their answers
with another pair and look for any areas of
similarity and difference.
4 Invite feedback from the class and discuss
effective ways of studying and any useful study
skills they have shared. Use the information you
gather from this activity to devise plans for ways
you can develop and encourage good study skills
in your classes.
4 Three-question prediction game
Aim To encourage prediction before a reading text
1 Choose a text from your coursebook that will
interest your class.
2 Spend time setting the context before the
students open their books, e.g. by asking
questions or by displaying appropriate pictures or
key words on the board and having the students
discuss them. For example, in a lesson on extreme
weather, tell the class about the coldest and
hottest places you have visited; then get students
to share their own experiences about being cold
or hot.
3 Tell the class what the text is about. Have them
work in pairs to write three questions they would
like to find answers to in the text, such as ‘Where is
the writer? How hot did it get? How did she feel?’
4 Set a time limit of 3–4 minutes and ask a gist
question, such as ‘Was the writer on holiday, or did
she live there?’ Tell the students to read the text
quickly without dictionaries to find the answer.
Check the answer with the whole class.
Professional Development  How to encourage good study skills photocopiable
5 Ask the students to read the text again and look
for the answers to their questions. Can they find
the information? Then have a class discussion to
discover what they found out. If some of their
questions were not answered, ask the class to
speculate on what the answers might be.
6 Spend a few minutes discussing this activity with
the class. Elicit from them or draw their attention
to the fact that predicting can make a text more
manageable and easier to understand.
Note This activity also works well with listening texts.
Aim To experiment with different ways of recording
new vocabulary
1 Put the class into groups and give each group four
or five large sheets of paper.
2 Give the groups a few minutes to write down on
one of the sheets of paper as many words on a
specific topic as they can think of, e.g. parts of the
body.
3 Students work in the same groups to find three or
four different ways of organizing the vocabulary
to make a useful revision tool. Give one or two
examples to get them started, e.g. you could
draw a picture of a face on the board and label
the parts. Other possible ideas might be to use
a spidergram with different sections for different
areas of the body – head, upper body, lower body;
make an alphabetical list; write example sentences
and underline the relevant word.
5 When the students have finished, display the
sheets of paper around the room and ask the class
to look at them and choose the three ideas they
like best.
6 Ask the students to choose one method and use
it to write down at least ten items of parts of the
body vocabulary in their notebooks.
Note Repeat the activity from time to time using
different topics, so that students get used to thinking
about and trying out different ways of recording
vocabulary.
Find out more about professional development courses at
www.oup.com/elt/oxfordteachersacademy
© Oxford University Press 3