How to Study Better Using SQ3R

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SQ3R is a new medium of studying which is slowly gaining in popularity especially in countries like the United States due to the various advantages it offers. SQ3R is a reading strategy that is designed in five phases or steps and incorporates the principles of studying. This is similar to the PQRST table. The five phases that are incorporated into the SQ3R method by way of a different learning skill, study skill and other learning styles include:

Survey: This is mainly carried out before memorizing or understanding the concepts. This process takes about a couple of minutes. This mainly involves looking at the title, seeing the entire chapter, the headings and sub chapters. These principles of learning skill, study skill and learning styles are principally incorporated into this system as there is a great need to understand and briefly form a basic idea of what one is getting into. This is thought to be better than blindly memorizing as the conventional rules of studying dictate. Surveying helps students identify certain important ideas from the chapter and the lessons.

Question: This learning style and skill is about asking questions related to the chapter. This process should generally take about forty seconds and helps the child understand that asking questions and seeking answers immediately will help retain ideas that the chapters contain. The questions can be varied such including the basic idea behind the chapter? What is the chapter attempting to teach? How can I learn these better? This procedure can be adopted with all chapters and sub chapters so that an overall mental picture can be formed and studying becomes easy.

Read: This is a very important step of studying and helps develop study skills, learning skills and learning styles. This is necessary as reading automatically makes a child understand the chapter better and in an effective manner enabling them to retain it for a long time to come. It is very necessary that the chapters and sub chapters are properly understood by the youngster. This needs immense concentration. Hence it is a good idea setting aside a location in the home where the child can concentrate on reading the chapters in peace.

Recite: Another important phase in this module of varied learning styles, learning skills, study skills which go on to make studying a lot simpler is the recitation of what one has read. This is important for the child to understand what he is studying. This should take no longer than five minutes depending on the length of the chapter. It is also important that the recitation is in their own words and not word to word repetition from the book. Understanding and repeating in own words make the concepts clearer than simply memorizing the pattern of the book chapters or the language that is used in the respective books.

Review: This is the last step in these wonderful and effective new learning styles, learning skills, study skills that make studying easy. This is about reviewing the chapters learnt using the above mentioned steps. This is necessary to conclude what one has learnt using the SQ3R model of learning. After reviewing one can try to recall or remember what one has learnt through the above mentioned procedure of studying. The more the student remembers the greater and effective the study rate .Flash cards can also be used in this process.

This method was mainly designed for college students. However recent times have seen this method being incorporated at elementary and primary levels of schooling too. Teachers need to be very familiar with this model of teaching before they can effectively help their students. This can be applied to various lengths of texts and various forms of studies too.