- Question
- What is the best way to study?
- Position‹2 of 3›
- Short-term study skills
Forming short-term study groups before big tests is the best way to study.
The argument
Proponents of this position argue that the most effective short-term preparation for a test is a study group convened just before it. The claim is not that group work replaces individual preparation but that it completes it: study groups are held to be effective when combined with preparedness, ample notes, and a notebook in which to work. The materials are the raw input; the group is what turns them into something a student can use under examination conditions. The mechanism, on this account, is the shift from reading to articulating. Students begin by looking at their own notebooks and thinking about what the teacher said during the lecture, which is already an act of recall rather than passive review. They then look up at one another and put the material into their own words. Restating a point aloud exposes whether it has actually been understood, because a student who cannot phrase it without reading from the page discovers the gap at once, at a moment when it can still be repaired. The group then works towards a general agreement on the meaning of the material, which subjects each person's version to correction by the others and settles ambiguities that silent revision tends to leave intact. It is this interactivity that proponents credit with the result. Material that has been spoken, contested and agreed upon is held differently from material that has only been read; in the phrase used for it, the student has made it their own. Because the effect depends on the material being fresh at the moment the test is taken, timing matters as much as method, which is why the group is recommended just before the test rather than as a long-run habit. On this view, forming study groups is the best short-term way to study.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Study groups are not for everyone: While social learners benefit greatly from study groups, solitary learners learn best by studying alone. For solitary learners, group study would be more distracting than helpful.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Study groups do not work well for solitary learners.