“Scooping Out”
Fresh Ideas about Studying!
Fresh Ideas about Studying!
On Wednesday, September 14, Learning Specialist, Lyam
Christopher, was a delightful addition to the “Here’s the Scoop” series. Mr. Christopher shared ideas for calming
anxieties with breathing exercises and increasing memory functions by using
word associations. Christopher shared
his first-hand experiences learning to breathe in a calming manner, as a result
of his practice of free diving.
Breathing exercises are always useful for controlling
the flow of air in and out of the lungs.
The benefit is a reduction in stress.
Christopher encouraged audience, consisting of half faculty/staff and
half students, participation by facilitating the practice of inhaling and
exhaling. The idea was to inhale and
hold for four seconds, then exhale, with the hissing sound of a snake, for
eight seconds. The audience repeated
this exercise several times.
Christopher also shared two different approaches for
better study skills. Each strategy
depends on whether studying facts and information in short or long narratives.
When sentences and/or phrases contain important
information to be retained, word associations help in the process. Christopher presented a strategy he described
with an acronym: WOH or WORDS, OBJECTS,
HILARITY (including humor with a SHOCK VALUE). Christopher again engaged the crowd with an
exercise.
Using the sentence, “Henri
Becquerel invented radium in 1896,” the audience was asked to determine the
hardest word to remember. In this
example, the audience agreed upon the surname of the inventor, Becquerel. After identifying the word, the audience was
challenged to think about some object which comes to mind regarding the word. This elicited several responses, including
one suggesting the object, cheese, because “béchamel” sauce is associated with
cheese and the name sounds like “béchamel.”
The “hilarious” is left to the imagination. Christopher’s second example about word
associations elicited responses about throwing scalpels at people in a court
room!
When studying and attempting to retain information in
longer narratives, another suggested strategy is the List Method. The audience discovered the benefits of this
approach by creating a “list” from a narrative about Mark Twain’s tragedies in
life. By reading the narrative and
creating a list of the tragedies, the reader is able to determine the number of
items in the list, or, the number of tragedies in Twain’s life. Studying with this number in mind provides a
benchmark, in order to be certain all the tragedies are studied, should there
ever be a quiz or exam asking questions about the tragedies.
Overall, the presentation was interesting and
informative. Could a side benefit of
learning the value of word associations be to think about “hilarious” gothic
and macabre stories of shock value, just in time for Halloween? WOH there, diver, you forgot your béchamel
sauce!
Submitted by Doug Cornwell
PBSC-Librarian/Associate Professor
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