What are the Important Learning Strategies?

Learning strategy could be divided into five categories; which are:

(i) Rehearsal strategy involves actively repeating (saying, writing) material or focusing on the key parts. For brief rote learning tasks, rehearsal may involve repeating key terms aloud, copying the material, taking verbatim notes or underlining important parts.

(ii) Elaboration strategy involves making connections between the new and the familiar. For rote learning, elaboration strategy includes forming mental images to associate with the material, generating sentences that relate to the items to be learned to more familiar items or using mnemonic devices like the keyword method. In more complex meaningful learning, elaboration strategy includes paraphrasing, summarizing, creating analogies, taking notes that go beyond verbatim repetition to extent or comment on the material, answering questions and describing how the new information relates to the existing knowledge.

(iii) Organizational strategy involves imposing structure on the material by dividing it into parts and identifying super ordinate-subordinate relationships. In simple rote learning, organizational strategy involves breaking lists into chunks. Organizational strategy for complex meaningful learning includes outlining the text, creating a hierarchy on network of concepts or creating diagrams showing their relationships.

(iv) Comprehension monitoring strategy involves remaining aware of what one is trying to accomplish, keeping track of the strategy one uses and the success achieved by them and adjusting the behaviour accordingly. This strategy includes self-questioning to check understanding, taking action when one does not understand, using statements of objectives to guide study, establishing sub-goals and assessing progress in meeting them and modifying strategies; if necessary.

(v) Affective strategy includes establishing and maintaining motivation, focusing attention, maintaining concentration, managing performance, anxiety and managing time effectively. These relatively generic learning strategies and related cognitive skills are not only worth teaching to elementary and secondary students but are helpful in your own learning.