Admit it: You already know what you need to do to get good grades!

One of the most frustrating things I have found about other study-enhancement approaches is that they tell you, often in very long-winded ways, what you already know! Students I have worked with also share this perspective. All too frequently, frustrated and anxious students attend seminars and are given the following earth shattering piece of advice: You need to study more! Wow, what a revelation that must be to the student! They come looking for advice, feeling bad because they are not getting anywhere with their study, and are told something that makes them feel even worse. The Next Level Learning system is different in that it makes an important assumption: it assumes you already know you need to study!

In my opinion, it is pointless telling students that they need to study when they already know action is required! This only serves to make the student feel guilty and even more anxious. The big question is not whether or not you have to study. You know this. The real question is: why don’t you do it? This is what the Next Level Learning system is designed to address. And once this has been addressed, taking the action that is required becomes effortless.

Additionally, other study-enhancement techniques focus in great detail on specifics. That is, they provide the student with detailed strategies regarding what they should do. They focus on aspects such as: how your study environment should look, how to take notes, the length of time you should spend on each subject, the length of time you should spend on study overall, when to take breaks, how long each break should be etc. The NLL system is different in that it makes a second important assumption: it assumes you already know all of this too! What do I mean? Take a look at the exercise below:

Think about your approach to study as it is now. Is there anything that you could do differently that would definitely make you improve? Ask yourself, “If there was one thing I could guarantee doing consistently and well to be successful in study, what would it be?”

From having done this exercise with many students, I have yet to come across anyone who had no idea how to answer the question. This, in my opinion, is extremely telling. It means that you probably already have a fairly good idea about the type of action required of you! Think about it for a moment. In the above exercise you were probably able to think of at least a few ways in which you could improve your academic performance if you applied the strategies consistently. In the past I have seen many excellent examples of strategies students think of almost instantaneously. Examples have included:

“Well, if I did a little maths homework every night instead of always leaving it until the night before it is due, this would definitely help.”

“If I did some technical graphics first, this would get me in the mood for study. I like that subject”.

“If I consistently wrote a few hundred words a day, my thesis would improve effortlessly.”

“If I started with my French homework, I would get it out of the way. Then all other work would seem easy and less daunting.”

“Perhaps if I read half a chapter a night, I could keep up with my reading”.

“If I took notes from the book and highlighted the important sections. Then I could use fun, crazy mental rhymes to help me remember the information and the order it comes in. If I did this every day I would actually ace my exam”.

From this list of examples, you can see that students are very capable of coming up with clever ways of improving their own academic performance. Moreover, they come up with very specific, individualized action plans. I often find that it is the strategy a student formulates for themselves that works best for that student. After all, who knows better what the student really needs than the student themselves? Yet, so many study-enhancement programmes focus on telling the student what they need to do in precise and laborious detail! In my opinion, it is incorrect to assume that generic advice given in a study-skills workshop will apply to all students, each with their own specific needs and preferences.

Generally speaking, even if a student is not totally sure about which specific study practices will work best for them, there is one sure-fire way to figure this out. Years ago, when I was learning to play guitar, I was given some excellent advice from an instructor. He told me that, whatever the difficulty I was having with a piece of music, the answer was always to do more practice! In fact, he even had his own droll saying for this: “the answer is practice, now what’s the question?” How right he was. No matter what the specific problem I was having with guitar, it was nothing that couldn’t be improved dramatically simply by applying some diligent practice. This applies to academic work too. No matter what the difficulty a student may be having with their specific study strategy, through consistently engaging with the work, their strategy will always improve eventually. Moreover, I have observed that these improvements in study practices usually come much more quickly that one might expect.

If you are unsure as to the specific details of your study practice, my advice is simply to start with any approach to study. From here, the more you study, the quicker you will realize exactly what needs to change or improve in order to have even better study sessions. The answer is study, now what’s the question! Try to remember that this is not rocket science. There is no ‘secret study technique’ that once you figure it out, will get you straight A’s. Study is simply study. Sure, the type of study methods you use are important. But remember that the more you engage with the work, the more refined and sophisticated your study will become. In this area, practice really does make perfect.

TTYL,

David

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