Study Skills A

Typical Student: 3rd grade through adult learners who do not understand the concepts of what is being taught in classrooms. These learners do not have well-developed recitation skills and cannot repeat sentences they hear. Therefore, they have trouble retaining and answering questions about information that is presented.

Students will learn:

• Analogies
• And/Or
• Basic Evidence
• Classification
• Deductions
• Vocabulary
• Description
• Opposites/Same
• Statement Inference
• True-False
• Information exercises (i.e., months, seasons, holidays, poems, animals)

Students will leave Study Skills A being able to recite poems, give definitions for about 50 words, follow instructions, use evidence to describe why something happened, classify things and answer questions based on statement inference. Students now have a foundation on which to build future learning.

Study Skills B1 and B2

Typical Student: 4th grade through adult learners who are poor comprehenders. Students lack some common basic information. They tend to have trouble with difficult statement-repetition activities, deductions that involve "maybe", relating conclusions to evidence, identifying contradictions, following written directions, poor vocabulary and writing.

Students will learn:

• To formulate a deduction (reasoning skill)
• Basic classes (information skill)
• To identify the precise meaning of a word (vocabulary skill)
• To understand the structure of complicated sentences (sentence skill)
• How to answer a question or follow a direction (basic comprehension skill)
• To write answers correctly (writing skill)

Students will leave Study Skills B1 and B2 having learned many of the skills associated with reading carefully, operating on information that they read and following specific instructions.

Students:

• Understand systems and that they are made up of parts that have names and that systems are governed by rules (i.e., digestive system, muscular system)
• Understand that when words function in the same way they are the same part of speech
• Understand the basic procedures for drawing conclusions from facts
• Can follow very specific instructions of the sort found in work applications, tax returns and other forms
• Can readily learn how to identify fallacies in arguments, how to read critically and how to solve possible inconsistencies encountered in reading

Study Skills C

Typical Student: 5th grade through adult learners who have already learned many comprehension skills. They have not mastered reasoning skills to the point where applying them is nearly automatic. These students have trouble learning a new concept or direction from written instructions. They are deficient in advanced vocabulary, the mechanics of writing and editing and lack skills in extracting information from sources (i.e., written passages or graphs). Most of all, these students have trouble working independently.

Students will learn:

• Organizing information (main idea, outlining, specific-general and visual-spatial organization)
• Operating on information (deductions, basic evidence, argument rules, "ought" statements and contradictions)
• Using sources of information (basic comprehension passages, words or deductions, maps, pictures and graphs and supporting evidence)
• Using information for directions (writing directions, filling out forms and identifying contradictory directions)
• Communicating information (definitions, combining sentences, editing and obtaining meaning from context)

Students leave Study Skills C proficient at analyzing arguments, inferring the meaning of a word from its context, understanding the purpose of the "expert testimony" provided by appropriate references, the basic procedures for editing and understanding how to correct some of the more common writing errors. They have a solid framework on which to become experienced, proficient and completely knowledgeable performers.