Regan A. R. Gurung - Study Like a Champ

This book should be essential reading for high school and college students, among others. The authors, both experts in their field, write in an informal way about how to plan to study, how to study, and how to assess the effects of study to prepare for evaluations. Reading this book will prepare students to master various types of subject matter in any level of education.

HENRY L. ROEDIGER, III, PhD, JAMES S. MCDONNELL DISTINGUISHED UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS, ST. LOUIS, MO

Regan Gurung and John Dunlosky, two leaders in the field of how people learn and what they can do to make learning last, have written a gem of a book for everyone who wants learning to be easier, more effective, and longer lasting. This book will pay lifelong dividends for everyone who wants to learn.

DIANE F. HALPERN, PhD, PROFESSOR EMERITA, CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE, CLAREMONT, CA

This is the perfect book to help undergraduate students learn to learn without excess baggage. The book is clear, concise, and focused, and the authorstwo scholarteacherswrite in an engaging, accessible style that will help readers master practices and strategies that really do work. Teachers of introductory-level courses: Take note!

DANA S. DUNN, PhD, PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, MORAVIAN UNIVERSITY, BETHLEHEM, PA

Copyright 2023 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, including, but not limited to, the process of scanning and digitization, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Electronic edition published 2023.

ISBN: 978-1-4338-4018-0 (electronic edition).

The opinions and statements published are the responsibility of the authors, and such opinions and statements do not necessarily represent the policies of the American Psychological Association.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gurung, Regan A. R. author. | Dunlosky, John, author.

Title: Study like a champ : the psychology-based guide to grade A study habits / Regan A.R. Gurung and John Dunlosky.

Description: Washington, DC : American Psychological Association, [2023] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022027877 (print) | LCCN 2022027878 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433840173 (paperback) | ISBN 9781433840180 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Study skills. | Educational psychology. | Learning, Psychology of. | BISAC: STUDY AIDS / Study & Test-Taking Skills | JUVENILE NONFICTION / Study Aids / General

Classification: LCC LB1049 .G84 2023 (print) | LCC LB1049 (ebook) | DDC 371.30281--dc23/eng/20220713

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022027877

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022027878

https://doi.org/10.1037/0000327-000

To students everywhere who tackle the complexities of learning, expend the effort to improve, and maintain the motivation to keep going in the face of challenges. May the tools of psychological science boost your endeavors to championship levels.

PREFACE

If you want to know the best way to learn, this book is for you.

Study Like a Champ provides you with the answer to the oft-asked question What can I do to get an A? We take years of psychological research on how learning works and what strategies best help one learn, and we translate the results into easy-to-understand, pragmaticand, most importanteasy-to-follow tips. But thats not all.

We have watched and listened as our students have tried to study better. We have seen students read other books on how to study yet still not improve. Part of the reason why is that it is easy for scientists and instructors to tell you what to do, but it is a whole other thing to actually be able to do it. So, we looked for reasons why students have trouble following guidance on how to study and have come up with some hacks to help. We also show you evidence to support our recommendations. We want you to know what to do and why to do it.

Furthermore, we show you which strategies work best for learning different kinds of material. Not every class is the same. What it takes to do well in an introductory psychology class may not be the same as what it takes to do well in a computer science class. We have your back.

This guide was written by expert psychology teachers who also conduct the very research on which the tips are based. You are in good hands. Collectively, we have published more than 200 research articles on the very material we share with you. We invite you behind the curtain so you can see the secrets of research conducted both in laboratories as well as in classrooms. However, although we are well versed in writing for peer-reviewed research journals, we wrote this book for you, dear student, not for academic researchers. This book is designed to be useful for every college student who wants to know how to learn well.

We recognize that many instructors do not spend much time teaching students how to learn. Many college faculty either believe students have learned how to learn either in high school or in a University 101type course, or they do not believe it is their job to teach learning skills. In other cases, faculty may share suggestions about the best ways to study (e.g., Make sure you spread out your studying, Make sure you test yourself) but do not share exactly how to follow the advice; nor do they reward optimal study habits. Even hardworking students often believe that it is the amount of time that they study, not exactly how they use that time to study, that is most important. We wrote this book to address these issues head onto explain how to schedule your study time and exactly what to do when you sit down to study.

We also want to demystify the cognitive science behind how people learn, and thus we provide simple, classroom-tested tools to begin and maintain habits that will foster lifelong learning. We want you to be a Study Champion; accordingly, we provide clear steps on how to plan, monitor, and evaluate your learning with easy-to-follow instructions. In essence, we first explain what to do, and then we show why each step matters. This is not a textbook; it is your training manual to become a Study Champion.

At one time, we were both graduate students at the University of Washington in Seattle. We were not the same age as we are now, and we definitely did not have the same length of hair back then; John evidently did not understand what a barber was for. Regan remembers his first sight of John as being a blur of hair flying by as John strode down the corridor to his lab past Regans office. John is a cognitive psychologist. Regan is a social psychologist. We both love trying to understand what makes people learn better. After graduate school, we went in two different directions: both literally, in terms of geography, and figuratively, in terms of our research interests.