Absorbing Writing Knowledge: Study Habits
Becoming a better writer means putting in the time with words. Reading, writing, speaking and looking into words’ meanings all contribute. No one way of spending time with words is a universal ticket to becoming a great writer. Instead, testing out different ways of studying language helps one discover what works with their mind, schedule, current knowledge and motivation.
Several weeks ago, we recommended a FreshAir podcast that referenced studying SAT vocabulary: “Sorry Assiduous (adj.) SAT Takers” in our resource article “Absorbing Writing Knowledge: Podcasts.” As I was listening to the podcast, a few memories surfaced that prompted me to think about my earlier days of studying English. I should mention that, as a young student, I squeezed and pinched schoolwork into odd places of my schedule. I was short on time, as were my friends, and we used creative means to keep up with learning and assignments. One year of High School, for example, I decided that listening to English vocabulary while I slept was an efficient way to prepare for a final English exam. About a week before my test, I recorded each vocabulary word and its definition into a portable cassette player and for several nights tucked it partially under my pillow and pressed play before drifting into the tenuous sleep of a nervous student.
I have no evidence that this study ploy was effective. The real studying probably happened while recording the words, rather than listening to them while I slept. But the whole ordeal was memorable, and part of a host of tactics that reflected my determination to improve my vocabulary, which I knew was lacking at the time. The efforts helped convince me that I was serious about being a better writer, and although I abandoned the sleep-studying, I continued to search for ways to study and write better.
A handful of friends were conspirators in such unorthodox methods of studying. For example, a friend and I decided we should carve out time to study in the shower, and we each laminated a copy of Hamlet’s soliloquy, which we were memorizing for our Freshman English class. The same year, on long trips to sporting events, I read aloud to a friend from assigned novels because she got car sick reading on the bus. I tried this again years later as a landscape architecture graduate student on the way to ecology field trips, so a friend and I could read landscape theory together. I think working through tough assignments with friends helped me stay calm and helped the content stick. In a slightly different spin on working with others, I am a little hesitant to admit that I sometimes was motivating by proving others wrong. I spent a summer looking up every unfamiliar word in Charlotte Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, because my sister had teased me about my poor vocabulary and I knew she had read and loved that book. A notoriously tough English teacher in High School overlooked me as a contender for reading William Faulkner for a term book; she always suggested The Sound and the Fury to the strongest students. Years later in college, I took a course packed with Faulkner literature and I slogged through some of the best books I’ve ever read. My sister and that tough teacher were perfectly valid in their assessments that I was not an excellent student of English at those times. But I was able to convert these judgments into motivation to learn what I didn’t know.
But that’s just me.
In other words, I am not promoting any of these specific study habits, although feel free to use them if they work for you. Instead, I am pointing out that being better at English is a road of personal and strange struggle. Research shows that people learn in different ways, though engagement and persistence are common threads in success. Knowing how you learn and how to humbly adapt to the process is a valuable, lifelong skill.
In the coming weeks, look for a series of resource entries on “Discourse and Writing.” For now, we encourage you to proceed with curiosity, thoughtfulness and integrity.
