IMPROVING LEARNING SKILLS

Learning Skills

The term Learning Skills refers to a collection of strategies and techniques whose goal is to improve a student’s learning quality and improve learning efficiency. Learning skills are of great importance since these skills represent the basis for self-development through the learning process.  The rubric includes thinking skills, study skills, and time management.  Memory and stress management are included as well.

Many children with difficulty at school have no assessable learning disabilities.  They read well, calculate well, and successfully complete simple writing assignments. When faced with the necessity to combine all of these skills together in a complex project, they encounter significant challenges impacting on their academic success.

Frequently, a learning-skills assessment which focuses on complex tasks reveals specific learning difficulties in areas such as: reading comprehension, written expression, and summarization.  It is essential to emphasize that there is no objective problem with reading comprehension or mathematics- but when the child approaches a multifaceted task, he or she suddenly encounters difficulty.  Why is this? The ability to combine a variety of different elements together is deficient and then the child is unable to complete the task.  Learning skills have a direct impact on the following cognitive functions:

1. Speed of understanding
2. Ability to respond appropriately to a stimulus
3. Differentiation of what is important from what is insignificant.

One of the most important learning skills is time management and planning.  Most of us agree that planning is of vital importance.  If so, then why don’t we dedicate more time to this important activity? The great irony is that most of us don’t have enough time to plan.  There is too much work to be done so the planning can wait for another day.  However, if we would dedicate the necessary time for planning, we would profit by having more time to get work done.

An additional problem is that many of us succeeded previously without planning.  In the past we experienced numerous impressive successes.  Many of us reached goals that they never dreamed of.  Without a doubt, it is possible to succeed without planning. The question is whether we would succeed even more with planning.