Study Skills for Higher Education: Learning Styles, Goals, and Plans

This essay delves into the crucial aspects of study skills essential for success in higher education. It begins by introducing the significance of effective learning styles, categorizing them into visual, auditory, and kinesthetic approaches, and explaining how understanding these styles can enhance knowledge acquisition and retention. The essay then transitions into the development of a comprehensive study plan, emphasizing the importance of setting both short-term and long-term goals to achieve academic and professional success. It outlines the steps involved in creating a structured plan, illustrating how to break down long-term objectives into manageable short-term goals. The essay also emphasizes the development of academic skills like academic discourse, academic strategies, text strategies, composition, and comprehension. The essay concludes by reiterating the importance of adopting effective learning styles and a structured study plan for career advancement and overall personal development.

Study skills for higher education

Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................1
Discussion on learning styles and how they allow students to learn better.................................1
A study plan that includes both short –term and long-term goals for attainment of professional
and academic success..................................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
For attainment of higher studies, it is essential for every individual to possess basic skills. It
includes proper communication, project managerial abilities and more. All these skills can be
gained if individuals have good learning styles, that aid them to grab knowledge and grow
abilities more easily. It also encourages students to become efficient learners or professionals, so
that high success can be gained during academic period (Nurulaeni, 2019). This assignment
describes the importance of different learning styles, that aid a person to learn in better way.
Along with this, a study plan including short-term and long-term goals to gain professional and
academic success is also explained.
Main Body
Discussion on learning styles and how they allow students to learn better
To learn more perfectly, it is essential for an individual to know own learning styles, so
that improvements can be made, if needed. Learning styles can be defined as a term that
describes ways in which an individual gains knowledge, interpret and store in mind (Moussa-
Inaty, Atallah and Causapin, 2019). There a number of styles present that allows a student to
learner better and can be broadly classified into three main form – visual, auditory and
kinaesthetic. It generally assumes that the manner in which information is presented, also plays
an important role in learning a thing. So, to learn at the best level, it is essential that information
must be presented in a way that matches the learning style of an individual.
Visual learning style describes the way under which information is presented by images,
charts, graphs and other visual manner. Having this style, helps a learner in remembering a thing
for long period of time and remain focused when working. These learners are good at spelling
but can’t understand the verbal instructions mostly and used to ask a number of questions to
clarify a thing (Joseph, 2019). Therefore, if they utilise graphic organiser and grab information
through smart classes i.e. using videos then they can remind things in a better way.
Auditory learning style is one of the best style, where learners retail knowledge by
listening on sounds or what teachers teaches them. Therefore, these types of learners are good
listeners also and better to explain ideas to others, with high confidence. They are always
participated in group meetings and able to present their thoughts and ideas more easily. But this
type of learners seems not be able to remind a thing for long period. So, using verbal
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brainstorming activities and making notes during lectures, may allow individuals to learn in a
better way.
Kinaesthetic learning style describes a specific learning pattern where an individual
learns a thing by physical movement. These learners are like to engage with study material by
using their whole body (Chaudhary, 2019). They used to walk during studying and accompanied
either reciting the content or listening to music. These types of learners do not attempt to control
their fidgeting as well as able to concentrate more on studies. To gain knowledge in a better way,
such learners are required to practice maths by abacus, chemical and physical knowledge by
scientific models, etc.
A study plan that includes both short –term and long-term goals for attainment of professional
and academic success
Academic skills are essential for an individual to get higher education and develop
professionally. These skills can be divided into five main categories that are –
 Academic discourse – Abilities that enable a person to communicate effectively in
discussion, presentation and debates.
 Academic strategies – Skills that are required to understand and respond in quick
manner, during lecturers.
 Academic text strategies – To analyse academic texts in detailed manner.
 Composition – Abilities for efficient and effective writing in academics.
 Comprehension – To understand academic lectures and texts.
Long-term goals – It consist goals that gain for development of future and can be attained in
near three to five-years duration (Suarez, Martinez and Mendoza, 2019). Such goals are often
made up by careful planning, hard work, time and full dedication, such as – Learning a new skill;
Attainment of upper position in organisation; Start a new business and more. These goals can
only be achieved by developing organisational skills, that encourage a person to put more efforts
in achievement of future goals. It secures their life
Short-term goals – To plan or balance the long-term goals, it is essential for an individual to
break down the same into short-term goals, that can be gained within two to three months. By
short-term planning, they can achieve success in better way (Chaudhary, 2019). For example –
For starting a new business, a person needs to develop good communication skills,
entrepreneurial abilities, creative knowledge and more, that helps in generating new ideas.
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Similarly, for learning a new skill like leadership abilities, can be developed through engaging in
group-activities, that help in understanding how to collaborate with other people, who have
different opinion and ideas to conduct a task. This would help in developing project management
skills and team-building abilities, that aid a person to gain management position at workplace in
future.
A Study plan to achieve short-term and long-term goal
Goals Planning Time period
Entrepreneurial skills Will take admission in higher
education
Two to five years
Project-management skills Take more challenging assignments Within a year
Team-building skills Engage in group-projects and make
discussion with team-members
Within six to nine
months
Communication skills Work with seniors and adopt both
auditory learning styles to improve
communications
Within three to five
months
CONCLUSION
It has been concluded from this assignment that for career development and achieve
successful growth in future, it is essential for every person to develop academic and professional
skills. For this purpose, they need to adopt best learning styles and work hard more, to grab and
retain information and knowledge for long period of time.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Nurulaeni, F., 2019, June. Think-Pair-Share Model: Improving Activeness and Communication
Skills of Prospective Elementary School Teachers. In Journal of Physics: Conference
Series (Vol. 1233, No. 1, p. 012081). IOP Publishing.
Moussa-Inaty, J., Atallah, F. and Causapin, M., 2019. Instructional Mode: A Better Predictor of
Performance than Student Preferred Learning Styles. International Journal of
Instruction, 12(3), pp.17-34.
Joseph, M. R., 2019. LEARNING STYLES OF LEARNERS AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN
INSTRUCTION. Journal of App lied Science And Research, 7(1), pp.67-76.
Suarez, A. M. S., Martinez, M. E. M. and Mendoza, L. R. M., 2019. Brain and
learning. International journal of social sciences and humanities, 3(2), pp.128-135.
Chaudhary, S., 2019. An Exploratory Study of preferred Learning Styles of visually Impaired
Children. Journal of Inclusive Education, 2(1).
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