University of Suffolk Study Skills for Higher Education Report

This report analyzes the crucial role of comprehension and retention skills in higher education. It explores how these skills impact student learning and academic achievements, emphasizing their significance in understanding, processing, and remembering information. The report delves into the benefits of comprehension, such as improved visualization, vocabulary development, and faster learning, alongside the advantages of retention, including clarity, connection-building, and active learning. Furthermore, it identifies and discusses obstacles that hinder students' ability to build these skills, such as difficulties in predicting meaning, analyzing purpose, summarizing information, setting reading goals, and undergoing testing and assessment. The report concludes by highlighting the importance of developing these skills to achieve academic success. The assignment was completed for the London School of Commerce in association with the University of Suffolk.

STUDY SKILLS FOR
HIGHER
EDUCATION

INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Role of comprehension and retention in learning and achievements of students........................3
Obstacles faced by students while building comprehension and retention skills........................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Comprehensive skill is an ability which every individual should have and start
developing from very beginning when they don’t even know how to speak. Its an ability of
understanding something they are seeing and reading comprehensive skills are when individual
start understanding what they are reading. This skill helps students to communicate well with
others as they can understand them better. Comprehensive skills help students to learn better
achieve their goals. Retention is another word for remembering, which means students can retain
what they are learning in their minds (Assiter, 2017). Retention of data can be for short and long
term depending on the power of students to remember and the importance of data. If same thing
is repeated again and again it becomes easy for students to remember it faster. In this report
comprehensive and retention skills are highlighted with their effects on knowledge of students
and their achievements. The role what both these skills play in order to obtain best learning and
achieve objectives. Some obstacles are also looked at which stops or hinder students aim and
stop them from attaining good reading and retention power. All these points are discussed in
brief in sections below to gain more knowledge about the importance of comprehensive and
retention skills.
MAIN BODY
Role of comprehension and retention in learning and achievements of students
Comprehension is an ability of understanding something, in other words its capability of
human beings of reading, understanding, processing and recalling what they just read. It is skill
which is excellent in nature and if someone gains the expertise in their comprehension skills it
will be increase their enjoyment and effectiveness of reading. Good reading and understanding
skills not only helps in day to day life of people but also, benefits students academically,
professionally and in personal life too.
Retention is power and skill an individual hold of remembering thing, it can be described
as an action of absorbing knowledge about anything and continuing hold on it for longer period
of time (Cottrell, 2019). It an ability of memorizing what the reader is reading or seeing and
developing themselves. The ability of human beings to live is depending on their power of
remembering stuff. This skill starts developing in individual from the very beginning when they

are students which enable them to learn new thing and live their lives in better way through
practicing their knowledge which they gained and retained with them.
Role of comprehension for students
1. Create a visual- Comprehension helps students to visualize what they are reading,
sometimes they face problems in visualizing things. This is where good comprehensive
skills helps them to visualize and then lean which enables them t earn better and apply
that learning in their daily life or academically.
2. Develops Vocabulary- Another role comprehensive skills plays for students to increase
their learning and achieve better goals are it develops their vocabulary. Student having
good vocabulary is must, this enables them to be better speaker and convey their
messages to others properly, which lead them towards learning and excel in their
academics (Wibrowski, Matthews and Kitsantas, 2017). Their vocab skills will stay with
them and even increase gradually which will also enables students to excel in their
profession.
3. Fast learning- Comprehensive skills of students enable them to learn fast and understand
their study material faster than others. This helps students in excelling in their studies and
attains good results which help them in their career and achieving better position in their
professional life.
Role of retention for students
1. Brings clarity- Retention of data, information and knowledge will bring clarity in life of
students. It will enhance their learning and keeping knowledge in mind and use it when
exactly it is required. That is possible only when they have clarity about concepts and it
comes when student remembers what they were taught.
2. Builds connection- Retention enables students in connecting one information with
another. While learning it’s important for students to link their knowledge with past
learning for gaining better understanding of the concept and that role is fulfilled by
remembering (Gormley and et. al., 2018). If students remember their past study material
then they can easily connect with current knowledge, which will provide them with
effective learning achieving better results.
3. Active learning- Retention also result in effective learning for students, they can be more
effective in what they have learned and implement their learning in manner. Students can

perform well in their exams if their remembering power is good which will give them
good grades. That will help them obtain good position in their class and even their whole
school.
Comprehensive and retention skills are really important for a student for learning, they develop
better skills which enables them to learn better and excel in their studies along with achieving
effective results(Virtanen and Tynjälä, 2019). Retention ability will enhance student’s power of
learning their study material faster which makes them better from other. Better comprehensive
abilities will empower student to understand things faster and better than others, being always
ahead in their class.
Obstacles faced by students while building comprehension and retention skills
Several obstacles come in way of students while learning and attaining required skills which
are important for them to excel in their academics and in future. Same is the case with
comprehensive and retention power and those difficulties or complications are discussed in
sections below.1. Predicting the meaning- It refers to that the understanding of concept student gained
they starting predicting the meaning of what they read which is not correct and act as a
challenge. As it depends on the mental activities which include mental exercise and
comprehension(Wright, 2018). Somehow it becomes barrier in the understanding of
individual learning and in order to overcome from it student need to develop and enhance
its learning which is used in predicting the meaning of understanding.2. Analysing the purpose- Determining the purpose of the learning and understanding is
important because it helps in summarising the overall understanding and for this, it
include linkage and connection between the mind and using it properly. Connecting and
converting the theoretical knowledge into practical is quite tough and it can become
obstacle in order the pathway of the career of students (McNally and et. al., 2017). As
every student has different level of understanding and grasping power which sometimes
becomes a challenge for students and breaks their learning.3. Summarising it in order to create new meaning- After analysis, summarising the
knowledge and learning is also the biggest barrier and obstacle in the understanding and
learning of students. Summarising includes the overall understanding of the knowledge

which students gain from reading and for this, textbooks plays an important role. As
summarising the knowledge is important because it is useful in order to create new
meaning and concept which helps in developing the understanding about the reading.
Making the new concept is quite tough for students because some of them cannot link the
overall chapter in order to create a new understanding.4. Achieving the reading goals- In order to improve the reading skills and understanding it
is important to set the goals for reading in order to develop the understanding which is
used in order to achieve the goals(Ryan and Zuber-Skerritt, 2017). Setting goals is the
first step in order to achieve the reading goals as reading itself is the biggest barrier in
modern world. Most of the students does not like to read and to overcome this developing
the reading skills is the prime objective which is used in order summarising the concept
of learning and it important in order to improve the quality of learning and achieving the
academics knowledge.5. Testing and assessment- It is a barrier and it diagnosis at the time of reading test as this
step is used to identify and determine the specific type of problem which affects the
learner's reading skills. It is analysed because of the observations, analysis of the student
work and assessment of the language and these measures are taken by the educator in
order to develop the reading and comprehension skills.
CONCLUSION
In the above report, comprehensive and retention ability are discussed which is required by
students to achieve their goals. Comprehensive means understanding and retention is known as
remember, both these skills work in line so that student can perform good. By understanding the
provided knowledge it becomes easy for students and even individuals to remember it for longer
duration in accordance with the importance of information. It is very essential for students to
develop these skills it enables them to learn faster and better in order to attain their aims in an
effective manner along with efficiency.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Assiter, A., 2017. Transferable skills in higher education. Routledge.
Cottrell, S., 2019. The study skills handbook. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Wibrowski, C. R., Matthews, W. K. and Kitsantas, A., 2017. The role of a skills learning support
program on first-generation college students’ self-regulation, motivation, and academic
achievement: A longitudinal study. Journal of College Student Retention: Research,
Theory & Practice. 19(3). pp.317-332.
Gormley, M. J. and et. al., 2018. Impact of study skills and parent education on first-year GPA
among college students with and without ADHD: A moderated mediation
model. Journal of attention disorders. 22(4). pp.334-348.
Wright, J., 2018. Learning to learn in higher education. Routledge.
Ryan, Y. and Zuber-Skerritt, O., 2017. Quality in postgraduate education. Routledge.
McNally, B. and et. al., 2017. Flipped classroom experiences: student preferences and flip
strategy in a higher education context. Higher Education. 73(2). pp.281-298.
Virtanen, A. and Tynjälä, P., 2019. Factors explaining the learning of generic skills: a study of
university students’ experiences. Teaching in Higher Education. 24(7). pp.880-894.