Study Skills Report for Higher Education: Comprehension and Retention

This report delves into the crucial role of comprehension and retention in higher education, emphasizing their impact on learning quality and academic success. It defines comprehension as the understanding of material and retention as the ability to remember information, highlighting the importance of these skills for students. The report discusses the benefits of comprehension and retention, including improved reading skills, better grades, and enhanced career prospects. It also explores various methods to improve these skills, such as encouraging reading, innovative learning methods, and student-teacher collaboration. Furthermore, the report evaluates obstacles like lack of focus, negative past experiences, and decoding difficulties, which hinder comprehension and retention. It suggests strategies to overcome these obstacles, including incorporating multimedia, summarizing stories, and consistent writing practice. The conclusion underscores the necessity of comprehension and retention in educational institutions and suggests addressing obstacles to enhance student outcomes.

Study Skills
for
Higher education

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
a) Discuss the role of building comprehension and retention in improving quality of learning
and increase academic achievement of students....................................................................1
b) Evaluate the obstacles pertaining to building comprehension and retention.....................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFRENCES...................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
For every educational institute it is essential to build comprehension and retention
because it will help them in ensuring learning of students. Comprehension is considered as term
that defines understanding of a person by reading material at a present time (Gernsbacher, 2013).
On the other hand retention is considering situation which define about what that person
remembers later on. There are different method which can be adopted by an individual in order
to enhance comprehension and retention such as reading, keeping notes, writing and so on.
Topics which are coved in this report are role of developing comprehension as well as retention
in enhancing quality of learning and maximising academic achievement of a student. Moreover it
will also describe about obstacles pertaining for building comprehension and retention of a
person or students.
MAIN BODY
a) Discuss the role of building comprehension and retention in improving quality of learning and
increase academic achievement of students
In a life a person comprehension and retention plays an essential roles because that lead to
generation of huge opportunities through which they can make effective career. These are also
necessary for students as that will help in improving quality of learning as well as it will also
enhance academic achievement (Krom, 2012). Comprehension is considered as level of
understanding of any text or message. It will be generally developed by interacting among words
which are written had how that can trigger understanding or knowledge outside any message or
text. It is essential for a student to have comprehension because without it reading is considered
as nothing more than tracking symbols in a book or a page with eyes as well as sounding them
out. It will also develop a reason of reading anything as well as it is also beneficial because
without comprehension a student not able to gather information’s through reading. In addition to
this comprehension also plays a necessary role in improving pleasure and effectiveness of a
student reading and listening abilities (Linderholm, Therriault and Kwon, 2014). It will also help
them in developing understanding of different subjects as well as personal and professional lives.
Moreover, that will also help a student in improving their grade in test through which they can
develop effective and successful future or career.
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Furthermore, retention is considered as information which can be defined as time duration
that shows a person memory particular information. In a life of a student it is essential for them
to understand things and retain it for log time duration so that they can exhibit their knowledge
as well as skills in front of others (Martin, Nguyen and McDaniel, 2016). It will also help them
in gaining good percentage in test or exam by which they can develop successful future or
career. Student retention is not only play essential role in student’s life, it is also necessary for a
schools or college because through this they able to show that more numbers of students are
getting graduated from their colleges which enhance their goodwill and market value. Through
both comprehension and retention literacy rate will also enhance which lead to successful future
of a country as well as it will also increase the employment rate of nation. It is so because when a
student start learning with proper comprehension and retention they able to do their get high
score which help them in making good career that will improve standard of leaving as well as
indirectly or directly it lead to growth of economy.
There are number of practices which can be adopted by a student or their family or school or
teacher so that effective building of comprehension and retention will be done such as school
must encourage their students for reading as well as learning through innovative methods. They
may involve video and music in learning method because it attracts students and retain in their
mind for the long time (Sellnow and et. al., 2012). Along with this it will also develop interest of
students in learning as well as reading. It is also essential for teachers as well as parents to
understand their students need, behaviour and expectation so that they can encourage them for
learning effective because every person or student get motivated with different things. There are
also several steps or strategies which can be adopted by a students in order to develop
comprehension and retention such as they can conduct more and more reading and at last they
can write down it as a summary, this will help them in checking their learning and retention
capabilities. Moreover, they can also do reparation learning because it help in remembering
things or information in effective manner as well as it will also lead to improvement in retention
capabilities.
b) Evaluate the obstacles pertaining to building comprehension and retention
A student go through several obstacles when they are pertaining to developing
comprehension and retention and this will pulling them back from learning. Due to obstacles
students avoid to learn ay thing as well as they also think it all are waste or didn’t have any
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value. From numbers of obstacles which hamper to building comprehension and retention, some
main are given below:-
 Lack of focus: Every learner need to focus for developing proper comprehension and
retention but if a person has lack of focus them not able to understand things properly
(Spiro, Bruce and Brewer, 2017). In today’s time, most of the time lack of focus is
developed due to mobile phone and internet. Due to this reason student not able to focus
on their studies as well as it also lead to low retention power among children.
 Negative past experience: It is define as a situation at which a student go through some
negative experiences which bothering them till now, due to this he/ she avoiding things
related to particular situation. Such as a student do hard work for getting good marks as
well as for that him / her study for whole day, but didn’t get good marks. Due to this
experience they he/ she didn’t want to involve in study that much again because they
experienced so bad.
 Decoding difficulties: It is also a main obstacle of less comprehension and retention
among the students. In this strategy, children not able to understand and decode things or
information. This is generally occurring when a child is facing mental or growth issue
which can be treated by medical therapies and medicines. Along with this, students who
are going through this issue not able to retain things for long time duration as well as they
are also face difficulties in learning or reading.
These are some of the main issues which are faced while building comprehension and
retention. But there are also several method help in overcoming these issues and lead to effective
comprehension as well as retention. Those methods are:-
 Include videos, music and pictures: Music, pictures and videos attract peoples as well
as it left strong impact on the person’s mind. So it is one of most effective method which
can be used by teacher or family members for developing effective comprehension and
retention (Swanson, Vaughn and Wexler, 2017). This will also help in developing interest
of learning among children as well as they also encourage learning new things.
 Ask to summarise story: According to this strategy family and teacher need to ask
students to write a summary of what he learn whole day or by a particular subject. This is
so because when children do so he/ she try to remember who day activities which directly
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help in increasing its comprehension and retention power effective as well as
successfully.
 Conduct writing continuously: According to this strategy teacher or family member
need to conduct written test of children on regular basis. This is so because during writing
child try to recall each and every thing that lead to improvement in retention as well as
comprehension level (Temur, 2012). Along with this, due to respective practice student
also able to know their effectiveness and weakness, that encourages them to improve it
effectively so that they develop proper career.
Through these strategies family as well as teachers can avoid or minimise obstacles which
developed during comprehension and retention among students.
CONCLUSION
By conducting analysis of above mentioned point it can be summarise that now a day it is
very essential of educational institutes to take actions in order to ensure comprehension as well
as retention of a students. It is so because through that they are contributing in developing more
effective career or future of that students as well as it will also enhance effectiveness of a
students. But while this institutes may face several obstacles which pertaining them in
developing or building comprehension as well as retention among the students such as lack of
focus, negative past experience, interest and so on. So it is essential for institutes to consider
these obstacles while developing decision related to comprehension and retention among the
students.
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REFRENCES
Books and journals
Gernsbacher, M.A., 2013. Language comprehension as structure building. Psychology Press.
Krom, C.L., 2012. Using FarmVille in an introductory managerial accounting course to engage
students, enhance comprehension, and develop social networking skills. Journal of
Management Education. 36(6). pp.848-865.
Linderholm, T., Therriault, D.J. and Kwon, H., 2014. Multiple science text processing: Building
comprehension skills for college student readers. Reading Psychology. 35(4). pp.332-
356.
Martin, N.D., Nguyen, K. and McDaniel, M.A., 2016. Structure building differences influence
learning from educational text: Effects on encoding, retention, and metacognitive
control. Contemporary Educational Psychology. 46. pp.52-60.
Sellnow, T. L. and et. al., 2012. The value of instructional communication in crisis situations:
Restoring order to chaos. Risk Analysis: An International Journal. 32(4). pp.633-643.
Spiro, R.J., Bruce, B.C. and Brewer, W.F., 2017. Theoretical issues in reading comprehension:
Perspectives from cognitive psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence and
education. Routledge.
Swanson, E., Vaughn, S. and Wexler, J., 2017. Enhancing adolescents’ comprehension of text by
building vocabulary knowledge. TEACHING Exceptional Children. 50(2). pp.84-94.
Temur, Ö.D., 2012. Analysis of Prospective Classroom Teachers' Teaching of Mathematical
Modeling and Problem Solving. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science &
Technology Education. 8(2).
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