Improving Academic Achievement Through Effective Time Management

Foun1001: English for Academic Purposes

11/20/17

Improving Academic Achievement through Effective Time Management

Academic achievement is the one of the more important things in students’ life. Academic achievement is the degree to which a student has attained their short or long-term educational goals. Improving performance in school is an important stepping stone in furthering education and impacts on which college program you can possibly get in or even future career prospects. The premise behind this paper is that scheduling, studying effectively and test-taking strategies can improve the academic achievement of students.

Scheduling is technique that can not only be applied to your daily life but academic life as well. Preparing a schedule and following it can brings many benefits. According to Dr. Patricia Glenn-Cowan author of Improving your Reading and Study Skills, it gives you direction and starts by helping you accomplish unpleasant but necessary tasks (134). Drs. Ronald Smith and Michael Passer, professors of psychology, state that when you efficiently allocated time needed for study, you will have a clear conscience when it is time for recreational activities and relaxation. When creating an academic schedule, for each day, first put what your do on a daily basis, for example, what you do when you get home, be it doing homework or doing chores. Then add in periods for study, avoiding times when you are probably tired (Smith and Passer 24). Next you distribute the study blocks throughout the week and schedule some study times before your enjoyable activities, which according to Smith and Passer can be used as a reward for studying (24).

Studying effectively is another strategy beneficial to students. There are a number of different approaches you can use to study. One of these approaches is to make meaning. In order to store what you have learned effectively, it is important to make meaning of the information. That is, you must recognize the connections between new information and what you already know and store information with a clue (Studying Effectively). An example of make meaning is the use of analogies. An example is saying the structure of an atom is like that of a solar system, nucleus being the sun and particles revolving around are the planets. Drawing or doodling makes remembering it easier so it solidifies in memory, which, coincidentally is another form of make meaning since the visual representation can help bring out memories. Another method of effective study is called chunking, which according to the National Centre for Educational Outcomes, is the procedure of breaking up reading material into manageable sections. An example of this is taking apart a numerical sequence like a phone number and breaking it into two or three parts. Alternatively, another strategy in studying effectively