Study Guides

A study guide is a teaching aid designed to help students develop reading skills
needed to enhance their comprehension of the material is the textbook. Study
guides can be very helpful to students who have low comprehension skills. A
study guide will ensure that the student will focus their attention on what is
important for them to learn. The study guide has to be relevant to the test that
will be given. Many teachers will assign a specific reading for the class and
many of the students may not adhere to the teacher’s request. A study guide will
reinforce the reading material. A study guide that is prepared without the
answers will force a student to do the reading. A study investigated the use of
study guides as instructional tools and compared the effectiveness of study
guides with and without analogies. Seventy-four undergraduate students in three
upper division education classes studied three passages about three obscure
religions (Manichaeism, Jainism, and the Druze religion) with and without the
aid of two types of studyguides. One study guide analogized the religions to
Christianity, and one did not employ analogies. Both study guides were written
in multiple-choice, short answer, and essay format. Within each class, students
were randomly divided into three groups for comparison, and each subject was
given all three passages to study in different sequences, studying one passage
per treatment condition. Results revealed a significant interaction between text
and treatment, but with a small effect size. Results also revealed: (1) that the
Manichaeism text produced scores significantly different from the combination of
Druze and Jainism scores across all three treatments; (2) that the Manichaeism
study guide treatments produced scores significantly different from those of the
other two treatments; and (3) that the Druze analogical study guide treatment
produced scores significantly different from those of the other treatments, but
that the Jainism analogical study guide treatment was not significantly
different from the other two treatments. A study explored whether the use of a
study guide would improve students’ comprehension of content area material. Two
groups of students in an eighth grade social studies class were involved:
students in the control group received the usual instruction–the chapter was
read orally and discussed in class–while students in the experimental sample
were given a study guide, skimmed the material silently, and worked on the
exercises in groups of two or three. A posttest on history revealed no
statistically significant differences between the scores of the two groups. How
ever, since both time and the amount of material were limited and since no
information is available regarding the reliability of the method used, the
results of this study can be applied only to these two samples. Reading in the
content areas from grades four through twelve requires the integration of new
knowledge with what is already known,that involves sophisticated skills. Content
area teachers must be aware of, model, and teach those reading and study skills
that help students to better comprehend their reading assignments. Some
strategies that have been used successfully to train students to acquire
information on their own include the use of prediction guides, advance
organizers, graphic organizers, study guides, and glossing. In most of the
studies that I read, the use of a study guide improved most of the test scores.

Study guides are a useful tool that can be used in any content area to enhance a
students learning. The idea behind study guides is that students can use them as
models of how to plan their own scheme of work. They are meant to primarily to
be an initiation to self-direction. A survey was administered to 10th-grade
regular biology students to diagnose the cause for low achievement on chapter
tests. Survey results verified teacher suspicion that students did not read
textbook assignments when designated as homework and, as a consequence, this
deficiency contributed to low achievement scores. A treatment included requiring
additional homework in the form of a teacher-prepared Reading Study Guide (RSG)
that accompanied each chapter and had to be completed while students read the
assignments. To complete the individualized RSG, students were unable to skim
the material but, instead, had to read the assignments thoroughly. Upon
completion of the RSG, a pretest was administered and learning activities
relative to the chapter objectives were presented, followed by a posttest. Cloze
test results indicated improvement in student ability levels. Posttest scores
increased significantly and the overall grade average on the RSG surpassed
expectations. During treatment, cloze test results disclosed that student
ability levels were not equivalent to reading stanine levels. Overall results
provided evidence