Study groups that encourage

Owned by Stuart J
Dec 13, 2023
4 min read

Early this year a student and I were discussing how to prepare for classes. She decided to try a study group that is really a reading group. It was either that, or she would grit her teeth and do the readings alone.

Four students in third year – where the readings in Semester 1 came thick and fast – decided to meet weekly to cover a couple readings. And it has been a success and encouragement.

So twice weekly they meet for an hour. Only an hour. They have previously chosen an important or challenging reading. Ideally, they all read it before they meet. Then they meet, discuss it, and go their merry ways. They love it, so I am writing about it.

 

Testimonials and advice

With their permission, I pass on to you what I received from them:

 

Benefits:

One keen member wrote:

I think the study group has made me more motivated to actually do some readings, and also made them more helpful and memorable when we’ve discussed them. I love that in the smaller group we can be honest when something’s hard to understand, or doesn’t seem to match with real life.

Often, we’d come to the group and one or more of us wouldn’t have managed to look at the reading we planned to discuss yet. Sometimes we’d even read paragraph by paragraph in the group as we met. For me, reading is the first thing to fall off the agenda when assignment pressure rises (like last term!), but the group kept me on track a bit. Not perfectly, but it definitely helped.

 

And her teammate wrote:

I agree. . . !

I found it so encouraging to have people alongside me commit to helping each other persevere in what can get tiring very quickly.

Doing readings before class actually helped me understand class content much better and be engaged – fancy that!

 

And their solo fellow commented,

Our reading group certainly pushed me to do readings when I otherwise wouldn’t have. So I actually had the chance to enjoy the reading, be more engaged with class, and explain concepts and ideas to my friends.

That’s better than trying to read alone when they are tired or unmotivated!

 

Advice:

And here is their wisdom on reading groups:

Their solo bloke says,

I’d say to keep groups small. 4-5 is a good number so you can organise schedules without people consistently missing out each week and so you all have opportunity to contribute to discussion.

And just do it. Don’t stop or fail to start if you can’t settle on a perfect process for reading and discussion. The benefit is in reading the content and talking about it.

 

One teammate chimes in with this,

If people can’t make the meeting on a certain week, don’t stress about trying to make it up later. You won’t have time. The meetings are to serve you guys, not the other way around.

 

And another with this,

  • Communicate whether you’re [reading the texts] in your group or discussing readings in your group. If you’re discussing, you can think more about implications or hard bits, but . . need to [read in advance].

  • Put aside time to find the readings before you get started.

  • Put your time slots in your schedule so you’re not surprised every week.

  • Keep your time to an hour.

 

And that’s not all!

Time to review the week’s lectures:

[We discuss readings both days and have] ‘a bit of review and prayer on the Thursdays.’

There’s value in having a session that’s just recapping what happened in the week. Last semester we had so much going on that recapping meant we didn’t forget Monday fully by the time we got to Friday. It also meant that we prayed about the work and it wasn’t just cerebral business.

 

Translation as well:

I’m starting up a translation group this semester. . .

 

Again, the feedback was positive:

The translation group usually runs on Thursdays at 1pm and the degree of translation that takes place varies. When we have small passages, we do more on the grammar, and [that] is more​ helpful in [class]. . . When we’re doing this, we’re discussing the things we would leave in or out depending on the grammar, we’re chatting about differences in translation style and approach.

[It is helpful saving our translating for that hour] because there’s a million other things that need [doing]. Pete Orr often asks us to review our Greek and I wish I had more time for it, but this forces at least an hour of handling it a week and that’s better than nothing.

We [book a] room and use the projector to have everything up on the screen.

 

Meanwhile, one of her translation buddies says:

[This] helps me do a really important thing that isn’t so urgent. Things in that quadrant usually get left by the wayside for me. Also [it] forces me to think a bit harder and consider why I do or don’t agree with a certain translation or syntax diagram. Ultimately, it means I know what we’re. . . talking about in class!

 

While another writes:

Ditto to everything [above]. . . Also I enjoy and learn much more from translating with others than doing it alone.

 

Other ideas:

 

Why not now?

What are you waiting for? Why do everything alone? Go find a couple classmates you trust.

A decent group beats studying alone for nearly everyone! And you might just learn more.

 

Earlier posts:

Reading paper texts

Reading electronic texts

Reading fast and slow