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Self Explanation And Practice Testing

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The best way to study is highly debated in the academic and educational world as it has been suggested by Credé and Kunzel (2008) that the habits and strategies students engage in whilst studying correlates with how well they perform academically. With this in mind, many researchers have now begun conducting numerous studies into the field of studying techniques, in order for students to learn and partake in the techniques that have been suggested to be the most effective and beneficial in their use. Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan & Willingham (2013) composed a research article, exploring ten main studying techniques including highlighting, self-explanation and practice testing, which therefore allowed students to empirically evaluate …show more content…

why material is true of one situation but not another), creating the idea that Elaborative Interrogation effects are often bigger when only learning about a constrained topic as a larger amount of prior knowledge is needed to gain a fuller understanding. This statement is supported by Woloshyn, Presley & Schneider (1992) who gave Canadian and German students facts addressing Canadian provinces and German states. It was discovered, after doing a final test, that those in a high-knowledge domain had a mean increase of correct answers by 24% whereas those in a low- knowledge domain only increased by 12%. This emphasises that those with prior knowledge will benefit most from this technique as they seem to be more equipped to begin with, resulting in higher academic success. However on the other hand, it suggests that Elaborative Interrogation can only be used when studying very specific topics, making it time-consuming and impractical for an individual like a Psychology student to use when revising for an examination. Elaboration Interrogation has not yet been adequately tested in many educational situations, meaning we cannot generalise the results to students wishing to discover the best technique for themselves.

In direct juxtaposition to this, Elaborative Interrogation has shown to be effective throughout a large variety of learners (age and ability). Even though a large

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