"When the Harvard education department developed its 'Learning to Learn' program, the main strategy they found to be helpful in improving students' study habits (and subsequent grades) was a very simple one: In the margin next to each paragraph in a textbook, the student is supposed to write the question to which the information contained in the paragraph would constitute the answer. Instantaneously, the grade point average of these student increased by an average of 1.5 on a 4.0 scale - a tremendously greater increase than among students using other tutoring methods (Slomianko 1987). And the improvement was just as dramatic in courses emphasizing rote memorization as for those which stressed critical thinking.Why such a dramatic increase? The Harvard team theorized that the improvement was attributable to students' adapting a critical, questioning frame of mind rather than a passive, receptive one. And we now know from Luria's and Sperry's work on the prefrontal cortex that, when we ask ourselves a question - and especially when we formulate a question for ourselves (as opposed to merely responding to someone else's question) - this is precisely when the prefrontal cortex increases its level of electrical and chemical activity. It is also obvious from PET scans and other such measures of brain electrical activity, and from the anatomy of neuronal connections, that when the prefrontal area is activated, the rest of the brain quickly follows suit. What seems to be happening, then, is that we remember information more effectively when we ask ourselves questions about it during the leaning process, and this formulation of questions about information is a primary aspect of the process of 'making sense out of' the information."
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