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the right environment to study.
- Choose a place to study where you feel
most comfortable. You may like to study in a place with people
around (e.g., the library) or with no people (e.g., your room
at home). You may like music or TV to drown out background noises
or you may want complete quiet. You also may like to study with
bright light or with dim light.
- Reserve the place for studying so that
you associate that place ONLY with studying. For example, if
you study in your bed, you may confuse yourself because your
bed is associated with sleeping, and not studying.
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A
lways reduce visual distractions.
- If you are visually distracted, be
sure to find a place to study where there is nothing to distract
you (e.g., the desk in your room). If you are studying in the
library, make sure to sit away from the main desk and the door.
If possible, sit facing the wall or the book stacks.
- Even if you like to study with people
around, you need to be sure that you will not be tempted to
watch people rather than study. For example, if there is a baseball
game happening outside the room where you're studying, be sure
to sit far from the window so that you're not tempted to watch
the game.
- Do not study near things that you may
be tempted to play with (e.g., a video game or a stapler).
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T
ry to eliminate noise around
you.
- If you are distracted by noises, study
in a quiet room. If you are still distracted by noises (e.g.,
the air conditioner), use earplugs to block out all background
sounds.
- If you like to study with music or
TV, make sure that you are not being distracted by them. Find
out if music helps you or not. If you listen to song lyrics
while studying, you are distracted by the music. If you ignore
the lyrics, you may be helped by the music. If you have the
TV on and you are listening to what people are saying, then
the TV is distracting you. If you don't pay attention to what
people are saying, then the TV may block out background noise.
- Use earplugs if necessary.
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S elf
talk to control internal distractions.
- Sometimes people are distracted by internal factors from
their own bodies (e.g., grumbling stomach, itch, thoughts about
other things to do).
- When you become aware of internal distractions,
talk to yourself and direct your attention back to studying.
For example, if your stomach is grumbling, say to yourself:
"It's almost lunch time and
I'm hungry. I have to study for another 30 minutes before lunch,
so I will ignore my stomach noises."
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