OK4R by Walter Pauk—meaning
Overview, Key ideas (find them he
meant). Read, Recall, Reflect and
Review was published in 1962. Next
came Space & Berg’s 1966 PQRST
(Preview, Question, Read, Summar
ize, Test), followed by OARWET in
1968 (Overview, Ask, Read, Write,
Evaluate, Test). The champion entry
was the 1973 PANORAMA which
stands for“Purpose(think about why
you are reading your text); Adapta
bility (adapt yourreadingspeed tothe
difficulty of the material); Need to
question (an obvious and painful
stretch for the acronym); Overview;
Read and relate (that is, relate the
main ideas to personal experience);
Annotate; Memorize; and (if you still
care at this point) Assess.”
Walter Pauk—the OK4R man—
finally called for an end to this
acronym Olympics by daring to put
into print what everybody had known
all along: despite proof that these
formulas work, no sane student ever
bothers to use one. In an article
knocking PANORAMA as silly
(“you’re reading your text because
your professor told you to”), Pauk
wrote, “There is no question about the
value of converting a title into a
question, but I can honestly say that I
have never met a single student who
has ever used the technique even
though he knew about the textbook
system incorporating this step.”
A shocking confession from a man
who has been teaching how-to-study
courses most of his academic career.
Student indifference hardly stifled
theacrolympics, however. REAP was
published in 1976. REAP was dif
ferent though. REAP looked as if it
might have something to do with how
people actually study.
Undaunted, Our Heroes
Press On
How students actually study is
something few researchers have both
ered to study. How one should study,
yes—advice abounds. But do study?
No. In 1976RobertSzabopublisheda
sketchy survey (not study) of prac
tices followed by successful students
on his campus. Even that survey
incomplete as it was—showed how
far from students the acrolympics
have been.
For example, most of the top
students preferred studying in cy
cles—working hard for three or four
days, then goofing off entirely for the
next three or four days. So much for
the “study a little bit each day”
platitudes vouchsafed by the formulas.
Students also preferred to work in
four- and five-hourstretches, kayoing
the formula emphasis on one-hour
study sessions. All the formulas stress
the importance of frequent rest breaks,
but good students say the breaks
interrupt concentration.
Like Pauk, Szabo found no student
using a formula. He found this meant
students rarely remembered the main
ideas in a text, remembering instead
trivia! details and facts. Yet, noted the
rueful Szabo, “They manage to ob
tain acceptable grades.”
Did Szabo and colleagues consider
this a hint that maybe they should
abandon the quest for a perfect
formula? Never. Szabo concluded his
article with a ringing cry to press on to
new acronyms. “We must find a
method that reaches students where
they are,” he said.
R Is for Read
REAP might be the method Szabo
was calling for. Published by two
University of Missouri professors, it
is. first, simpler than all the others.
The R stands for read. That’s it. No
Survey, Question, Preview or Over
view. Just sit down and read. That’s
what students do anyway, so for the
first time in a generation the first step
of a formula makes sense in human
terms.
The next step, E—Encode, is equally
simple. Using any method you want,
simply close the book and try to
phrase what you’ve read into your
own words. Section by section? Chap
ter by chapter? Book by book? That’s
your choice. The only requirement of
the method is that you actively re
phrase the material immediately. The
other two steps, Annotate and Pon
der (upon which the authors elabo
rate at length) are just refinements of
Encode: write down your encoding
(for later review?) and then think
(think?) about it, they say.
When one examines REAP, it’s not
so different from earlier formulas in
that it calls for an active engagement
with the material to be memorized. It
is different in that it throws away the
hoopla and rigid rulesiness of earlier
formulas and states the meat of the
matter: Success ful study requires tak
ing time to put things in your own
words immediately. Repeat, immedi
ately.
The Forgetting Curve
Why does study require an immedi
ate Encoding (or Recalling or Re
citing or Evaluation or Call It What
You Will)? The answer to that is
suggested in some classic early re
search on memorization, such as the
1913 nonsense syllables study by
Ebbinghaus (ah yes, the one you had
to memorize for Introductory Psych,
remember?). In the Ebbinghaus study,
subjects studied a list of nonsense
syllables and then were tested re
peatedly. After 20 minutes they had
forgotten 47 percent—almost half.
After a day, 62 percent were for
gotten; two days, 69 percent; 31 days,
78 percent. The results were clear: the
bulk of forgetting takes place within
minutes after study and then tapers
off.
A similar study by Spitzer in 1939
which used meaningful material came
up with similar numbers—46 percent
of the material was forgotten after a
day; 79 percent after 14 days. For
getting is an immediate thing. By
tonight you will have forgotten al
most 50 percent of this article—unless
you try to encode it or put it in your
own words the minute you finish.
Spitzer proved that encoding works
to counter the brain’s awesome and
instant forgetting power. In another
study he conducted, some subjects
merely studied (i.e. read) materials
while others recited the information
in their own words immediately after
reading it. Seven days afterwards,
those who had recited remembered 83
percent of what they had read. The
others only remembered 33 percent.
This shows that encoding works, but
for the why of that working you’ll
have to return to Bruner’s concept
about structural patterns. Encoding
apparently makes you create memo
rable patterns. It works.
Note-taking, Like Love,
Requires You Listen Dearly
Assigned readings are not the only
material you must commit to mem
ory. You will also be tested on
lectures. Studying lecture notes is a lot
like studying a text. First you read,
then you encode. But before you can
read or encode you must take notes,
and that requires listening.
It is a subtle skill, perhaps because
it’s so human a skill. Professors are
not textbooks; they’re humans who
do not organize themselves into easy
to-grasp chapters and headings and
who often talk rapidly, slowly or
monotonously.
But listeners are fallible, too. They
listen in monotone, racing like a
dictaphone to capture every word.
Most students listen to a lecture as if
every idea had equal weight. Not so.
In an hour-long lecture, there will be
at most only six or seven main points
that you are expected to remember.
The rest of the information is detail,
colorful anecdotes, relevant tangents
or side dressings of opinion which the