Students Abstract

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING

INTRODUCTION

Many students are being left behind by an educational system that some people believe is in crisis. Improving educational outcomes will require efforts on many fronts, but the central point of this study focused on evaluating the effectiveness of many promising strategies and techniques for helping struggling students and to enhance academic performances– an expected outcomes to be achieved through the use of an effective review techniques.

A review aims to renew study of the same subject matter or to recall what have been taken up in the past and view this again in the different perspective of point of view. New associations, new relationships, new interpretations may be discovered in the second study that may not have been evident in the first lesson. A review is equally very useful; it has been also defined as a recall and rehearsal of information presented in a study. The major advantage of a review is that it aids both immediate and long-term retention. As the students go through the material over and over again, the tendency is for them to get used to the material while being reminded as well as of those points they may have overlooked or forgotten.

Most students do not know how to review probably because they are not aware of what techniques to apply in the situation. Fortunately, cognitive and educational psychologist had an understanding of this deficiency in students approach to review. In connection with that, they have develop and evaluate an easy-to-use review techniques that help students achieve their learning goals. They selected techniques that were expected to be relatively easy to use and hence could be adopted by many students. The techniques include the self-explanation, summarization, note-taking, highlighting (or underlining), the keyword mnemonics and practice testing and choosing a good study environment. And the quality of education as reflected through motivation which is a function of study habits and study behavior of student. Motivation may be considered to be anything, material or non-material which energize and direct a person's behavior towards achieving a set goal. Human have an inborn tendency to become self-actualized; a general positive force that is responsible for people achieving their potential and performing good.

Some techniques that are popular and often used by students are relatively ineffective. Toward meeting this challenge, they explore the efficacy of the techniques which foster improvement of students learning. However the aim of the study is to encourage students to use appropriate technique (or techniques) to accomplish instructional effective.

Thus, each review techniques describes how it can be used and its effectiveness. Many methods and techniques can be used nowadays and making it as especially valuable tool for students and teachers who wish to promote effective learning.

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

More than 100 years, psychologist have been developing and evaluating the efficacy of review techniques for the students. Nevertheless, some effective techniques are underutilized. Many teachers do not learn about them, and hence many students do not use them despite evidence suggesting that the techniques could benefit students’ achievement.

Lovell (1993) asserted that retention can be aided by thorough learning, by studying at a suitable period of the say, by constantly reviewing and by   likely to cause interference. He also pointed out that when materials have been learnt, partly forgotten and learn again, the rate of forgetting is slower after the re-learning and it becomes lower still after further periods of review. This would appear to consume a lot of the student's time and can only be utilized by those who determined to study for excellence.

Good (1998) cited a review as a “re-examination of the materials previously presented or studied”. This re-examination has the purpose of revising, examining, inspecting or noticing critically. He also define the term as the students’ way of study whether systematic, efficient or inefficient. Going by this definition it literally means that a good review produces positive academic performances while in efficient review leads to academic failure.

In Nigeria, there are so many factors influencing the ability of students to cultivate effective and efficient study habit. Ozmert (2005) emphasized the importance of environmental influence as a major factor in the development of students. In the same vein, Adetunji and Oladeji (2007) submit that the environment of most children is not conducive for studying; it is in the light of this that made some parents to prefer their children to go to boarding school for proper discipline and to inculcate better reading habit.