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Study guides, such as CliffsNotes, SparkNotes or online Novelguide.com have gotten a bad rap over the years. Sometimes, they signal that a student hasn’t done his fair share of studying, but when used as intended—as study aids—these handbooks actually can help decipher some of those hard-to-comprehend classics. Students can use study guides to enhance their reading lessons in a variety of ways. Some may prefer to read the notes intermittently with the assigned reading, while others might like to use them after the assignment is complete as a review guide. “I see [them] as a nice pre-reading,” says Donna Ogle, professor of curriculum and instruction for National-Louis University’s National College of Education in Evanston, Ill. The notes provide a sort of entrée, she says, into complex topics of which students might not have prior knowledge. More than telling the students what to read into a text, study guides give students a higher degree of confidence while reading and interpreting assignments, Ogle says. “The reader who comes to a text with a clear idea is more able to engage fully with the text,” Ogle says. “Whereas students unaware of that particular genre or topic might get too frustrated and give up.” Students also can use the reading guides as a follow-up to an assignment, helping to refine their first reading and to understand a novel’s more intricate messages. These finer points even help at test time, when after a handy review of a study guide, students’ brains are revved up and ready to go. Parents also can use the guides to be more involved in their child’s studies. Although parents read the same titles back in high school English class, it’s probably time to brush up on classic literature. Parents will find that they can interact with their children’s studies, and even help prepare them once test time arrives. These aren’t the same guides most parents read in high school. Although still chock full of plot summaries, character descriptions and theme explorations, the modern publications each provide additional sections that enhance studying skills. The traditional name in study guides, CliffsNotes provide a commentary section, helpful study questions and an online supplement. At the study guide’s Web site www.cliffsnotes.com, students can download free samples of books and access myriad additional learning tools, including quizzes, daily e-mailed tips and standardized test guidebooks. And as filmmakers increasingly look to modern fiction writers for the latest blockbuster, the newer versions include critical essays depicting the similarities and differences of a novel to its movie counterpart. Created in the late 1990s by a group of Harvard University students, SparkNotes provide similar chapter-by-chapter summaries, critical analyses and character sketches, and they cover a wide range of topics, including literature, poetry, drama, philosophy, even health and nutrition. In addition to its paperback versions, SparkNotes’ online counterpart www.sparknotes.com lets students compare notes on its message boards. Students also can find reference materials such as a dictionary, a thesaurus and a language translator. For questions about citing materials for reports and essay exams, the online guides provide examples of bibliographic citations. If you want to save a tree, Novelguide.com offers students free online reading guides, with in-depth plot, theme and metaphor analyses of both classic and contemporary titles, from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s cryptic “Notes From Underground” to the high school classic “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding. These online guides also provide author biographies and a handy list of the top 10 quotes, which teachers often use to create exam questions. By Natalie Bauer |
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