About the author: Elaine Fine is a SIM Trainer from New Jersey and an associate professor in the graduate program at Montclair State College This article originally appeared in the April 1997 issue of Strategram, a newsletter for SIM Professional Developers.
Return to Article ArchiveThe Paired Associates Strategy has been greeted with much enthusiasm by the teachers I have trained. When asked how this strategy will meet the needs of their instructional programs, many teachers express hope that student use of this strategy will decrease the need to reinforce basic information over and over. When the students become competent in learning basic material, the teachers feel that they will be able to spend more time on higher-level learning such as integration, critical thinking, and application. After students have been trained, the teachers note that students who are taught the Paired Associates Strategy are better prepared to master information.
The steps, which involve identifying pairs or groups of items that are important to learn, creating study cards with questions for the items, selecting memory devices, and rehearsing in a systematic manner, foster active involvement with the material. Students who use the Paired Associates Strategy are better prepared to participate in class and to take tests as a result of learning how to cope with large amounts of information. Both students and teachers are enthused about the Paired Associates Strategy. Students with learning problems, however, may still have generally inefficient and ineffective study habits and skills. Teaching an additional strategy, FORCE, will help them use the Paired Associates Strategy as part of a larger study system.
FORCE: A strategy for studying for a test
L. Wehrung-Schaffer (1990). May the FORCE be with you: A test preparation strategy. Academic Therapy, 25,291-300
Deficiencies in study habits have been noted as one of the problem areas in student performance. As a part of the evaluation process, I include a strategies interview to determine how students study. Following the procedures described by Wiener (1986), I ask students to bring tests they have recently taken and I pose questions about how they studied for those specific tests, starting with the general question, "How did you study for this test?" and then asking specific questions about study habits. From these interviews, I have noted that many children with learning difficulties employ ineffective and inefficient study habits. They may be unsure of what will be on the test and how they will be tested. They report that they study by just rereading the chapters entirely, or at least trying to, without sorting out material. They often go over the information they know again and again and fail to study the parts they do not know. They tend to review the information as a whole rather than chunking it into smaller units. They do not anticipate the questions they will be asked. These poor study habits have been noted in young children as well as in young adults with learning disabilities with whom I have worked in college-level support programs.
Wehrung-Schaffer (1990) presented a powerful test preparation strategy called FORCE that addresses these poor study habits. I have taught this strategy to many students over the years with success; this was before the development of the Paired Associates Strategy. There were, however, some parts of the FORCE Strategy that were difficult for students to master, and the Paired Associates Strategy provides specific ways to address these difficulties.
The F (Find Out) step and the O (Organize) step are completed before studying and are intended to help the student become more attentive to information given in class and more responsible for organizing themselves. These steps should promote independence; the special education teacher, after teaching these first two steps, should be able to gradually turn responsibility for knowing what has to be done and how over to the children. Previous patterns where the special education teacher or parent runs around finding out what has to be studied or obtaining missing worksheets or materials left in lockers should be faded out; although these behaviors are helpful to the children because the teacher can then assist the child in preparing for a test, they promote dependency. Direct teaching of the Find Out and Organize steps with modeling and rehearsal helps students develop self-reliance.
The R (Review), C (Concentrate), and E (Early Exam) steps are completed at home or during study time in school. Students who have good study habits do a general review before concentrating on unknown information or information they anticipate will be on the test. They think of questions that the particular teacher may ask based on work stressed in class and the pattern of questions presented in previous tests. They review unknown information systematically.
I used to find that, when learning the FORCE strategy, the children were still uncertain about how to do the general review in the R step. The students faced the most difficulty in the C step, which calls for the students to put the information they are unsure of on cue cards in question-and-answer form. This step did not allow for the students to group information in meaningful ways and did not provide for the use of memory devices to aid the study process. The Paired Associates Strategy provided the needed specific ways to do the R, C, and E steps, and using the two strategies together provided a powerful package of study tools.
To present the two strategies, I begin by teaching the Paired Associates Strategy following the eight-stage instructional sequence that is needed to ensure mastery and generalization. I then teach the FORCE Strategy. I connect the two strategies by teaching the students to use relevant steps from the Paired Associates Strategy during FORCE. The children use the Paired Associates Strategy to select important information, make the study cards and questions, form the memory devices, and study on a regular basis using the self-test procedure.
When studying for a test, the students integrate the two strategies during the R, C, and E steps as follows.
Review. Students develop a pack of study cards using the P, A, I, and R Steps of the Paired Associates Strategy.
Then, using the self-test procedure, the S Step, from the Paired Associates Strategy, students separate the cards into two piles, one containing the cards that represent material they know well and the other containing the cards that represent material they have not mastered.
Concentrate. To do this step, students use the self-test procedure over and over with the cards in the pile of unknown material. They also do the other part of this step, thinking of what material the teacher will likely include on the test.
Early Exam. To do this step, students use the Paired Associates cards to practice the questions that have been written for each paired associate. Then, they use the cards to make up different kinds of questions, such as multiple choice, short essay, or true-false. This is an excellent step to do in cooperative learning groups.
Students who learn both the Paired Associates Strategy and the FORCE Strategy are prepared with both general study habits and specific skills that can be used throughout school. These students can use Paired Associates with FORCE.
