Any consideration of how to design appropriate activities for helping students to study successfully in English has to be based on an understanding of two fundamental factors, namely, (i) what effective study involves, and, (ii) what an effective approach to learning to study entails – conceptions, in other words, of the underlying ‘what’ and ‘how’, respectively, of this area of the design of activities. Obviously, numerous other factors also play an important role in the design process, such as sequencing, variety, feasibility, level and so on, but ultimately, everything depends on whether the materials have validity in terms of the underlying view of studying and learning to study on which they are based. Unless these concepts are sound and appropriate ones, the materials, however technically well-developed, will simply be misdirected.

In what follows, therefore, we will first of all briefly consider the main ‘messages’ of research about the nature of effective study. We will then present a rationale for an approach to helping students master such study processes. The remainder will focus on how these concepts can be taken into account in an overall framework for the design of study development activities.

The nature of effective study

There is general agreement in the EAP research literature (see, e.g., Dunkel, 1988b; Johns, 1981; Braine, 1989, etc.) that effective study involves the successful use of techniques such as how to take notes, skim and scan, construct a bibliography and so on – in other words, a command of what are commonly referred to as study ‘skills’.