How Can Friends Help You Learn?
- Friends tend to collaborate more, spending more time together and elaborating on the material.
- Friends can relate learning material to shared experiences.
- Friends are familiar with how other friends think and express themselves, thus have a better idea of how to explain the material to each other.
- Friends can provide each other with a comfort level that can help overcome jitters, frustration, and discouragement.
How Can Friends Slow Down the Learning Process?
- When friends slide into the bad habit of being rude and inconsiderate to each other, learning slows down and becomes unpleasant.
- Jealousy and competition among friends can lead to unconscious efforts to withhold support and even to look for ways to prevent effective learning.
- When one member of a pair or group of friends has a very domineering personality, this can prevent effective learning among the other friends.
How Can I Help My Friends Learn?
- Be considerate. Take into account your friends’ strengths and weaknesses, and be patient.
- Be polite and respectful; save the jokes and teasing for after the study session.
- Cooperate! Work with your friends to achieve better learning results for all of you.
- If you tend to dominate groups, make a special effort to be inclusive and to let others help determine the course of study.
- If you tend to hang back and let others direct the study, be sure that your needs are being met, and gently speak up if you think there are better ways to study.
May Allah (swt) richly bless your efforts to learn and spread the message of the Quran.
Be pious scholars of the Lord because of what you have taught of the Scripture and because of what you have studied. [from Al-Quran, 3:79]
