raining in methods of study into secondary
and elementary schools is that more individuals will be helped,
inasmuch as the eliminative process has not yet reached its
culmination.

In high schools where systematic supervision of study is a feature,
classes are usually conducted in Methods of Study, and it is hoped that
this book will meet the demand for a text-book for such classes, the
material being well within the reach of high school students. In high
schools where instruction in Methods of Study is given as part of a
course in elementary psychology, the book should also prove useful,
inasmuch as it gives a summary of psychological principles relating to
the cognitive processes.

In the grades the book cannot be put into the hands of the pupils, but
it should be mastered by the teacher and applied in her supervising and
teaching activities. Embodying, as it does, the results of researches
in educational psychology, it should prove especially suitable for use
in teachers' reading circles where a concise presentation of the facts
regarding the psychology of the learning process is desired.

There is another group of students who need training in methods of
study. Brain workers in business and industry feel deeply the need of
greater mental efficiency and seek eagerly for means to attain it.
Their earnestness in this search is evidenced by the success of various
systems for the training of memory, will, and other mental traits.
Further evidence is found in the efforts of many corporations to
maintain schools and classes for the intellectual improvement of their
employees. To all such the author offers the work with the hope that it
may be useful in directing them toward greater mental efficiency.

In courses in Methods of Study in which the book is used as a
class-text, the instructor should lay emphasis not upon memorization of
the facts in the book, but upon the application of them in study. He
should expect to see parallel with progress through the book,
improvement in the mental ability of the students. Specific problems
may well be arranged on the basis of the subjects of the curriculum,
and students should be urged to utilize the suggestions immediately.
The subjects treated in the book are those which the author has found
in his experience with college students to constitute the most frequent
sources of difficulty, and under these conditions, the sequence of
topics followed in the book has seemed most favora