To "study" (something) means to learn it as a whole topic. To "study about" (something) means to learn some details about it. Examples: "I would like to study English." (I want to learn the whole topic and use all of it.) "I would like to study about English." (I only want to know some details about English, for instance, where the English language came from, how difficult it might be to learn English, or perhaps a few grammar rules.) I will now use your example of "basic computer skills" for another example. A native English speaker would probably not say "study basic computer skills." If someone has never learned any computer skills, we would say this: "I need to learn basic computer skills for my computer literacy exam." If we feel we need to know a lot about it, we would say this: "I need to master basic computer skills for my computer literacy exam." If we learned some computer skills in the past, but we have forgotten them because we have not used them very much, we would say this: "I need to brush up on my basic computer skills for my computer literacy exam." "To brush up" is a common idiom that means "to remind oneself and practice using something that was learned before." One time when native English speakers will use "study" is when we are talking about an entire class, or about a primary area of study in college/university: "I can't go to the movie tonight. I need to study algebra for the test tomorrow." (This means "I need to study recent material that was presented in my algebra class.") "My brother is studying psychology." (This means that he is attending college and that all of his most important classes are designed about psychology; he plans to receive a degree in psychology and to become a psychologist.) We can also use "study" alone to mean that someone is attending a college/university: "My sister is studying at Harvard." (This does not mean that she has books open right now, only that she is enrolled as a student at Harvard.)