Have you ever questioned yourself as to whether your study methods are really effective? Are you getting the results for the number of hours you put into studying, or are you just curious and want some tips and tricks that have been proven to help you retain and learn things better? Well then, read on!
Table of Contents
1. Be aware of the serial position effect.
In psychology, the serial position effect states that you best remember the things that you first read on a list or in a chapter(primacy) and the last things you just read on a list or in a chapter(recency). So when you pick up a book to continue studying from yesterday, instead of picking up where you left off, you might want to consider rereading from a few pages back as those pages might not have been remembered as well the first and last pages.
2. Use the self-reference effect
The self-reference effect is when you remember things better when you relate the concepts to you and your life in some way. For example-if plants make food through the process of photosynthesis, and if your dog’s name just happens to be photosynthesis(I know its weird, just go with it), it becomes instantly easier to remember! So weave your learning into your daily life.
3. Space out your studying, Don’t cram.
Psychology has told us that distributed practice works far better than last-minute cramming. That means that you will do much better on a test if you have been studying two hours a day for two weeks than studying 10 hours the night before. You will also not be able to retain the information longer with cramming and it will stress you out way more.
4.Explain things to yourself in your own terms
This technique works for anything that you want to learn. When you read your textbook, you are reading someone else’s words, that is the author’s words on the subject, so you need to take those words and put them into your own simple terms. Don’t try to memorize. Instead, explain to yourself or your friends and you will understand just how much you have actually learned and retained.
5. Make yourself interested
Anything that we pick up on our own or things that we use out of school, we most probably do because we have a genuine interest in those subjects. Just like that, we need to tell ourselves that somehow, we are genuinely interested in the subject er are about to learn. Sometimes just telling yourself that you absolutely love the subject and can’t wait to study it(even if you don’t actually like it), will make the information you are about to study, more digestible. Say you don’t like math, the next time you sit down to do some hard problems, tell yourself that you absolutely love math and can’t wait to solve problems and the complexity of them only fascinates you!
