Studying Effectively When Time Is Scarce by RnDegrees.net
Everyone leads busy lives and students are no different. Expectations of students these days are higher than ever before, with greater in depth knowledge expected in more subjects than any other generation in the past. The technical, information world we live in makes information easier to obtain, but it is still hard to learn and retain it.
An hour of regular study every day for three weeks is far more effective than 16 hours staying up late and cramming the night before an exam. It is also a lot easier to fit into your life. Plan your study time and use it effectively so that you will need to spend less time studying.
Retain More In Less Time By...
1. Avoiding Distractions
When it is your study time, go to a quiet place where other people will not distract you. Studying in a busy caf- is not nearly as effective as studying in your bedroom alone. Close the door and turn off the phone and the television. Tell your family you are studying and ask them not to disturb you
Avoid things that could distract you in your study environment. Clutter in the space you are trying to study in can provide a good distraction. A cluttered room can equal a cluttered mind and you need a clear mind to effectively study.
While playing soft music in the background can help some people block out other noises, if you find yourself singing along the music is a distraction.
Students of average learning ability often perform better in school than do those of greater ability simply because they study more effectively.
2. Summarise Your Class Notes
Rather than trying to read over reams of class notes and textbooks, it is more effective to summarise your notes and then to read over the summaries. You have already learnt this information, but study cements the knowledge into your short-term memory so that you can easily retrieve the information in the examination.
Summarising notes helps you to remember what happened in the classroom. As you read the notes, you will notice many sections that are less relevant for the exam. You can delete the chaff from the summary version.
It is much easier to rewrite a whole chapter of a textbook into a one-page summary of the most important details than to try to remember the whole chapter. Summaries are easier to read and, with less information to retain, and expressing the materials being learned in your own words makes them far more easy to remember.
What's Your Learning Style?
3. Study in the Way You Learn Best
Different people have different learning styles and study is most effective if you structure your study notes in a way that suits your learning style. The three most common learning styles are visual, audio and kinaesthetic.
Visual learners will remember someone's face rather than their name and will remember what they see. If you are a visual learner, you are far more likely to remember the movie than the soundtrack.
If you are a visual learner, make your study notes visual. Instead of writing out summaries in sentences, try making your summaries into diagrams or mind maps. Place key terms in bubbles or circles on the page, with lines to show relationships with other key terms.
Draw pictures or create visual images in your mind of what you are studying. Then when you get into the exam, you will be more likely to remember the picture.
Visual learners also benefit from using different colours to highlight text in their summary notes. You will remember the colour and associate that colour with the important information.
Audio learners remember what they hear, so are more likely to remember someone's name rather than their face or the soundtrack rather than the action in the movie. Audio learners should read summary notes aloud. You can even read the summary notes aloud to a recorder and then play it back, instead of re-reading the summary notes.
You may like to set a series of key terms to music so you can remember them. The alphabet song helps young children to learn the alphabet in a sequence. If you need to learn sequences of events or a sequence of chemistry formulae, this technique can be very effective. Repeat the song in your head and you will have the answers for the exam.
Kinaesthetic learners remember what they experience, feel or touch. This is harder than other types of learning style to incorporate into traditional study techniques. However, kinaesthetic learners will be more likely to remember what they have written, rather than what they have just read. You will find process of writing summary notes itself helpful study, if you are a kinaesthetic learner.
You may find that re-writing summary notes is more effective than merely reading them. Kinaesthetic learners should consider ways of learning that allows them to do something. You may like to try completing practice exams as part of your study.
Some students have created games that use the key terms of the subject they are studying and will play the game, rather than simply read over notes. Anything that turns the study into a more interactive session will help you to retain the information.
Your Attitude Matters!
Bear in mind your goal to get a passing grade in each class so you will be able to achieve the final objective (your degree), and try to keep a positive attitude towards whatever subject you're studying at the moment. It's human nature to do better at things we enjoy and worse at things we dislike, and those same tendencies effect our ability to learn and remember what we study as well.
Students attach positive or negative feelings to material they study and those feelings directly impact ability to learn. If you approach a subject with a negative outlook such as predetermining that it's boring, for example, you will find it much harder to study effectively and retain what you learn until test time than you would if you clear your mind of negative preconceptions and approach the subject with a positive attitude. Remember, subjects aren't inherently boring, it's your own negative attitude that makes it dull. Accentuate the positive in your approach to a subject and you'll be successful!
Make The Most Of Your Study Time
Following these techniques will help you to make the most of the time you do have available for study. Plan your study time so that it is regular and consistent. You want to ensure the information you have learned is easily accessible in an exam situation. Practice makes perfect and the more study you do consistently over a period of time, the easier this recall will be.
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