Perennial cornflower
5 Study Habits You
Should Be Practicing
Alexia Bullard
With exams, quizzes, essays, projects, and myriad
deadlines for different things,
effective study habits are critical for keeping stress at
bay during college.
Having these great study habits can make things easier
and alleviate some of the stress looming overhead. If you are in need of a bit
of an improvement, or just want to get some new ideas,
keep reading for the top five study habits that you
should be practicing.
1. Make and use
flashcards.
Flashcards are designed to promote active memory recall
of information.
By using flashcards with a question or term on one side
and the answer or definition on the other, you will force your brain to recall
the necessary information.
Even if you struggle a bit with a card, you will still be
actively reviewing the necessary material.
One of the other reasons why flashcards are effective is
that they utilize spaced repetition learning techniques. Spaced repetition has
been proven time and time again to be one of the most
effective ways of building up memory and increasing
recall of information.
By studying the information again and again, at spaced
intervals,
you will be able to recall the information faster and far
more easily.
2. Revise, revise,
revise!
Many students put off studying until just before the
exam, with the more diligent students
giving themselves a week or two prior to a test. While
this may sound effective
and like a good manner of planning, it’s actually an
ineffective method of preparing and studying.
It’s best to revise the information a little bit every
day,
so that you are not overwhelmed when a test (or pop
quiz!) comes around.
One method of revising is to make a mind-map. This is a
bit like a flowchart,
in that you start with one core concept in the center,
and then branch off into connected sections.
This will help you to connect everything together and
associate the terms with one another. When it comes time to take the exam, you
will be better prepared and the key terms will jump out at you.
Read aloud to yourself and, as silly as it may seem,
pretend you are teaching a student.
Read your notes aloud, pretend you are lecturing. Do this
over and over,
until you no longer have to look at your notes. Once you
have accomplished that, do it again.
Take one of the main concepts and turn it into a little
story. Make sure you are able to explain this concept, no matter how complex it
actually is, to someone who has never heard of it before.
For example, if you are studying the industrial
revolution, write a story that is written in such a way that it would explain
that concept and events to someone who has never heard of it before.
While this may sound silly and tedious, it’s an
incredibly effective means of going over the information and looking at it in a
new light. This, in turn, creates new associations and gives your brain a
visual representation of the information, thereby making it easier to remember
and recall.
Finally, come up with a keywords list. Take each of the
main concepts for the subject
you are studying, and reduce it into a ONE-word
sub-topic. Study this list and memorize it. Incorporate it into the above
methods, especially when using your flashcards. When it comes time for the
exam, write down your list of keywords the moment you have that test in front
of you.
This will ensure you easily remember each topic and
sub-topic,
as well as providing a frame of reference if you get a
blank during the test.
3. Watch related
lectures and videos.
One of the most effective—and the most fun—methods of
studying is to watch related lectures
and videos in order to supplement the material. Watch
documentaries or videos on YouTube
and educational websites. You may be surprised at how
much you can learn from videos,
and just how much information is available online.
On a related note, you may also be able to download or
stream podcasts that cover a large range
of topics. Depending on what you are studying, you may
find this to be very useful and entertaining.
4. Create practice
tests based off previous tests.
You should save all of the graded papers, quizzes, tests,
assignments, and handouts
that your teacher hands back to you. This will not only
show you how well you did, but it will
also highlight what you need to work on and where your
strengths lie in that particular subject.
You will also be able to learn the format of the tests,
the structure of the questions,
and whether or not to predict the inclusion of tricky
True/False questions.
Use these graded tests to create a new practice test.
Include the questions you got correct,
for some variety, but mainly focus on the questions you
answered incorrectly. By focusing solely
on these parts of the required material, you will turn
your weaknesses around and even out
the dents in your recall. Come test time, you will be far
less stressed and feel more prepared.
5. Re-write your
notes.
Studies have shown that writing information out by hand
increases your ability to recall the material. This makes the recall go hand-in-hand
with muscle memory,
and you will be able to picture your written notes when
you are taking the exam.
One of the best ways to do this is to prepare for each
class far ahead of time. Before the lecture begins, stake out your spot and go
back over the assigned reading, your notes from the last class, and any
homework you completed the night before. Right before the lecture starts, scan
through
the notes from the previous lecture as a means of gaining
a sense of context that you will be able
to build the new material on. This way, you will be able
to focus on the lecture in order to get the information you will not be able to
just look up in the book later on after the class has ended.
When you take the notes, write the information in
your words rather than just blindly writing down what the professor says. This
will help you to better grasp and retain the information.
After class, re-write your notes in a more organized
manner. This will help you to go over
the information, as well as to ensure you have a solid
set of notes for studying later on.
As you go through the notes, summarize each section.
This will sum it all up in your own vernacular, and show
that you truly do understand the concepts.
It will also show where any gaps in your understanding of
the material may be.
Using outline formats with bullets, indentations, and
numbering in order to make the hierarchical relationship between different
points even more obvious will further solidify the information in your mind.
Leaving space between the lines will also makes your notes easier to scan and
study later on.
The Cornell method is also extremely effective,
especially if you do the summary at the end
of the page. Fold your paper to have a large section on
the right, and a smaller section on the left. On the right, jot down the
pertinent information, points, or definitions during class.
On the left, write questions for the information on the
right, as you would read on a test.
The left section is also the place for terms that are
defined by the information on the right.
At the very bottom of each page, add a summary of the
above information.
Later, when you go to study the notes, you can cover up
the right column
and make your notes a great means of preparing for exams.
These are the five most effective study habits, and
something all successful students do.
Make sure you are on top of your game by following these
study methods!
http://www.lifehack.org/284599/5-study-habits-you-should-practicing
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