Advice on best study techniques to learn fast and make better career.
|
|
| Do you find it hard to take in what you study into your mind? Maybe you think you don't have the capacity to understand what you study? It could be the method of studying which is causing the problem. Here are a few study techniques which can be used to make the best of your study time. When to start the studies? Most people like to postpone studying or leave it till the last moment. While you can do a book report in a hurry and still scrape by without failing, it can be a whole different story in the case of exams. Leaving the absorbing part till the end means that the facts won't stick in your mind. Even if they do, they will be a jumble of words and phrases so that you won't be able to link them together in meaningful ways. In other words, it will be hard for you to write a coherent answer to a structured question. Plus, you never really feel comfortable when you postpone studying. You'll tell yourself there isn't really much to understand but when it gets right down to it, there is a long night ahead. The stress factor will also apply. In this case, when you come across a difficult section, you either let it go altogether hoping that there won't be any questions on that part or you just mark the pages and move on with the others hoping to return to it. Chances are that you would never get enough time to get back to the area that you left behind. Remember, examiners are no fools. They know what are the tough areas that students tend to leave behind. End result: more often than not you'll find a question in the exam from an area that you did not study. So what can you do to be better? First of all have a look at the syllabus or the course structure and check the amount of work that you have to do before the exam. And then identify the areas that you found difficult to understand during the lectures. When you have a study plan, the rest of the journey goes smoothly. Now you will know how much time would be required for the whole process of studying. Ideally you should go through the stuff that you have been taught at the school or the university that very day. This may sound impossible or boring, but this would make it really easy for you to understand lessons and absorb efficiently. It saves time too. But let's say you are one of the many that ends up burning the midnight oil to study. Would you then have a fresh memory to even remember the tips that the teacher or the lecturer gave you in the class? You will take a very long time to understand each sentence you read otherwise especially as fatigue takes over. Your brain can only take so much at a time. If you run out of time, at least take in the salient points of each section so that you can expand on the basic ideas in the exam. Never push yourself to read too much of one section. It's useless, you'll never remember all that when it counts. It's much more advisable to stick to the key points so that you can even improvise if necessary. You never know, your brain might respond well when you sit at your desk and chew on your pen. Revision/reviewing The thing about having large amount of information to study is that when you move on, you tend to forget what you studied in the beginning. This can also happen if you have to study several subjects at once. Confusion will reign! What is the solution? The best thing that you should do here is should review what you have completed studying, at least once a week. This will help you to refresh your memory and you will also be able to take note of areas that you tend to forget more easily. Those areas can be marked as special sections that need more attention and even more coaching. More tips/techniques follow in the part 2 of this article.. Study Techniques- Part 2 In the first article, we have discussed two study techniques that would help you to improve the effectiveness of your studies. But if you need a comprehensive knowledge about effective study techniques, make sure that you go through this article. How many hours for studies? Clearly this will vary depending on each individual. If you are a person who likes to do your work in short hours, then please stick to that time limit. Beyond your maximum limit, nothing will go into your brain. You will just be looking at the book, nodding or drifting off and basically wasting your time. Solution Figure out the number of hours that you can study nonstop. 1 hour and 30 minutes can be given as a target for school level. However, 2-3 hours or more would be more effective when you are doing higher studies, like postgraduate work. If you can't stay tuned for that much of time, you may have to first work on your concentration. There may be certain reasons that prevent you from focusing properly. Once you address those, you can get on track. Still, if you find your self being unable to concentrate for longer hours, don't worry about it too much. Start with what you can and then improve it in steps. This gradual process wouldn't make you feel drained. This will be the key to prepare yourself for longer hours of studies. Remembering What is important in studying is to get the principles into your head. Remembering each and every word in the book would almost be impossible although some still try! Read through the study texts and books and try to understand the basic ideas. Jot down points, make lists. Write the key areas as you understand it. This way, you won't follow the course structure like a robot. Seeing the main sections structured to your understanding will make you more confident that you have covered the relevant material. The study stuff may even seem friendlier to you when you review it later, because you know you have gone through it. This is a very important psychological step when it comes to studying. Testing your self This is something that most students tend to ignore. Once they have gone through several pages of a study text, they assume that they have successfully absorbed all the facts. This may not be the case all the time. But you can always check this. When you have tested yourself, it's easier to face other tests. Assume that you have gone through 2 pages in your biology book. Now stop reading the book and try to memorize the most important facts that you came across in those pages. If you can remember all of them, then it's perfect. If you don't, go back to the right page and identify the fact or facts that you couldn't memorize. Always concentrate on your weak areas. Don't let them slip by. How to read Most students tend to open the book and start on reading the pages from top to bottom without a good knowledge about the content of the page. This is not a successful method to use when studying. As soon as you open the book glance through the page and try to identify the contents of the page or the section that you are going to study. If it's part of a chapter, get that into your head first. For instance, you may be studying about conservation strategies, but it will help to realize at the start that this section is about wildlife and not energy. Then the rest of the reading will make sense to you quickly. Or when you get to the energy conservation, you might get a feeling of déjà vu and not really know why. Speed of reading Clearly this will depend on the person's reading ability. However, what is important is not the ability to read fast. What is important here is the ability to grasp things while reading at a reasonable speed. What's the use of speed reading if you can't recall anything you read? No doubt efficiency in readying saves you a lot of time in exams. Practice to improve the speed of grasping the important factors from a passage while reading through it at a reasonable speed. And as this develops, you can always increase the speed of reading. It helps not to dawdle at paragraphs on which questions are based. In the third and the final article on this topic, expect some more studying techniques. Study Techniques- Part 3 In this third and the final article on Study Techniques, we will concentrate more on techniques of making proper notes. Here, you will find information about techniques of taking down notes when you are studying or while you are at lectures. What to take down as notes A text book does not have to be memorized for you to pass an exam, no matter how relevant its contents are. In the same way, all information given to you in a lecture need not go down as notes. When you are going through your study text, important information that is more likely to be tested in exams will catch your eye. This is the information that you should write down as notes for future reference. It applies to any subject. Sometimes, you may even want to copy an illustration or a table for clarity. Using the lecture time more effectively There are plenty of students who take down all what is said by the lecturer word by word. It may be done in school but not at university, because lecturers like to speak at their will. So you won't have a continuous lecture nicely written down. This approach will be a waste of time, especially if you can't read what you have scribbled or make sense of it later. So what is the right approach? First of all listen to what the teacher/lecturer says. Listening is an important asset. If you are too busy writing, you won't be listening properly and will miss some information. Get an idea of the main theme of the lecture. Take down the most important information in point form. If you need a description, then write the minor points that you would include in the description, so that you would be able to understand what should be there in the description at a glance. If further information is available in study texts or other material, put the relevant page number for further reference. The lecturer might even suggest reading material. Don't try to learn too many things in a lecture. A lecturer basically tries to guide and interest you in a particular area at a time. It's your job to go home or use free time at college to learn more. How to deal with the lecture notes Do you feel that your lecture notes do not give you a clear picture that you need for your studies? It may be that you are reading the lecture notes a long time after the day in which they have been written. Or maybe you copied some details from friends and their writing is not clear to you. If you read your notes weeks later, you might even not understand your shorthand. Try to go through your lecture notes in the same day of the lecture, even if you don't have time to expand on it. Make a detailed description of the notes when time permits. Now you have a clear understanding on how to use study techniques to improve productivity at school. Happy studying! |
|
Featured Sponsar
Blogs about child education