Compilation Of The Best Study Techniques

 

And time again played a trick on us

September is just around the corner and, for a change, the summer has passed us without studying even half of what we set out to do, right? Well, the damage is done and lamenting is not going to help. Now, the best we can do is try with all our might that the little time we have left we can really take advantage of to get the best possible grades.

The damn optimism

It's little, it's easy, it's sucked, with studying for a couple of days I have plenty. But then comes the overwhelm when we see the agenda and everything that can fall on the exam. If we want to pass, we had better put optimism aside and see what we really have to study, so that later we do not panic.

So the first step is to get organized:

Compilation of all the material: You have to know what goes into each subject and what doesn't and have all the notes up to date.

Calendar: The time has come to hang up that calendar in the drawer that they gave us at Christmas and mark the exam days. It is important to know how much time we have to prepare each of the subjects.

Folders: It is better to print the material and keep it in folders than to read it on the computer. In addition, by looking at the volume of pages we can get a better idea of ​​what it will take to study each thing.

Difficulty: The subjects that are the most complicated for us are those that we will have to dedicate more time to, so we will have to deal with them every day even though we have other exams to prepare.

Why does varying study techniques work?

Mainly, for two reasons:

Because studying ends up boring: During exam time we spend many hours studying and our brain relaxes and stops paying attention. To really perform, the brain needs an adequate level of stimulation and we will achieve this by varying the study techniques. By changing the method from time to time, the brain will be more alert and studying will become more enjoyable.

Because if we study all subjects the same, we will waste time: We cannot study a legal text in the same way as mathematical formulas. It would be absurd, because we would spend many hours and the result would not be good. Each subject must be worked with the most appropriate study techniques, but never with the same one all the time (from what we said in point 1). We are at the end of August and the most important thing now is not to continue wasting time; every hour that we dedicate to study should be an hour well spent.

Compilation of study techniques

This compilation of study techniques should serve us (in addition to studying) to plan the study and see which ones we will use in each of the subjects that we have to prepare. We should not be afraid to try new things, because although the usual works for us, it is very possible that some of the study techniques that we have not tried ghost writer yet will give us an even better result and save time. Let's see them:

Comprehensive reading: The first step when we start to study is to read the syllabus. This stage is essential, but there are ways to do it so that it is more enjoyable and we take better advantage of it. Instead of reading to read, it is better to do a comprehensive reading, which is a study technique that consists of dividing the syllabus by points and going one by one. Ideally, the points are not extensive and we can ask ourselves the following questions: What are you talking about? What does it mean? What is it related to? What is the fundamental idea? If we answer these questions at each point and write down our answers, at the end of the reading we will have a great knowledge of the ghost writer subject and we will have done more than 50% of the work.

Effective underlining: Underlining a text seems easy, but if we feel the need to put on some sunglasses after having underlined a topic or our notes look more like a pride flag than an academic text, then we do it out of pain. Two colors will suffice (main ideas and secondary ideas) and creating a code of signs is much more effective than scratching without stopping under any word. Arrows, asterisks, dotted lines, circles, etc. and providing a meaning to each one will help us much better to understand at a glance what it is we wanted to highlight.

Summaries: After comprehensive reading and underlining, we can start with summaries, which will be what we will use later to review. The summaries serve to remove the chaff from the text and keep what is important, so it will be our most useful work tool and we must do them very well. Like each of the study techniques, the summary has its tricks (like finding the "key phrases" so that we can remember what follows by heart).

Create your own tests: If there is a simple and effective way to learn, it is by doing simulations. Ideally, we would have access to other old exams, but if this is not possible, we can do them ourselves. You just have to take out of the text the questions they could ask us, answer them without looking at the notes, correct ourselves, re-study the answers and repeat. There is no more effective way not only to learn, but also to achieve a deep calm in the exam, because, if we have done well to generate questions, it will be like repeating something that we already know we know.

Study aloud: Why use only visual memory or what we get by repetition if we can help ourselves with auditory memory? Isn't it easier for us to learn songs than poems? When we read our summaries aloud, we will learn more quickly and we can even accompany certain expressions with gestures that will help us to retrieve the information on the exam.

Mind maps: Making a mind map of our summary will help us a lot to place the information in our head to be able to retrieve it effectively and, furthermore, it is a study technique that is very fun; so it's great when we're exhausted from studying. We tell you about the technique of making mind maps here.

Mnemonics: The mnemonics are perfect to study definitions, dates, formulas, lists, instructions and the like. Nothing that is a long text, but those short things that we cannot forget but that we find difficult to retain.

Study cards: If we prepare the study as if we were going to give a lecture and we make some cards that support us, we will know that we have done well when a few cards with individual phrases allow us to release the whole paragraph without problem. They are also ideal for studying in a group or for when a friend or family member helps us by asking us the lesson. They can also be taken anywhere and allow us to review even from the beach.

Emotion: It is logical that the subjects that we have left for September do not excite us excessively, but we must remember that memory is closely linked to our emotions and, therefore, it is important to use it to our advantage. The trick is to look for the positive emotions that led us to study this career and try to motivate that. On the other hand, you have to make inferences and try to associate something that has happened to us or that we have felt with the parts of the agenda that we want to learn. If we achieve that, we can recover the information just by evoking the memory.