Do you sometimes feel like your study habits just aren’t working out? Do long hours of preparing for a test feel useless? If so, here is a collection of useful studying techniques you can try out for your next exam.
Distributed Practice
This method involves studying in short periods of time over days or even weeks. Instead of preparing for several hours the night right before your test, you can instead study in blocks of 20-30 minutes every day for a longer stretch of time. This reduces stress and prevents procrastination if you stick to a studying schedule. You can also practice more than once a day, but remember to take breaks in between. If you need to memorize something, it’s much easier to do so in a few paragraphs a day rather than three whole pages an hour before class starts. One way of using this technique is making a deck of flashcards of a reasonable amount to go through once a day.
Making Your Own Study Guides
Sometimes you might not know where to start. Maybe your teacher gave you a giant study guide that’s 50 pages long. How can you study it when it’s beyond your abilities to memorize? The short answer is, you can’t. But there are no other study materials, and a test is happening soon. What do you do? You make your own study guide. In order to do this, summarize the key facts of each page and transfer it to a separate document. Don’t forget to put a title and headings, so your study guide is well-organized. That way, you can even learn while making a study tool. You can even share your new study guide with your classmates if you want!
Active Recall
Most of the time, just looking over your notes or even at a study guide isn’t enough. Active recall is an approach where you test yourself on information you have learned in class. How is active recall done? There are many ways to quiz yourself before your big test. A few strategies to study using active recall are flashcards, practice tests, and online quizzes similar to the topic you are preparing for. This method reactivates your memory and can be more fun as opposed to scrolling through twenty pages of lesson material from your past classes.
Visual Aids
The final studying technique that will be covered in this article is visual aids. Visual aids are graphs, diagrams, etc. that are helpful to visual learners. Like the other methods, this is more useful than looking at an old worksheet over and over again. If you can’t find a good graph or chart online, you can use the resources you currently have to make one yourself. Sometimes if you are confused about a particular section when studying, a visual aid can help!
These are all amazing ways to study, whether it is for an upcoming test or just in general. There are more ways to study as well that are not listed here. What is your favorite studying technique, and why?
