Study Techniques Review Club
I'm going to launch straight into one of the most celebrated study techniques on the internet. You've probably heard of active recall (trying to remember the material and say it by not looking at it) and of spaced repetition (revising the material over spread out intervals of time). Let's discuss them a bit more in depth, and I will offer my views on these methods.
Active Recall
In layman terms, after you learn the topic, draft yourselves a few questions that enquire about the essential details of the material. Then, try to answer those questions purely from memory. If you cannot, glance at the material and reinforce that missing piece of detail in your memory. This technique is especially useful in identifying which parts of the material you are NOT well-versed with, which is why this works extremely well as a revision technique for subjects like History, Biology and Chemistry. This technique works better for subjects that crave minor detail attention and chunks of information to memorise.
This is also effective for last minute grinds. Ultimately, this technique ensures you are not pseudo-studying; surfing through the textbook and reading it without active attention. Pseudo-studying occurs when you are lazy, unmotivated, or studying under time pressure. Active recall has definitely helped me in information-rich subjects, so I'd recommend this highly to you. But this is just one half of the treasure. When paired with another technique, nothing could be more efficient to make your grades rise, I assure you.
Spaced repetition
Do you remember why you DON'T remember your academic knowledge after a long end-of-year holiday? The forgetting curve is your culprit. Solution? Spaced repetition simply requires you to re-visit the material over fixed periods of time, like every week or two, and THEN apply active recall to see how well you retain the information.
"Neurons that fire together, wire together," -Donald Hebb
Each neuron contains a pathway that stores information in your brain. By trying to stimulate that information that you've forgotten and re-activating it, the pathways become stronger than before, and this is powerful if you want to retain the material for long periods of time. This is why your teachers pop up a surprise quiz on you every often. Class tests and quizzes require you to think about the material and retain it from your (tiny) bookshelf of knowledge, so that it can be applied to answer the questions. And that leads me to my piece of advice, grind out those past year papers. A true blessing for exam revision. Prioritize them BEFORE you even start relearning the material. That way, you can focus on the topics you flunked at in the past year papers. "Put in the work, put in the hours, we stay hungry, we devour,".
The diagram above should make it clear why spaced repetition and active recall work so well. Spaced repetition alone, functions effectively for subjects like Mathematics, Physics and intuitive-on-the spot-thinking related subjects. This is because it requires you to gain expertise by having practice in applying the knowledge very often, and this helps enormously for exams. Because under the time pressured environment, you KNOW your stuff and how to apply it, no time wasted figuring out how to proceed with the question. I now see why this was the most hyped up, bible of student's productivity technique. I came across a technique of studying with flash cards, and it uses spaced repetition and active recall. While I do not personally use it(lazy?), I have seen it work extremely well for others.
Write down the questions regarding your topic on one side of the flashcard. Write the answer on the other. Then try to answer them all. That which you cannot answer, or do so incorrectly, you move it to the "revise frequently boxes,". That which you answer correctly, move it to the "re-visit later" boxes, helping you eliminate the need to revise topics you are good at, and instead focus on your weak areas.
Conclusion
To ensure you can obtain your information from your brain during exam settings, and apply them with ease due to expertise, consistent spaced repetition and active recall work hand in hand to cast the magic spell. This helps disrupt the forgetting curve. Please leave any opinions you have about this article below, or any improvements you would like to see on Student's Spot. Help a buddy out by subscribing, and sharing this to those who need this, if you think this is helpful.
Signing out, Arshath.
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