Is it hard for you to study? We offer you the best study techniques, easy and effective, that will be of great help when learning to study, and above all, they will help you achieve your goals.
As the students go up in academic level, the demands and the amounts of tasks and syllabi to study are greater. The students are gradually realizing that studying the afternoon before an exam is no longer possible, but what now?
Normally we do not pay attention to study techniques until the child reaches higher grades and the stress appears when he does not know how to manage all the things he has to do with “the little time he has left!”
That is why we must change this vision and start with these techniques practically as soon as the child begins his schooling.
What are study skills? Helpful tips to keep in mind
A study technique could be defined as that or those methods that facilitate learning.
Throughout this article we will point out some of the most effective, bearing in mind of course that each person learns in a different way and that what works for many does not work for others.
Same time and place of study
Although it may seem less important, always using the same study time and place prepares our body to take study action. It is important to remember that the study environment has to be relaxed and we have to remove those distractions that take us away from our purpose.
Organization of the tasks to be carried out
Once we are seated with everything we need at hand, we have to decide how to start our study day. Without a doubt, we have to start with those tasks that are more tedious or complex for us, since at the beginning of the day we will be fresher and more motivated. As we advance in the study time, the attention decreases and it costs us more.
In addition to organizing daily tasks, it is convenient to establish calendars dividing over time those aspects that require a longer study duration, such as exams and assignments. In this way we will not find amounts of work impossible to manage in a short time.
Be realistic when organizing tasks
We are all aware of our work capacity, and despite the fact that with the practice of it is increasing, at first it is of the utmost importance to adapt our objectives to our possibilities.
It is preferable to set ourselves low goals and adjust them little by little with respect to our ability than to set ourselves impossible goals and feel the frustration of not achieving them every day since this fact causes motivation to decrease.
Take breaks
Around 60 minutes of continuous study (in the adolescent or adult), attention drops noticeably and fatigue appears. It is preferable to use breaks of 10 or 15 minutes than to continue, since if we do not take breaks, the effectiveness is lower and we would need more hours of study to learn the same contents.
Read actively
When we come across an agenda, it is not enough to read it and reread it to learn it. It is much more effective to read carefully while underlining and making annotations in the margins that later serve us to make diagrams or summaries.
Summaries and schematics
Once the contents to be studied have been analyzed, it will be easier to retain them if we “make them our own”. That is, if we write and summarize them in our own words.
Memorization tricks
There are several methods such as reciting aloud , making a pseudo-presentation for invisible assistants, inventing creative phrases that give us clues (Hydrogen, Lithium, Beryllium = There are Beautiful Lanterns), using question and answer letters made from the knowledge and play in a group, etc.
Set small goals
Self-motivation is very important when we talk about study, so we have to see how little by little we progress and achieve small objectives. For example, suppose that for today we must memorize 5 pages of our agenda. Well, we can reward ourselves with each page learned with a fun activity that lasts no more than 15 minutes.
In this way and with this little game we will go from small objectives (one page) to the desired objective (the 5 daily pages).
Positive messages
Finally we have to be good to ourselves and bombard ourselves with positive messages of the type: you have already learned more than half of the syllabus, you are able to finish it today, today is the first day and you have organized the whole study and have even looked at the syllabus, etc.
Studying is not easy, but if we load our backs with feelings of frustration and incapacity, the road will become much more difficult.
Some tricks to learn to study
With the exams at the doors, many are the students who worry about knowing what can be the best way to study, looking for tips and tricks that allow them to learn to study.
Although it is true that studying is something that is fundamentally taught in schools from the childhood stage, there are times that either due to lack of practice or forgetfulness, many people do not remember exactly what may be the best way to correctly adopt the habit study.
There is no doubt that the best habit when it comes to studying is to do it for a few hours each day, since in this way the habit of studying is not properly lost.
This is so, because studying is a process in which a total of four main acts have to be present: understanding, assimilation, retention and reasoning. Discover them:
- Comprehension: It is a fundamental act, since fully understanding what is studied allows effective learning. Of course, it must be taken into account that understanding requires: knowing the meaning of the words, understanding the sentence, distinguishing in the paragraph what is essential and necessary, and grasping the chaining of the sentences with the rest of the paragraph.
- Assimilation: Tends to be a broader concept than memorization itself. A person assimilates something when what he understood makes it his own, exactly as if it were in his thought. This capacity for assimilation is extremely important, since it is being aware of why something is being said about a topic and why it is being said.
- Retention: It is one of the main functions of memory that we find between fixation and memory. Of course, it must be taken into consideration that a study that is solely and purely rote – and without meaning – will have no value. For this reason, to retain something it is necessary to understand it (first step), organize it and do it intelligently. Producing a summary, an outline, a summary table or a synthesis can be very useful.
- Reasoning: At present, much emphasis is placed on reflective learning, mainly because you learn better by thinking and finding the reasons for ideas than by learning by heart.
