How to study effectively
1. Organize your study area
Organize your study area with all the materials you may need to complete your assignments, such as pens, paper, research materials and even snacks. With all the necessary materials at hand, you can focus on studying without interruption. Keeping drinks and snacks in your study area can help you maintain focus by reducing trips to the kitchen.
2. Practice active listening
Concentrate when your teacher or instructor is speaking. You can practice active listening by focusing on what’s being said and writing it down in your own words. This can help you hear and understand what’s being taught in class or seminar.
3. Minimize distractions
4. Make sure your notes are complete
Writing clear and complete notes can help you process the information you’re hearing. These notes can also become study notes that you can review before a test or a client meeting. If you’re a student and you’ve missed a class, talk to your friends or instructor to ensure your notes are complete.
5. Ask questions
If you don’t understand something, raise your hand and ask questions. If you’re not comfortable asking in front of everyone, you can write yourself a reminder to talk to your teacher or supervisor after class.
6. Make a study plan
When you make a study schedule, review your planner and rank your to-do list from the most important to the least important. Think about the kinds of questions that may be on the test and the topics it might cover, so you know what you should focus on. You can set specific goals for every study session.
7. Single-task, with intensity
Multitasking efforts usually involve context switching, in which your mind has to restart and refocus.To to study effectively, learn accomplish a single task at a time. Rather than spending time doing low-intensity work with several distractions, you can work for shorter periods of time at higher intensity, with no distractions from social media, emails and smartphones. This way, you can make your studying more effective and achieve greater results.
8. Keep a positive mindset
Think positively while studying so you can be more effective at learning and retaining information. Try saying something positive to yourself before you study, such as “I’m going to pass this exam!” If you find yourself thinking negative thoughts, immediately replace them with positive thoughts, such as, “I’m going to master this technique and succeed!”
9. Quiz yourself
To learn information more effectively, try using mock quizzes, flashcards and practice exams. Taking the test can help you learn the information better than just re-reading or reviewing the information. Consider creating flashcards to quiz yourself or create a practice exam or mock quiz. You can create a simple mock test for yourself by copying all questions from your previous quizzes and answering them.
10. Outline the information you need to learn
Making an outline from class materials and notes can be an effective way to study your notes and materials from class. Consider taking your lecture notes and creating an outline of the information you took down in class. You can also include relevant information from your textbook in the outline.
11. Use a memory game
Consider using an acronym, song or mnemonic device to help you retain information. For instance, when memorizing the notes of the treble scale, EGBDF, you can assign the letters a set of phrase or words that’s easy to remember, such as, “every good boy does fine.”
12. Make connections
Instead of memorizing information, make connections between ideas. This process, known as context learning, requires you to customize your own methods of learning. Some people find that recording all information visually in one place, such as one chalkboard or on a piece of paper, can help aid their connections within the learning process.
13. Use the Leitner system
Created by Sebastian Leitner, the Leitner system helps you to learn the material you know least well through repetition. The system involves moving cards written with correctly answered questions further down a line of boxes and moving cards with incorrectly answered questions back to the first box. This allows you to study the first box most frequently, and the interval becomes greater as you proceed down the line, forcing you to review the information you don’t know again and again.
14. Use active recall
Active recall is when you stimulate your memory for a piece of information. Imagine reviewing medical information for a physiology test. You have written all the terms on flashcards. As you turn over each card, you see the question, and you know that on the flip side is the answer. That moment — when you try to recall the correct answer before you check it — is active recall. It’s a retrieval practice in which your mind goes into its memory storage and finds one specific piece of information.
How to Study More Effectively
Is it possible for students to study smarter not harder? More and more people today would answer this question with an emphatic, “yes!” One of such people is US-based Nigerian Newscaster NaijaTab 9ja News and education consultant, Michael Aromolaran who has developed what he called NGStudent which is an educational package that gives new direction in learning.
The essence is to offer the most complete exam package that is easy to use, enabling JAMB, NECO, SSCE and GCE students as well as SAT, TTOEFL, GRE and GMAT students to study and take practice steps online. It works with students at their own level to make sure they achieve their best, and gives instant and detailed feedback and explanations so students can improve on their exam scores.
According to Aromolaran, students can get easy and convenient access to past exam papers on NGStudent Using past exam papers to revise is beneficial because it lets students practice the exam under conditions so they are less stressed about the layout of the exam. Also using past question papers lets students see how the exam board asks questions. Under this scheme, all subjects are divided into topics’ diagnostic test is used to show where the students scored strongly or poorly. Such student can take a domain test on topics where they scored poorly in order to build on their knowledge. The target is to allow users to become strong student in every category so they can score the best possible marks.
His words,” First, NGStudent tests the fundamentals in Basic Training; students get feedback on their reading speed, basic Math and critical reasoning. Basic training is completely free the first time students take! Then students can enter their chosen subject and take a diagnostic test. NGStudent breaks every subject into its component parts or domains. The diagnostic test evaluates students on all domains of their chosen subject and gives them detailed feedback. After the diagnostic test, NGStudent will show them the specific domains they need to work on, and will give them a personalized study plan.
“Students can then use the domain tests to focus on their weaknesses by selecting the individual domains they need to improve. Once they’ve made an improvement, students can take the Multi – domain teat. This will give them a mock exam score along with detailed feedback to enable them quantify their improvement’.
Aromolaran also deliberated on what he described as dashboard technology which enables one to track his or her progress very easily. With it, students can view, in an easy to read format, their current scores.
Asked his impression on the country’s education standard, this great scholar and consultant, stated that Nigeria has the potential to rule the entire world academically. He disclosed that many products of Nigerian secondary and tertiary schools are making waves in the United States of America, Europe and all other parts of the world. He however quickly added that there is still much to be done to ensure that the country keeps abreast with the times. Such imperative measures include ensuring that our pre-tertiary students learns how to study properly in order not to become frustrated with their studies.
Explaining the workings of the dashboard technology, he pointed out that it provides a wide array of study aids and educational materials. The technology helps students get organized, showing them their progress and how they are doing, in an easy to read format.
As he put it, most students live and study on the surface They miss the crucial guidelines. They study and study and yet performs woefully in the exam. The reason is not that they are not studying hard enough but because they are not smart enough to learn how to study tactfully.
He however quickly added that there is still much to be done to ensure that the country keeps abreast with the times. Such imperative measures include ensuring that our pre-tertiary students learns how to study properly in order not to become frustrated with their studies.
A core educationist and CEO of Dave Abion Consulting, Chief David Oni has identified some of the reasons why many Nigerians end up being frustrated in their bid to have meaningful study abroad.
Chief Oni who have over the decades paid his dues in the consultancy world of identifying Nigerian students who want to go abroad to study, interviewing them, selecting those who are suitable, helping them secure offer letters from the affected institutions and facilitating in Visa procurement, told Champion Scholar that this is one field where students needs in depth counseling.
Resource:
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-study-effectively
https://thefrisky.com/how-to-study-more-effectively/