![]() ![]() Those who just reread the material did worst. Those who answered the questions did best. The other group answered questions from someone else. One group wrote questions about the material. In one 2010 study, Roediger and two other colleagues compared test results of students who reread material to two other groups. One of McDaniel’s coauthors of Make it Stick is Henry Roediger. But until you try it yourself, you don’t really know if you understand it. Rereading is like looking at the answer to a puzzle, rather than doing it yourself, he says. Too often, when students reread material, it’s superficial, says McDaniel, who also co-wrote the 2014 book, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. She is now at Wheaton College in Illinois. Test results differed little between these groups, Aimee Callender and Mark McDaniel found. Both groups took a test right after the reading. In one 2009 study, some college students read a text twice. Now, she adds, “we know that’s one of the most common bad study skills that students have.” “Over and over and over again,” recalls this psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. Don’t just reread books and notesĪs a teen, Cynthia Nebel studied by reading her textbooks, worksheets and notebooks. The second group recalled the material better a week later. Others took several tests with short breaks of several minutes in between. In a study done a few years earlier, college students read material and then took recall tests. On the final test, they scored more than a full letter grade better, on average, than did students who studied the way they normally had. In one 2013 study, students took practice tests over several weeks. ![]() She’s a psychologist at Kent State University in Ohio. “If you want to be able to remember information, the best thing you can do is practice,” says Katherine Rawson. And you’ll remember it better, next time, he notes. But then you’ll be able to relearn it and learn more in your next study session. Allow time between study sessions, and some of the material may drip out of your memory. Try to refill the bucket while it’s still full, and you can’t add much more water. Kornell compares our memory to water in a bucket that has a small leak. But testing showed that the first group learned the words better. Both groups spent the same amount of time overall. Others studied smaller batches of the words in crammed, or massed, sessions, each over a single day. Some students studied all the words in spaced-apart sessions throughout four days. In one 2009 experiment, college students studied vocabulary words with flash cards. But you’ll learn and remember material better if you space your study sessions over the course of several days. Instead, space out those study sessions.Ĭramming before a big test can leave you exhausted. But research shows it’s a bad idea to cram all your studying into that day. He still thinks it’s a good idea to study the day before a big test. He’s a psychologist at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. Nate Kornell “definitely did cram” before big tests when he was a student. Here are 10 tips to tweak your study habits. This includes things like using graphs or mixing up what you study. Other tactics work best for certain types of classes. For example, don’t just cram! And test yourself, instead of just rereading the material. To them, Sana says, it may be like telling students to learn to swim by “just swimming.”įor more than 100 years, psychologists have done research on which study habits work best. Yet many students never learned those skills. They will have to manage their time and study more on their own. Plus, students are likely to have to do more without a teacher or parent looking over their shoulders. These conditions can distract from your lessons. Still others have all online classes, at least for a while. Others schools have staggered classes, with students at school part-time. Some schools are holding in-person classes again, with rules for spacing and masks. Beyond that, students in many countries are facing different formats for learning. Many students worry about family or friends who may get sick, Sana notes. But it’s even more important now during the COVID-19 pandemic. Having good study skills is always helpful. There she studies how students can learn better. She’s now a psychologist at Athabasca University in Alberta, Canada. College got harder, so she worked to find better study skills. “No one ever taught me how to study,” Sana says. In effect, “it was just to practice my handwriting skills.” But often she was “just copying words or changing the words around.” That work didn’t help much either, she says now. “The colors were supposed to tell me different things.” Later, she recalls, “I had no idea what those highlighted texts were supposed to mean.” As a teen, Faria Sana often highlighted books with markers. ![]()
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