Comments (0) Most study guides provide way too much information. As a student, you should spend most of your time studying, not reading how to study guides. Right?
The menubar items will be short and sweet but also very effective.
Memory for Students has been released in e-book format.
You can order the book from the www.HowToStudy.com home page.
The book is a full memory course aimed at seriously improving students memorization skills. It takes about 20 hours to cover the entire book.
Memory for student contains a minimum amount of theory, many illustrations, practical exercises, and real life examples.
1. If you’re having trouble answering a question, skip it, answer other questions, and come back to it later. This way, you won’t run out of time to answer the other questions because you were stuck on that first one.
2. You should bring an extra pen in case yours stop working in the middle of the exam. If you’re writing with a pencil, you should also bring an extra pencil or a pencil sharpener.
3. If you’re answering a multiple choice question, and you don’t know the answer, you can start by eliminating the ones you know aren’t right.
4. If you have time, revise your exam when you’re finished writing it. This way, you’ll be able to spot your careless mistakes if you made any.
There are blogs and websites dedicated to help you succeed academically.
For example, www.sparknotes.com is an amazing study guide if you want notes on literature, poetry, and many other subjects.
There are also many tutorials on Youtube designed to help you understand your schoolwork better. There are tutorials to help you understand math, chemistry, history, French, etc.
For example, here’s a video entitled “A way to remember the Entire Unit Circle for Trigonometry”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIVpemcoAlY&feature=related
However, you should remember that not everything you read on Internet is true. Therefore, be careful not to get fooled by false information.
Being stressed can make it harder for you to concentrate when you’re trying to study. It can also make you perform more badly on your exams.
Therefore, while you should definitely study before your exams, you should also relax.
Here are a few popular ways to relax:
1. Meditate.
2. Take a nap.
3. Drink caffeine-free tea.
4. Take a walk.
However, it should be noted that there are always exceptions, and while some people perform less well when they’re stressed, it’s not the case for everyone. Some people thrive under pressure.
1. Draw or transform your notes into a comic book.
2. Find the funniest situation in which the information in your notes could be applied.
For example, the book The Physics of Superheroes written by James Kakalio explains many principles of physics by using examples from superhero comic books.
3. Discuss/Debate the content of your notes with your friends.
4. Use your notes to create a trivia game, and play with your friends.
You can ask yourselves questions that you think might be on the exam, and whoever answers the most questions correctly wins. Though, that does not necessarily have to be the format of your game. You’re free to make up any rule you want. The important is that you have fun, and that you get to study at the same time.
Things you shouldn’t do:
Never ask for help.
If you aren’t able to understand your notes alone, you’re eventually going to need help. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from a teacher, or from a fellow classmate.
Skip classes.
If you skip classes, your notes won’t be complete, and it will be harder for you to study everything you need to study.
Cheat.
Plagiarism isn’t something that is taken lightly. If you plagiarize, you could fail your exam, fail your class, and even get expelled from your college.
Have too many distractions.
You won’t be studying very hard if you’re too busy texting, surfing the web, watching television, and talking to your boyfriend/girlfriend at the same time.
I have compiled a short list of spelling mistakes that people make frequently. Underneath each misspelled word, you can see the proper way to spell it. Hopefully, this will help you when you’re writing research papers, or writing your exams.
Wrong: Alot
Correct: A lot
Wrong: Athiest
Correct: Atheist
Wrong: Definately
Correct: Definitely
Wrong: Dissapear
Correct: Disappear
Wrong: Dissapoint
Correct: Disappoint
Wrong: Its a girl.
Correct: It’s a girl.
Wrong: The dog ate it’s cereals.
Correct: The dog ate its cereals.
Wrong: Momento
Correct: Memento
Wrong: Prononciation
Correct: Pronunciation
Wrong: They didn’t do they’re homework.
Wrong: They didn’t do there homework.
Correct: They didn’t do their homework.
Wrong: He’s over their.
Wrong: He’s over they’re.
Correct: He’s over there.
Wrong: There nice.
Wrong: Their nice.
Correct: They’re nice.
Wrong: Writting
Correct: Writing
Wrong: Your pretty.
Correct: You’re pretty.
Wrong: I like you’re shoes.
Correct: I like your shoes.
There is more to studying than just reading your notes. You must also understand them, and you must remember them.
One way to study is by recopying your notes using different words. This is called paraphrasing. It’s a good way to make sure that you understand your notes. Being able to correctly translate the information in a terminology that you are familiar with means that you understand the meaning of that information.
Another way to study is to visualize the information in your head. For example, if you read “anions have a negative charge”, you can imagine a guy called Anion having a negative attitude. It can also help to draw funny sketches of what you’re visualising because it makes you think about the information in a more creative way. It also helps you associate the content of your notes with a visual image more clearly.
Organize your time.
If it helps, you can make yourself a studying schedule. That way, you will always know what to study, and when to study it. When you’re planning to study, you should remember to plan study breaks. Otherwise, you might get too tired to actually stick to your studying schedule.
You should probably start by studying the subjects you don’t understand well because those are the subjects that will take you the longest period of time to study.
When you’re writing a research paper, make sure that what you write is coherent. However, before you begin to write, you should do some research. Make sure your sources are valid. Just in case you were wondering, many professors do not consider Wikipedia to be a valid source of information.
After you’re finished researching, you should start writing your paper. You should remember that spelling counts. Therefore, make sure to check every word even if your computer is correcting them for you.
If you don’t have a computer, and you are writing on sheets of paper, you can avoid some very common mistakes simply by looking in the dictionary. For example, many people write “alot” instead of “a lot”. However, were they to look in the dictionary, they would know that “alot” isn’t actually a word.
It needs to be a place where you feel comfortable, and where you can avoid distractions as much as possible. It also needs to be easily accessible, so you can go study there whenever you need.
Here are some examples of places where you could study:
1. The library.
2. The park.
3. Your bedroom.
4. Your favourite coffee shop.
Don’t be too self-confident.
If you’re too confident, and you don’t expect to make mistakes, you might not check twice to make sure you haven’t missed anything. Being overconfident might also make it so you don’t study as much as you need to.
However, don’t lack confidence either.
Sometimes, when you look at your notes, the content might seem hard to understand, and you might think you aren’t smart enough to understand it. That might cause you to simply give up. You need to realize that you are smart enough to understand; you just need to work harder on your studies.
Things you shouldn’t do:
Procrastinate.
Always putting stuff off until the last minute might make it so you don’t finish on time. It could also cause you some last minute stress.
Not get enough sleep the night before studying or before an exam.
A lack of REM sleep can impair your cognitive abilities.
Only read your notes once.
Do not assume that you know and understand everything after having read your notes once. You should read your notes a few times in order to make sure you didn’t miss anything.
Eat junk food.
After your initial sugar high is over, junk food will make your body become very tired, and it will be harder for you to concentrate.
Skip some material because you don’t understand it.
If you don’t understand something, you should be studying it even more. Don’t simply skip it in hope that it won’t be on any exam.
Fall for learning scams.
Bringing a horseshoe with you the day of the exam won’t actually help, and neither will listening to a tape with subliminal messages.
You should set goals for yourself. You should make sure your goals are realistic, but you shouldn’t underestimate yourself.
Here are some examples of goals you could have:
1. Passing a certain class.
2. Studying at least an hour every night.
3. Getting a really good mark on an exam.
Once you attain your goal(s), remember to be proud of yourself, and to reward yourself with something nice.
1. Listen.
In order to write down the correct material, you must hear what you’re professor is saying, and you must understand it. Therefore, it is very important that you listen attentively.
2. Write.
When you’re taking notes, write in a way that you can easily understand. Use words that you are familiar with, and use a sentence structure similar to the one you use when you’re speaking. That will make it easier for you to read, memorize and understand your notes later on.
Also, do not worry about spelling at the moment. If you think you might have misspelled a word, you can look for it in the dictionary later. At the moment, what’s important is that you have enough time to write down all of the information.
Do not worry about cleanliness either. It doesn’t matter if your notes are pretty or not. It only matters that they’re complete, and that you can understand them.
3. Highlight the important stuff.
If your teacher hints that certain information is likely to be covered on your next exam, it probably will be. Therefore, you should have a way to remember that it’s important. You can use highlighters to highlight important lines.
However, it is preferable to use a pen or a pencil to underline things because it allows you to write little notes and annotations in the margin. It can also make it easier for you if, for some reason, you have to modify your notes later on.
It is a well-known fact that many people do not like studying. However, many people enjoy music. Therefore, if someone could combine studying and listening to music, he or she might find studying funner.
Here’s a list of ways to combine music and studies:
1. Listen to music that helps you concentrate while you are studying.
2. In order to memorize your notes, sing them along to the beat of your favourite songs.
3. Write a song about whatever you have to study. Your song about derivatives and integrals is probably not going to make you become a famous rock musician, but it might help you pass your calculus exams.
4. Do not be afraid to use music as a reward system. For example, you might say something like this:
“If I get at least 90% on my next exam, I will treat myself by going to a concert.”
This might sound obvious, but before you can start studying, you need enough motivation to stop procrastinating, and to start reading your textbooks. You won’t study if you don’t think you have a good reason to do it. Therefore, it is important that you figure out exactly why you need to study.
Your motivation might be that you need good grades in order to keep a scholarship or a bursary. You might need to get a passing grade in a certain class to graduate. Perhaps, you want to make your parents proud of you. It’s even possible that your motivation is to prove to yourself that you are, in fact, smart enough to succeed academically.
It doesn’t really matter what motivates you, but you must be motivated.
Distractions are not good.
Studying is boring in comparison to other things you can do around the appartment, so go to the library to study. At the library, studying, will be the most interesting to do.
The Internet is one of the worst distractions. It’s hard to concentrate when you get 100 MSN messages per hour. So disconnect.
Turn of the cell phone during important study periods.
Removing distractions can cut your study time in half so REMOVE THE DISTRACTIONS and you will have more free time for interesting things.
How much we remember depends a lot on how information is presented to us.
| See/Hear | ***5% |
| Reading | ******10% |
| Video/Audio Visual | ***********20% |
| Demonstrations | **************30% |
| Discussion Group | *************************50% |
| Practice by Doing | ***************************************75% |
| Teaching Others | **********************************************90% |
| Immediate application of learning | **********************************************90% |
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As you can see, one of the best ways to remember something is to teach it to someone else. Even pretending to teach to someone else is a good way to remember more.
Immediately applying what you learn is important. If you can’t apply immediately, visualize how you would apply the mateiral.
This video explains how to plan your study time for an exam.
A study plan consists of 3 things.
What should I study?
When should I study?
How should I study?
The following video explains the WHAT very well.
Procrastination is putting off something that must be done.
Lets face it, the biggest challence is to actually start studying. There is always a ton of others things you would rather be doing.
The best way not to procrastinate is to clearly VISUALIZE THE CONSEQUENCES.
What will happen if I don’t study?
Take a piece of paper and write down the REAL CONSEQUENCES if you don’t study.
Once you have done that, ask yourself the MAGICAL QUESTION:
What is the best use of my time now?
There are a few lessons to be learned from this hilarious video called “The Time Management Fairy”.
A big part of studying is memorizing stuff for exams.
MemoryForStudents is a tool developed to teach memory skills to college students. We have received the OK to publish one of their modules on How-to-Study-Guide.Com.
Click on the image below to gain access to a FREE, NO PASSWORD REQUIRED Memory for Students module. Its free and you don’t even have to provide your email address. Although we can only provide access to one lesson, trust us, this stuff will help you.
Study Guide Memory for Students Demo
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