Study tips -- LiveWire Teen Forums

The basics of studying

The point of studying is to remember things as well as possible. You might want to learn things for personal interest, or to help you do better in exams or just to get a better grade in class. Whatever your reason for wanting to improve your learning, the same techniques apply.

These are some general techniques that will help you remember facts better. They probably won't work very well if you're trying to improve anything that involves creativity, but for rote learning, these can really speed things up:

Mnemonics. Do you remember learning to spell 'because'? We were always taught 'Big Elephants Can Add Up Sums Easily'. The phrase was a lot easier to remember than the whole word, so all we had to do was remember the phrase. Mnemonics work by making up a phrase where the first letter of each word is the first letter of something in the fact. For spelling, it's very simple - the first letter of the word is the next letter you need to use. Mnemonics can be useful for more things than just spelling, though - if you're trying to remember a string of facts or an order in which to do something, they can help you remember it better.

Making up stories can also be useful. Let's say you have to remember a list: oranges hairclips mascara lampshade comb. You could probably manage to recall that list pretty well, since it's so short, but what about a longer list under the pressure of an exam? Would you be able to remember that list tomorrow? I can't even remember it now. If you make up a story, though, it fixes it in your mind for much, much longer. The orange used hairclips and mascara to make the lampshade look like a comb. Isn't that much easier to remember? You're much more likely to remember that than just a series of random, unconnected objects.

Pavlovian triggers. Once upon a time, a man called Pavlov had a dog. He would ring a bell and then he'd feed the dog. Over time, the dog began to salivate at the sound of the bell. It had learned to associate the bell with food. You can turn this effect to your advantage by doing the same thing just before you start to concentrate. In my case, I normally have my hair tied back, so I tighten it and push it out of my eyes just before I knuckle down to work. That gesture lets my brain know that it's time to concentrate. You can do the same - it helps you get into 'the zone' in a fraction of a second.

Mind maps. I'm sure you know what they are already, but just in case you don't, I'll explain again. A mind map uses colour, text and symbols to help you remember connected facts. Here's an example:

The subject in the middle is what the whole mind map is about. The branches are different areas of that subject. For example, in the example above, the subject of the mind map is cats. The red branch is 'care', and more branches come off that. Branches can keep branching for as long as you want them to (well, actually, you're generally limited by the size of your paper). You can also link ideas from different branches in whatever way you like. In the example, I've drawn big blue circles around two connected ideas and drawn a big line in between them, but that might not fit into a bigger mind map.

Notice how the mind map also uses pictures - both in the 'pictures' branch (well, it would have pictures of cats if I had any) and in the 'care' branch, where I've illustrated 'fish' and 'water'. Diagrams are a great way to remember stuff.

Teach what you know to someone else. Grab a friend, parent or sibling and explain some of your work. If you've made a mind map, then you could take them through it, explaining how the ideas are linked together. The advantage of explaining things to someone else is you're forced to think about every little thing, rather than skipping over things you already know. It can also help you think about the knowledge from the point of view of someone else.

Get someone to test you. If you've got friends studying the same things, then get together for a study session and test each other. If you have to learn things by heart, get your family to test you (this works especially well for foreign vocabulary). Make test exam papers for yourself and take them a month later to see if you can still remember what you studied.

Don't push your concentration span! Your concentration span is roughly your age plus or minus five minutes. For example, I'm fourteen now, so I can concentrate well for around nine to nineteen minutes. If you're sixteen, then it's from about eleven to twenty-one. Remember to take breaks when you study: if you're pushing yourself too hard, then you're not going to take in anything at all. That goes for studying when you're tired/hungry/ill, too: it ain't gonna work, son!

Post edited at 4:59 am on Feb. 23, 2008 by Periwinkle

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One drop is lonely
Two drops okay
Three drops can make a spray
Four drops get carried away

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