To achieve excellent academic performance, it's necessary to learn how to study. The idea of creating a study routine might seem simple; after all, you just need a good book and a few hours of reading to learn the material, right? However, several studies indicate that there are ways and methods of studying that optimize your learning.
In many cases, people spend several hours studying a subject, but when it comes time for the test, the result is poor. This is an initial indication that simply dedicating many hours is not enough to guarantee a real understanding of the material. If you want to know how to study efficiently, keep reading and check out the best tips!
What can interfere with studying?
Any external factor that captures your attention has the potential to disrupt your study routine. These elements can range from street noise to music from a neighbor's house or notifications arriving on your cell phone.
To reduce these interruptions during study time, it's important to take action regarding factors you can control. Talking to family members to encourage silence during study time and keeping your cell phone away during class time are alternatives that improve your study productivity.
Regarding external factors, since we have no control over them, it's important to find ways to adapt. Waking up earlier, for example, is an excellent way to take advantage of the city's quiet to review the material that requires more attention.
What are some inefficient ways to study?
According to a scientific article published in the journal Science, the passive reading method, that is, reading the same text several times, does not produce significant gains in terms of learning.
The authors also point out that creating mind maps at the beginning of the learning process for any subject is not efficient. They suggest that if the basic memory blocks are not stored in memory, you cannot create strong connections in the brain, making the understanding of that subject insignificant.
Another self-deceptive factor relates to the activity of highlighting important parts of the content using a highlighter. For this method, there is evidence that a passive attitude does not significantly affect how much one understands of the material learned, representing a passive way of studying.
What is the forgetting curve?
This concept was developed by a German psychologist, Hermann Ebbighaus, in 1885, and according to him, the forgetting curve occurs because the more time passes, the lower the chances of remembering what was studied or read. For example, if you studied something today and didn't review it, the probability that you won't remember the content in a month is high.
This happens because the brain understands that it's not necessary to store information that isn't used constantly. Therefore, it's important to find ways to signal to your brain that what you've studied is relevant and should be stored. To help you with this, we've prepared some tips that can help you learn how to study at home. Check them out!
What are the best tips for learning how to study?
There are several methods that can help optimize your performance and understand how to study better. Therefore, it's important to learn and apply each of them to your routine in order to achieve even better performance.
Create mind maps
Using mind maps can be a good way to help your brain remember the subjects you've studied, and as we mentioned before, it's not recommended at the beginning of a new topic. This is because it consists of synthesizing the information absorbed into a few words through connections and concepts in related subjects.
With this study tool, you can gain efficiency in your studies and develop a broader knowledge of a given subject, making it easier to retrieve information from your memory. Furthermore, there are now tools and programs that can assist in creating visualizations.
Use the recall method.
Another way to show your brain that information is important and should be stored properly is through reviews. With reviews, you revisit previously studied content and ensure that all important information is clear.
This simple method has been chosen as the most effective way to learn a new subject, as mentioned in the article presented earlier. Based on tests conducted by neuroscientists, the students who best understood the subject matter were those who practiced spaced reading and recalled as much information as possible.
Therefore, you can use the recall method as your main study method and incorporate other formats in which you feel more comfortable. The most important thing is to have a critical sense when evaluating which method is most efficient and to use practice tests to verify if you are really learning or just believing that you are.
Practice the Feynman Technique
This learning method was developed by an important American physicist, Richard Feynman. In this approach, the student learns new content and seeks to translate that knowledge in a simplified way, as if explaining it to a 5-year-old child.
This methodology correlates well with the recall method, and perhaps that's why it's so efficient. The second step of the method is to assess which gaps in your knowledge you haven't yet filled, and cover those gaps with new research and exercises.
Through this format, you can understand a subject in depth and with a solid foundation. Obviously, the dedication required by the Feynman Technique is greater than others, so it's worth selecting the most important topics in your preparation and applying this format to only a few of them, in order to optimize your study time.
See how there are different ways to learn to study efficiently and maximize your performance? By adopting these strategies, you signal that the information being viewed is important, and the brain understands and stores the content appropriately, helping you achieve peak performance in your daily learning.
