College Degrees Guide | What To Do While Studying
It's true that there are many students who "get by" without ever doing any real studying but it's probably not true that there are students who truly have NO clue HOW to study....Students who disagree usually just have no clue how to motivate THEMSELVES to do it. Unfortunately, schools simply do not spend enough time teaching students HOW to study effectively...leaving much of it up to personal technique and even individual chance.
For the purpose of this discussion there are two general kinds of exams: Multiple-choice/fill-in exams which require you to recall names, dates, concepts, and other facts of trivia with the multiple choice variety, of course, being far easier since you can more readily identify right answers when they're already presented to you as one of several options. The other kind of exam is an ESSAY exam, requiring students to write several paragraphs in response to a question (or commenting on a theory, etc;) to evidence their knowledge of the concept and/or their ability to think freely & logically about it.
In most cases, students can "get by" just memorizing a few dozen notions, names, dates, etc; Often, this works even on essay exams.
But HOW do you retain the information? HOW do you make studying meaningful and...even...dare we say...a bit amusing or even desirable? Particularly if you're going to do it at least once a week for 15 minutes as we've reasoned, you'll need to discipline yourself to stick to using some unique..interesting...study tool...that you don't regularly use now.. Read on:
One of the greatest techniques for studying involves the creation of silly songs about the topic at-hand. Many have HEARD of this technique but few have used it more than once.
The trick is to motivate yourself to a) do it, b) to do it WELL, and c) to keep on doing it for EVERY exam. Whenever you're studying, you WISH you could be doing something else, right? You're easily distracted? Sometimes you probably even read entire pages and then realize you have no clue what you've just read.
CHANGE ALL OF THAT: Focus on creating rhymes...slogans...songs, etc; Doing so will a) more fully demand your attention, b) make it easier to memorize the material, c) make the chore of studying a BIT more enjoyable... If nothing else, this technique DEFINITELY works better than any that currently only lead to falling asleep with a partially-read book over your face!
Simply take some basic concepts from your textbook and transform them into basic songs, and raps--make them RHYME... Sing the song over and over in your head and even out loud... You'll probably begin to find that you know the words/lyrics to your creation in almost no time at all--and you'll be humming it back to yourself the next day at the exam like crib notes--but in your HEAD/MIND--so they're "legit!" Remember:
it doesn't matter how corny or ridiculous your "song" is-- nobody else needs to hear it-- just keep humming the rhyming tune in your head--and, of course, be sure to fill it to the brim w/ facts and dates about the topic at-hand! In fact,---as soon as you receive the exam at your desk, you might even want to jot the lyrics down quickly--so you can reference them as you answer questions!
Distance Learning Guide | Complicated Exams
