22 Tips on How to study effectively

When it comes to understanding how to study well, there is no one-size-fits-all method. Tutoring strategies should be adjusted to the needs of each individual student. It's crucial to figure out what works for you and what doesn't, since everyone has various skills. What sort of learner are you and what study methods are most effective for you?

Some students find it easy to study and remain motivated, while others may have to put in a little more effort to achieve their goals.

How do you study effectively?

You never know what method works best for you unless you try it! It's not something you can put off until the last minute. If you want to learn more about what works and what doesn't, you must always improve your study abilities.

Learning how to study more effectively can help you avoid stress and anxiety the next time you have a major exam. Having time to thoroughly examine and practise your content increases your chances of doing well on a test and decreasing your anxiety levels. In addition to making it simpler to learn, mastering efficient study habits can help you get higher marks in high school and post-secondary education.

 1. Get your study life in order

At all times, have a homework planner in your pocket. As soon as homework, projects, exams, and assignments are given, they should be entered into the system. 

2. Observe and participate in class

If you're paying attention to what the instructor is saying, you won't be distracted. The best way to learn how to listen effectively is to pay attention to what is being said and write down what you are hearing. Make sure you're paying attention and understanding what's being taught in class by using this method.

3. Avoiding distractions is essential.

From mobile phones to social media to pals, distractions abound. Recognize and avoid the sources of your own classroom distractions. Do not sit next to anyone you know will keep you from concentrating. It's also a good idea to turn off your mobile phone during class to ensure that you're paying attention.

4. Ensure that your notes are comprehensive.

You can better understand what you're studying in class if you take notes that are both concise and thorough. In the future, these notes will be used as study aids for upcoming exams. If you've missed a lesson, talk to friends or your instructor to make sure your notes are up to date.

5. If you're unclear about your understanding of a lesson, ask for clarification.

Let your teacher know if anything isn't clear by raising your hand and asking questions. If you don't want to inquire in front of the class, make a note in your planner to speak with the instructor after class to discuss your concerns.

6. Preparation is the key to success in school.

Determine what must be done before creating a study timetable by looking at your planner. Consider the content of the exam and the sorts of questions that will be asked so that you can determine where your study efforts should be directed. Each study session should have a particular aim, such as how many subjects you want to cover.

7. Every night after class, go through your notes.

After school, go through the notes you took in class and build on them. It's a good idea to go over your notes from time to time to make sure you haven't forgotten anything.

8. Consult with educators

Before the exam, speak with your instructor to get any clarifications or additional assistance you may need. Teachers love it when students approach them for assistance!

9. Establish a study space

A calm, well-lit, and low-traffic place is ideal for studying. Make sure you have a clean desk or table to work on when you're studying or writing. Because everyone's requirements are unique, it's critical that you choose a location that meets yours.

10. Concentrate on a single subject for brief periods of time.

Take a 10-15-minute break every 30 minutes of study to refuel. To get the most out of your study time, stick to short sessions. Learn how to take a study break that really works.

11. Make your notes easier to read

Condensing class notes will make studying easier. Make sure to put an emphasis on important words by underlining or highlighting them. Organize and simplify information with the use of visual aids such as charts, narrative webs, mind maps, or outlines.

12. Join a study group

You'll learn more and have more fun when you're in a group setting with your peers. This is a great way to enhance each other's self-esteem and knowledge by putting your skills to the test with others.

13. Give yourself time to study.

When he was a student, Nate Kornell "certainly did cram" before significant examinations. The Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., is where he works as an academic psychologist. While studying the day before a huge exam, he still believes it is a good idea. However, studies suggest that cramming all of your studying into one day is a terrible idea. Avoid cramming in too many lessons at once.

Preparing for a big exam by cramming might wear you out. However, if you spread out your study sessions across many days, you'll be able to retain more information.

In a study conducted in 2009, college students used flash cards to learn vocabulary items. Some students studied the words over the course of four days, breaking them up into smaller chunks of time. Others compressed, or massed, sessions of the words into a single day, one at a time. There was no significant difference in the total amount of time spent by the two teams. The first group, however, performed better on a standardised exam.

Allow yourself some downtime in between study sessions, and you may find that you forget part of the information. But you'll be able to re-learn everything and learn even more in your next study session, as well. As a bonus, he points out, you'll remember it better the following time.

14. There is no substitute for practise!

Instrumentalists hone their craft. Athletes work on their athleticism. The same is true for education.

As Katherine Rawson points out, "practise makes perfect," and she means it literally. Currently, she is a student at Kent State University studying psychology. In a 2013 research, some  students were made to do several practice tests for many weeks before taking the actual exam. On average, these students did better than their peers who had studied the manner they typically did.

Students in a previous research read information and then performed recall tests after they had finished reading. Some people just took one exam. Others did a series of exams with a few minutes of rest in between each one. A week later, the second group had a better memory of what they had learned.

15. Avoid just rereading books and notes.

By reading her textbooks, workbooks, and notes, Cynthia Nebel learned as a teen. This psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, remembers it as being "over and over and over again". According to her, this is now "one of the most frequent terrible study techniques that kids have."

Some college students read a material a second time in a 2009 research, according to the findings of the author. Others only read a piece of writing once. Following the reading, each group was given a short exam to see how much they had learned. Aimee Callender and Mark McDaniel observed that the test results of these groups were almost indistinguishable. Wheaton College in Illinois is where she is now enrolled. The Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he works,

According to McDaniel, who also co-wrote the 2014 book Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, students commonly revisit trivial content when they do so. According to him, rereading is like gazing at the solution to a problem instead of trying to solve it for yourself. It seems to be logical. However, unless you put it to the test, you won't know whether you've grasped the concept.

In Make it Stick, Henry Roediger is one of McDaniel's co-authors. He, too, is a student at the University of Washington. For example, in one 2010 study, Roediger and two other researchers compared students' test scores after they reviewed material to those of two other groups. One group created a list of questions based on the readings. The second group was asked questions by someone else, and they responded to them. Answering all of the questions correctly was a major plus. Those who just re-read the content fared the poorest.

16. Put yourself to the test.

One of Nebel's favourite methods of studying was supported by a 2010 research. Her mother would question her on the topics before to major examinations. That was "retrieval practise," she tells herself today. "It's one of the most effective methods of learning." Nebel became more self-aware as she grew older. Definitions in her notebook may be hidden, for example. After then, she attempted to remember the meaning of each word.

If you can explain something to someone else, it will stick in your mind and help you recall it better. When it comes to understanding anything, the more you can talk about it, the better.

In a research published in Learning & Instruction in August 2020, Rawson and colleagues found that retrieval practise may benefit practically everyone. In this study, college students with an attention deficit disorder (ADHD) were enrolled. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Students with and without ADHD benefited equally from retrieval.

Every time you learn something new, Sana recommends making a deck of flash cards. Make a side for each question and a side for each response. They can even question each other over the phone.

"Ask yourself questions in the same manner the instructor does," Nebel advises.

However, she advises that you thoroughly question yourself and your loved ones. Because this is why. For each class time, she was a member of a team that asked pupils to compose one exam question. The next step was for students to respond to a question posed by another student. Early results reveal that kids performed worse on exams after receiving daily quiz questions from the instructor than they did before. He and his colleagues are still working through the data. There may have been a problem with the students' questions.

It is common, she observes, for teachers to go further into lessons. They're not simply looking for definitions. Teachers often ask their pupils to compare and contrast two or more concepts. You'll need to exercise some discernment to do that.

17. As long as you learn from your mistakes, they're OK.

The importance of testing your memory can't be overstated. However, it doesn't really matter how long you spend on each attempt. Kornell and colleagues conducted a research in 2016 that found this. However, Kornell stresses the need of taking the following step: checking to verify whether you were correct. Then, concentrate on the mistakes you've made.

Mistakes are an important part of the scientific method.

"You're wasting your time if you don't find out what the solution is," he adds. Checking your answers might save you time in the classroom. You may then concentrate your efforts on the areas in which you most urgently want assistance.

According to Stuart Firestein, errors might really be beneficial. He is a biologist at Columbia University in New York City and the author of a book on the subject. It's titled Failure: The Reason Science Is So Successful. " Mistakes, according to him, are a fundamental part of the learning process.

18. It's time to mix things up.

Changing up your self-assessment might be beneficial in many circumstances. Focus on many things at once. Work on various ideas until you get them down. Interleaving is a term used by psychologists.

Make an effort to come up with solutions and recollect details on your own. Then double-check your findings. Psychologists claim that retrieval exercise improves memory and learning.

Your exams, on the other hand, are likely to feature questions that aren't clear. In the end, interleaving may improve your ability to learn. Sana argues that "your attention dips because you know what's coming up next" if you practise the same subject again and over. Now that you've changed up your routine, you're able to better separate the ideas. It's also possible to examine how ideas are related in some other manner.

Let's say you're taking a math class and studying about the volume of various forms. Wedged volumes may be used for a wide range of situations. Afterwards, you might answer further sets of questions, each of which dealt with a different geometrical form. Alternatively, you may calculate the volume of a cone and then a wedge. A half-cone or spheroid volume may be next on your list. After that, you may experiment with other combinations. Addition and division drills might be thrown in for good measure.

Students from several universities participated in a study led by Rawson and others to see which methods worked best. Researchers published their findings in Memory & Cognition last year and found that those who practised in single batches performed worse than those who practised in several batches.

Students with both strong and poor working memories benefit from interleaving, according to research done a year earlier by Sana and colleagues. When you're following a recipe, for example, your working memory keeps track of where you are in the process.

19. Picture heavy content

In class, Nebel advises paying close attention to any diagrams or graphs that may be shown. "Those images will help you remember this stuff better." And if there aren't any images, making your own may be really beneficial."

As McDaniel points out, "I believe that these visual representations help you construct more full mental models." During their time at Washington University, Dung Bui and he presented a presentation on automotive brakes and pumps to a class full of students. The schematics were given to one group, and they were instructed to add annotations to the diagrams as required. Another group received a note-taking outline. One more class just took notes. If students were already adept at developing mental models of what they were reading, the outlines were helpful. However, they discovered that in these assessments, visual aids were beneficial to all pupils.

Even wacky images might be useful. Nikol Rummel works as a psychologist at the Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, where she is also an adjunct professor. In a 2003 research, she and her colleagues offered college students cartoons depicting five scientists who investigated intelligence, along with information about their work. There was an illustration of a racing car driver with the text about Alfred Binet. To keep his brain safe, the driver donned a bonnet. A study found that students who were shown illustrations instead of just text performed better on tests.

20. Identify real-life examples of the topic.

An abstract topic might be difficult to comprehend. Nebel asserts that having a tangible example makes it much simpler to build a mental picture.

Acids, for example, are responsible for the sour flavour of many common meals. That idea could be difficult to recall on its own. As an example, consider a lemon or vinegar and you'll see that acids and sour go hand in hand. Also, the examples may assist you in determining whether the flavour of other meals is related to acids.

If you wish to apply what you've learned to new circumstances, you'll need at least two instances. Research on this was evaluated in July 2019 by Nebel and others. According to their Journal of Food Science Education article, students may enhance their study abilities by following these suggestions.

21. Explore further

By itself, a list of numbers and information is not very memorable. Ask yourself why things are the way they are. What led to their emergence? What's the big deal? This is referred to as "elaboration" by psychologists. Nebel describes it as "asking a lot of how and why questions" regarding the subject they've covered in class. Make sure you don't take anything at face value.

The process of elaboration aids in the integration of new knowledge with what you already know. In addition, she claims that it expands your mental network by connecting previously unconnected ideas. It's simpler to learn and remember things when you're part of a wider network like that.

Asking questions about why something is the way it is and how it relates to other things can help you retain information. Consider, for example, the case of an automobile driven by a ravenous individual. What are the chances of his doing anything like that?

According to McDaniel, let's imagine you're asked to recall a series of details about several males. "The hungry guy got into the automobile," for example. It was the man's strength that helped the lady out. "The courageous guy bolted for home." And so on. In one of his experiments from the 1980s, college students had a hard time memorising the fundamental facts. Those who were given an explanation for each man's actions performed better. When they had to answer questions about why each guy did something, the pupils had a far better memory.

In McDaniel's words, "Good understanding creates extremely good recall." For many students, this is a major consideration. Ask further questions if you're not sure what you're looking at. Check to see whether you have the ability to explain the content. You may also try to explain it to someone else, he suggests. By phone, several of his college students explain what they're learning to their parents.

22. Treat yourself well.

Make an effort to follow a regular schedule. And don't forget to get plenty of sleep, not just the night before the exam, but for weeks or months at a time. For learning, Nebel stresses the importance of these factors. She adds that exercise is also beneficial.

She advises not to worry if this all seems like a lot at first. Try adding one new study skill a week or two to your routine if you find it overwhelming. For the first several months, try to spread out your study sessions and work on retrieval. You may learn new abilities as you practise. Ask for assistance if you need it.

Conclusion

Being able to study effectively is a great skill to have. It takes a lot of effort and patience to learn excellent study habits. Achieve your goal of ‘aceing’ your next exam by following the above guidelines. You'll soon learn whatever method of studying works best for you.