How To Use Memory Techniques To Learn More In Less Time With Better Recall
Written on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 by Christian Stephens :: 1 comments to this post
I know there are lots of memory techniques, like mnenomics, acronyms etc. But I never agreed with using them, because to me, even if they work really well, it seemed pointless/ superficial and I found it not very satisfying to learn something just to do well in some exam… And then forget it all a week later.
The 4 steps to committing something to your long-term memory:
- Absorb information (eg, reading)
- Test yourself on that topic to see how much you can recall
- Re-learn what you forgot and check that you did it correctly.
- Repeat step 3 and 4.
Ideally, repeat steps 3 and 4 at intervals of 1 day, 1 week, 1 month and 6 months. If you can remember everything after 6 months, you can be sure it’s in your long term memory.
The problem is that a lot of students think that learning involves only step 1! In fact, step 1 by itself is quite useless, as after day we forget 80% (on average) of what we’ve read.
Every time you revise something it takes less and less time to learn!
That’s why it is far more efficient to revise something for 30 minutes 6 times at regular intervals than to leave it all to the last minute and revise for 3 hours.
Repetition is the key!
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More from Uncategorized(t) , Study Skills(t) Category | 1 comments to this post
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October 24th, 2006 at 7:44 am
Step 4 is repeat steps 3 & 4, do you mean step 4 is repeat steps 2 & 3? You should consult your retention/time graph to make you sure do don’t make the same mistake again, hehe.
P.S. you might want to get some cue cards from the newsagent and study them before your lectures, could come in handy when you repeat a repeated step.
=D
All the best to everyone in y12. Eek, it’s already oct 24, agh how did the exams sneak up on me like that?!