How to learn a new content || Best study tips for students
Studying right way is much important. Whenever we are learning a very new content, it seems very hard and difficult to study. We can't understand and remember the new content. So, here I will provide best tips to study a new content.
In order to remember, we have to learn the content first. Generally there are two components of learning. 1) Understanding and 2) Remembering
So, Understanding plus Remembering equals good learning, which equals good exam performance.
Also read Habits of high performance students
First of all I want to point that what not to do. One of the biggest mistake which students do is they try to memorize quick. Sstudents focus more on remembering a content rather then understanding it, which is great mistake. The key thing is not to rely on memorization. Instead focus on understanding the content. Whenever an arbitary facts come which we can't understand then its time to remember. Like any formula of Mathematics, Fact of Science, etc.
1) Understanding
What is the actual meaning of understanding? We can easily search on Wikipedia or on google about meaning of understanding. When we are able to teach something to our friend, then we can say we understand that thing. Its kind of like, when we can teach some content to our fellows and be able to answer their questions about that content, then we truly understand that content. And that's the question, Can you teach your friend?
2) Active recall
Its kind of testing yourself. Active recall is not just for revising, its the best way of learning. whenever we are learning a new content, or reading a book or any note, instead of reading passively i recommend to learn by doing active recall. Like read one paragraph and recall it by thinking what you have learned recently. Most of the researchers, authors, philosophers and great professors suggest to study actively by testing yourself rather than studying passively. Its better to test yourself, and recall the content as you go along.
Let's say, that you've read a paragraph or a page, now you would stop, close the book, look somewhere else and ask yourself what you've read now; What were the key ideas? Can you tell it in your own words? Study like above way.
When you recall like this way and you can't remember some point, you would open the book and read it once again and repeat the process. When you go like this you were actively testing yourself.
Some students have behaviour of repeating some information many times until it stick in their mind. And they think that it is the only way to remember any information. But when you start to quizzing yourself,your mind becomes active because you start to think what you've learned recently, what were the key ideas, what was that about. Like if you are reading biology, its like this enzyme goes there and here and it comes down there and finally that happens. And you review your note to be sure that you were right or wrong. Active recall is the fundamental material of learning any new information or a new content.
3) Remembering
When we try to remember any content that we learned a week ago by using technique of active recall, we can't remember it. Now what is the remedy?
Now it comes to next point i.e. Remembering
There are two key absolute pillars of remembering anything. 1) Active recall (which is testing ourselves) and 2) Spaced repetition (which is to repeat the process of testing yourself for a certain period of time) I talked many things about active recall which can be done by different ways like writing some questions for yourself and trying to answer it, and if you can't answer it just look at the book and read it once and again try it. And you can also make flashcards. Mostly medical students use flashcards which makes them easy to remember important information. It takes some time to make it but worth it. You can also take a blank paper and write everything you know about that subject by making a spider diagram. It does not matter how we are doing active recall but point is that you need to be testing yourself.
As more we do active recall and retrieve knowledge from brain, the more strongly that connections get encoded in our brain.
Spaced repetition
It is the repeating of the process of active recall across intervals over a period of time. It is the spacing of testing yourself. Its like we read a content one day by using active recall, waited one week and again tested, again then waited for some days and tried to recall but we can't, then look at your notes and repeat the process. And here it may come a question that should we read nothing during these 7 days? No this is the time for studying other topic. This process continues regularly. By this technique we can interrupt the forgetting curve. The more we repeat this process over a period of time, lets say a month or two, you can look that your forgetting curve has become flat. And if you have repeated this process enough you will probably won't forget that information. And this was the key thing of spaced repetition.
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