Three tips to help you study smarter (not harder).
The Christmas holidays might be just around the corner (yay!), but for many of you this will mean that mock A-levels (or other exams) will follow pretty shortly after that (boo!).
And so, lots of you will have teachers and parents telling you that now is the time to work harder; now is the time to revise and make sure you know your stuff.
The conscientious amongst you will do exactly this, and will spend lots of time re-reading all your notes. The less conscientious won't, but will probably pretend to be working while actually doing something completely different.
But what if there were ways that you could use your study time more effectively and more efficiently?
For the conscientious, you'd be able to do more in the same amount of time. For the less conscientious, you'll be able to work faster, and have more time for other things.
That would be a proper win-win wouldn’t it? If you agree, read on…
Now, I’m no expert in this area, but I’ve had a look at the work of Psychologist Daniel Willingham. I came across him through a piece he wrote in the New York Times (There Are Better Ways to Study That Will Last You a Lifetime), and I’ve checked out some interesting stuff on his blog.
He points out that the most common technique for studying and revising is reading and re-reading your notes. Sound familiar? You sit down in your room, open your notes, and re-read what you did in class, so that hopefully it will help you remember it when you take your exam.
But the trouble is, according to Daniel, it’s a terrible strategy. Even highlighting the important bits in three different colours does little to help. So what’s better?
Practise recall
Well, according to Daniel top of the pile for effectiveness and ease comes practising recall, or self-testing. Essentially, stop re-reading all the time, and instead practise recalling the information you have just read. There are a whole bunch of ways you can do this.
Lots of textbooks will have quizzes at the end of each chapter, so use them!
Alternatively, just close your notes folder and write down everything you can remember about the section you have just studied.
And better still, repeat the exercise the next day, only skip the reading; just write down what you can remember. Then compare it with what you had in the notes. Find the bits you missed, and remind yourself to include them next time you do recall.
And, by the way, you are going to want to do the recall note-writing by hand, not on a laptop. Studies show that it is more effective for a number of reasons:
Firstly, it takes longer, so you have more time to process the information.
Secondly, because it is slower, you will tend to start to summarise, paraphrase and ‘map’ the content as you go, which is a great way for your brain to process the material.
(See Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away for more information on that!)
Another way to test your recall is simply to ask a friend, brother, sister or parent to test you. Give them your notes and get them to ask you questions about the content.
I know… you don’t want to open yourself up to look like a failure, but trust me, it’s way better to get a few things wrong now with your friends and family, than in the actual exam. Failure is a great teacher!
Just remember, less re-reading, more recall!
Interweave and interleave your study
Now, this is a weird one, because it goes right against our in-built instincts. You would think that it would be most effective to arrange our learning and revision in blocks. So, you should revise on a single subject in a block before that exam, and then move to the next subject in advance of the next exam.
But, research seems to show that it's better if we mix up our learning. Rather than learn in straightforward blocks, it is more effective to mix up our learning of different topics. This comes from a few bits of research undertaken by Monica S Birnbaum, Nate Cornell, Elizabeth Bjork and Robert Bjork. If you’d like to go to the source, you might like to start here.
The research suggests that when we interweave our learning, we start to notice the similarities and differences between the things we learn in different subjects, and this can give us a deeper, better understanding of the topics.
So…
If you have a two hour session for revision, consider whether you can take two or three topics and study them together.
In English Literature, could you take three texts that you have studied separately, and ask yourself questions that might apply to all three?
In History, could you take three different periods, and try to analyse them from a specific perspective (e.g. economic, political etc.).
In Chemistry, could you take three different experiments that you have done, and work out what they have in common?
Or, perhaps you could try something even more dramatic? Do 40 minutes study of English, 40 minutes of History, and 40 minutes of Chemistry.
Weirdly, you might just find you remember all three better than if you had looked at each in separate blocks.
Space out your studying
I know… literally everyone is telling you you should start your revision early. And you are sick of it. And that’s because they want you to do more work. They think if you leave it late that you’ll do less work, and so you’ll do less well.
But that’s not my pitch. I’m not going to tell you to do more work. I just want you to be able to be more effective with the work that you do. So imagine you decide you are going to do 20 hours of revision for your mock exams. You could either do ten hours per week for the previous two weeks. Or you could do five hours per week for the previous four weeks. Or even two-and-a-half hours for eight weeks!
But which would be more effective?
Well, research (this one also comes from Psychologist Nate Cornell) tells us that shorter spells, over a longer period of time, will win every time.
The theory is that we actually start to forget the stuff we learn in our first session. But then we recall it again in our next session. In Nate’s words, forgetting is the friend of learning! By forgetting and then re-learning, we actually remember more. We get better at retrieval, and become more confident with the material we are studying.
So, if you really don’t want to do more study, but just want to study smarter, space out your revision; don’t leave it all to the last minute.
You can read more about spacing and interweaving in Nate’s piece in Psychology Today.
Time to put it into practice
So, there you have it: three study tips that you can put in practice right away that could help you achieve more, with less.
Prioritise practising recall over reading
Interweave and interleave your learning by mixing up subjects
Space out your revision as much as possible
I can't promise miracles, but now is definitely a time to try out new ideas. Your mocks are a great opportunity to try out a new way of revising, so you can learn what works for you, and then refine and improve it for the real thing in spring!
And the great thing is, if you nail these ideas, and get better at learning and revising, it will help you regardless of what you end up learning about in the future.
You might not need to know about Shakespeare, quadratic equations or the EMF of an electrochemical cell ever again.
But understanding how to learn effectively will stay with you for life!
