Are you ready to spend LESS time studing. More time on the things that mater. Are you ready to ace your exams? Apply these techniques now!
Are you tired of taking notes in the dark? Not knowing which note taking techniques for students are actually working. Or if you're wasting your time studying ineffectively
I've got you covered. I struggled with the same thing until my 2nd year of uni. When I discovered these life-changing techniques that I'm sharing with you.
Below are 2 amazing note taking techniques for students. That will improve and level up your note taking skills and get you on the path to studying and taking better notes.
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Studying and Note Taking Techniques for Students
1. Active Recall
Active recall is retrieving information from the brain. For you to remember what you have learnt.
You need to focus on recalling the information already stored. Rather than putting more information in. Testing yourself strengthens the info further in a brain and makes it stick.
How does the concept of active recall work in practice?
Here is an example
- You read something, this could be anything.
- Then you understand it and take in the meaning of the thing you read.
- The most effective thing you can do now to remember the information is to test yourself on it. This is active recall.
You do this by asking yourself questions about what you've learned. Even if you already know the answers.
It's known it takes about x7 times hearing the same concept before it sticks and you start to remember it.
Testing yourself on the concepts is a good way of identifying any gaps in your knowledge.
2. Spaced Repetition
The idea is that spacing out your learning and using active recall is a better way to remember things.
Spaced repetition vs Cramming: Which is better?
Cramming stores the information in your short-term memory. If you have an exam the next day, cramming can work. Yet, the next day after that, you'll find that you have forgotten almost all the information.
This is what makes cramming an ineffective study technique. Especially, if you want to remember the information long-term.
Active recall and spaced repetition are more effective study techniques. Using them together transfers the information into your long-term memory.
Spaced repetition vs the Forgetting Curve
I'm sure you've had that annoying feeling where you've spent ages studying something. Then a week pass and you have completely forgotten everything you've learned about it.
It it becomes even more annoying when you have to repeat the circle of revising the same thing again.
This is how the forgetting curve works. Over time we begin to forget things, fairly quickly. Especially if we are not using that information and it has not yet been stored in our long term memory.
Spaced repetition is a disrupter to combat the forgetting curve.
When the forgetting curve is interrupted, it takes us longer to forget things.
As a student, you should be taking full advantage of this studying technique. Here is how you do it:
- On the first day, you study a topic. You will keep 100% of it because it's fresh in your memory.
- On the second day you review that same topic. Now instead of forgetting everything, you may only forget about 20%.
- Then review your notes again 3 days later, it should take you back up to 100%.
The more times you do this process, the more spaced out the repetition becomes. The information is more likely to be encoded into our long-term memory. Once that happens you will never forget it.
It's better than riding a bike- like they say, you never forget that.
Basically the harder your brain has to work to retrieve the info, the more that info is encoded in your memory.
Final thoughts on Secret note taking and studying techniques for students...
There you have it, the two best kept study secrets when it comes to effective note taking.
It's scientifically proven to work and it's definately worked for me when I was at university.
This post was all about secret note-taking techniques for students.
