1. Read the chapter before coming to class. Just like making sure you attend every lecture, reading before you come to class saves you a lot of time in the long run. First, it allows you to make the most of your class time, because you will be able to understand and follow everything that the teacher says. Second, you will remember the material better because by comparing what the teacher says to what you’ve read reinforces the encoding process. Lastly, it gives you an additional boost of confidence because you will no longer have to worry about not finishing your readings. Read before class; it makes a huge difference. this technique is the most important; value it over the others.
2. Create flow charts. It helps you relate the topics together and this will enable you to do better on essay type questions. Most essay type questions involves comparing or elaborating on a topic. Flow charts facilitates this task, because it connects topics together.
Most of psychology essay and short answer exam questions are graded on the number of points you’ve mentioned that are on the on a teacher’s checklist. So the more points you mention, the more likely you are to get a perfect score. Flow charts ensure that you don’t forget any point that are worth mentioning. Flow charts are very helpful to prepare for written type questions on exams.
For a guide on how to make flow charts, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flowchart
3. For prereading, avoid reading everything down to the innermost details. This can be very inefficient in the sense that chances are you won’t remember the details- that your effort would just be wasted. For prereading, I suggest focusing more time on the bigger topics.
Question: For prereading, should I take handwritten notes?
This was debated. Here are the pros and cons and you can decide how to go on about note-taking during reading:
Pros: 1) You’ll have organized notes to bring to class 2) Studies have shown that students who hand write their notes outperforms those who just highlights the text. In some sense, this means taking notes down by hand facilitate encoding and memory recall.
Cons:1) Takes up too much time 2) Hard work
4. Reread the textbook with the lecture notes in front of you 1 or 2 days after lecture. After the lecture, you should now have a better idea of what are testable materials. Spend more time focusing on the overlap of lecture material and textbook notes. The textbook is generally meant to complement the lecture notes unless the teacher specifically assigns your readings. During this time, it is actually very useful to hand write your notes and organize the information.
5. During notetaking, instead of lazily just rewriting what the textbook and lecture notes say, predict and make up possible test questions. This is important, because you are not only working on your memorization, you are also actively preparing for the exam.
6. Our brain has a limited supply of fuel. Study hard, but don’t study too long. Switch between tasks. Don’t study, read the same chapter for an extended period of time. Studies have shown that alternating between tasks better helps retention of material. Decide how long you want to study for, and study as hard as you can during that time.
-Regine
