Studying for tests..

[dennis08]

I don’t know what it is but I have so much trouble just remembering what I have read. I try to study for tests like physiology by reading and re-reading the chapters but its no use.

All I want right now is to do good in school because its my last two years of high school and I’m not going to stack boxes at Dan deer dorfs deer stands inc. What the hell is the problem here.. I ask myself.

I have tried everything from getting good rest to using sticky notes to just intense concentration. Nothings working. What else is there come home and read for 9 hours? Any suggestions please I need some help.

[Namaste]

Imagine that you have to give a presentation on a chapter you've read. Plan out what the most important issues are in the material you've read, and what is the message you would like your audience to take away with them. It will help you organise your thoughts if you are reading with the intention of passing the knowledge on to other people.

You can even go beyond imagining and actually present to someone on the topic - why not a fellow student studying for the same test?

Also, different people learn best through different media. You say that you have tried learning through reading, but maybe you will learning through listening more effective? If so, record yourself reading the information out loud, and then listen to it several times.

Being interested in the material you are studying certainly helps with putting it into memory.

[dennis08]

Namaste thanks for the help but I don't learn through listening very good either or else I wouldn't have to study because my teacher talks about the chapters we are supposed to study in detail everyday and I don’t learn much from him..

[Mark Lapierre]

Try this: Scott H Young » How to Ace Your Finals Without Studying

[rbhambha]

I think to some extent it's an intellectual thing. But at the same time, you have to figure out what works best for you. Everyone's got their talent.

What always works for me is imagining the material is the most interesting thing I've read. It takes some practice, but once you master it, you'll learn everything a LOT easier. Try and read the little side notes and get yourself interested.

[Sourcerer]

Dennis, I think what you need is a break. If you find yourself looking at the pages of a book, with your eyes tumbling from one end of the page to another, words passing through you mind and then out again, and there is no comprehension or memory of the words and concepts that have been in your focus a few seconds ago, then you are really wasting your time.

I don't think that what you need is a rest, though. What you need is something a bit more radical. Even if you don't feel like it, try going out and run. Run as long as you can. Or at the very least, do something physical. One common reason why you wouldn't be able to focus is lack of exercise. You may not find your focus improving immediately, but rather gradually. Not today, but tomorrow. If not tomorrow, then the day after, or a week after. Of course, you will have to start exercising daily for a better effect.

However, your lack of ability to focus may also be temporary. I've noticed this with myself some time ago, that my ability to focus varies over time. Sometimes I can focus on anything, whether I find it interesting or not (I can focus on interesting things more easily, of course), and sometimes I can't focus even on what I find interesting. With practice, however, you can overcome this.

The trick with focus is that when you can't keep it, you need to keep reminding yourself about establishing it. Using a reminder, though, is a bad idea because it can distract focus once you have it. So, when you notice you're losing focus, then make that effort to focus and try to keep it. Focusing requires conscious effort both in establishing it, as well as in keeping it, so you're in for tough times practicing this. At first you'll be focusing on the fact that you're trying to focus instead of on the thing you're trying to focus - which isn't a bad thing, because it is in itself an exercise in focus. After you've practiced enough, you will be able to focus on something else, i.e. on whatever it is you want to do, such as reading a book. But whatever you're trying to focus on and no matter how practiced you are in it, it will always need the same amount of conscious effort.

It's like what I've noticed with weight-lifting. When I started, I could barely lift 20kg with my arms. I gradually increased that, but the effort I had to put in lifting those 20kg was always the same. No matter how much stronger I became, 20kg never became any easier to lift than it did the first time. The only difference was that I could lift more.

So it is with focus - it always remains equally difficult to establish and keep focus - but with consistent practice, your focus will become wider and you will be able to consciously manipulate more ideas (concerning, of course, the same topic).

[ChaosKiwi]

Hi Dennis08. If your memorising specifically for exams/tests etc, then reading and re-reading your study material probably isn't the best idea. I say this because if you are trying to remember things for a test cramming every peice of info on the test subject is just going to jumble everything up.

A good idea, if possible is to try and get a hold of some past test papers (for the same topic), and read through each question and answer it using your notes. You'll probably notice doing this, that the test questions from year to year are quite similar and with any luck, will be similar to your upcoming test. Review these questions and the answers you generated a couple of times before you take the test. Because tests are relatively short, examiners really don't have time to thoroughly test your knowlege of an entire subject, so they usually test for certain fundamentals they consider important. By going over past test papers you can see what these fundamentals are and therefore talor your revision/studying on these.

I used this study technique recently for a test worth 15% of the course mark at my uni and got 97%! It took me about an hour and a half to answer the questions and I looked over those questions 2 times for 10mins a time.

Obviously this is not fool proof. If a new teacher is setting the test, or there has been a major reshuffling of the way the subject is taught then don't use this technique. I should also mention that I have taken many exams (possibly around 100) and my exam technique is very good. Perhaps you might want do some research on exam technique as it can greatly increase a persons mark regardless of the subject.

Also don't try and use this technique for the first time on a major exam, as it might not work for you the same way it works for me.

Best of luck.

[Razo]

The method I use for studying, is each week, I type up summaries (with subheadings for easy navigation) of everything i've learnt in that subject, definitions, explanations, everything, as short as I can make it so that I can understand it, and in my own words. I print it, and then read over the notes, i may make notes to refer to diagrams, I use my highlighter to emphasize important notes, but i think the most important thing is that they're my own notes, not stuff from the text books.

Alongside this, whether it be at the start/end of the week, or near exams, I write out a checklist of all the things I need to learn, that is the stuff i'l be putting into my notes.

so there, here's the three main things (not including the highlighter)

1. Notes (typed by yours truly)
2. Revision Checklist
3. Short Summary (either for each topic or for the whole subject)

other things that may help you are sticky notes, just in case, in grade 12 I had a folder with clear slips, for each subject. In each slip would be one week worth of notes (including the stuff I wrote in class, i had those cool A4 notebooks with tearable pages) and then at the end I had a summary/Revision page of all the stuff I needed to know. Sometimes I also had a references page where I'd keep a list of other sources i may want to read for info on stuff, but i usually didn't have much (if any) use for them.

ALSO, to keep you motivated, tell other people you want to do well! they'll support you, and you'll also have their expectations to push you to do well. friends are also a great way of studying, I remember I'd often hand my notes to friends before exams and get them to quiz me with material, this is a great method of learning because you'd have to explain things in a way you couldn't possibly do it on your own without fooling yourself.

GOOD LUCK!

[HumbleDee]

You should be able to turn what you had read into a flow chart. Once you can do that, you have the map to the content of the chapter. Reproduce the chart several time from scratch, you should remember it no problem.

[dennis08]

Thanks for the advice everyone but its going to be harder than this. Yeah I know with that attitude but still it is.

[Stu]

Highschool sucks because they make you learn what they think is important, not what you want to learn. Maybe you really are interested in what youre learning but to me it sounds like youre more interested in graduating with a decent GPA.

I was in that situation in highschool and if it's the case for you as well, the best advice I can give is to just try and find something even remotely interesting in what youre doing. Take advantage of any projects or papers where you get to choose your topic and also, talk to your teachers, some of them do, believe it or not, care about your education and will try to work with you.

I hope some of that helps.

[Love]

Hi Dennis08!

It's great that you want to do well for your last two years.
I'd recommend active reading to accomplish that goal. That would mean, as you are reading, constantly asking yourself (and then jotting down notes in the margin) what's the author's point? Why is the author writing this? What in here might the teacher test me on? How does this connect to the last lesson? And don't just think it--write it down so that you have physical motion of writing in there too to help you remember. You might then repeat it, so you have visual, audio, and motion going for you.
And then I agree with the other postors--teaching someone else is a very effective way to learn because you are forced to organize the material for yourself. Sum up all your notes as if you have to teach someone else.

Go for it!

[Xander756]

Since I started college 3 years ago, I have not "studied" for even one single test that I have taken. I have a 3.7 GPA. I hope that I can be of help to you with a story and enlightenment on my method of learning.

Back in high school I was basically a slacker. I didn't do homework, quit classes like Spanish because they were too hard in favor of ones I thought were easier (like Web Design) and already didn't study. I still miraculously had an A average and was in the top 10% of my class but I attributed that simply to good luck and memory. Anyway, I started college and took these potentially bad habits with me. It's obvious you can't just grace through college as you might be able to in high school so I was forced to augment my method of "laziness" (as I referred to it) so that I could still be "lazy".

Now to my method. Going to class and attentively participating is the core of the system. I usually do not take notes as other students do, they seem to write everything the teacher says or writes up on the board. Why bother? I found that if I write something I am more focused on writing it down than I am learning it. And since I don't "study" for tests writing a bunch of notes is useless to me. I only write things that I believe that I will not be able to memorize right there on the spot. Participation in the class via discussion is also a must because it personalizes the lecture to you, at least in your mind. It isn't so hard to recall a conversation with your friend that you had earlier in the day or a few days ago, and actively discussing the material with your professor by asking questions on things you don't understand help you to retain information. Obviously, there will be some things that you might find it very hard to memorize especially if they are complex theories that you have never even heard until now. Writing these down is fine, but you should not be RELIANT upon looking them over later. Looking over what you wrote down should only refresh into your memory the wording or terms used, but the concept should be memorized. As a criminal justice major I might not know what the cognitive development theory of crime is, but I might know the concept of what it entails and thus on a test simply need to relate my thoughts back to the words of what the theory is.

Hopefully this post isn't getting too long. With reading, I have also found it to be a very difficult task to retain something I have read if I don't want to read it. I'm sure it has happened to everybody where they are reading something and it gets so boring that you find you are simply reading the words on the page but not understanding it. The cure to this is to WANT to read what you are reading. There will be some classes you are forced to take and so the reading might not appeal to you as much, so the classes will have to be your saving grace there. This shouldn't apply to classes in your major though (since you chose your major and must like it) and to the various electives you can take. For example, I had to take a Cultural Diversity class to fulfill an elective. I could have easily chose from a bunch of 100 level, easy classes, but instead I chose a 300 level history class about Vietnam. Why? Because 1) I like history and 2) I wanted to learn about Vietnam. The reading in this class was therefore very easy because I legitimately wanted to learn what I was reading. I only had to read things over once and understood it. You also shouldn't attempt to memorize the entire book, that's impossible. You should memorize the concepts of the book and the key points and arguments. If 55,820 vietnamese died in a battle and 14,130 Americans, I don't need to know those numbers. I do need to know that more vietnamese died, in fact more than triple as many. Plus I am sure it would be easy to remember the numbers 50,000 and 10,000.

In summary, you should recognize that school is meant to increase your knowledge, not just get grades for no reason. By increasing your knowledge, the good grades will come, so getting good grades should not be your focus. Hope I helped.