Many times, the real problem that studying does not pay off has its origin in poor study planning. There are many study techniques and strategies to study, but there are a series of guidelines that should always be taken into account.
It is essential, for example, to dedicate the necessary time to studying and to have a suitable environment. However, a series of factors must also be considered that will have a decisive influence on your ability to study, something that you will later see reflected in the results of your exams and projects. Whether you want to learn to study in primary school or if you want to learn to study at university, the study techniques that we propose below will serve as tools to achieve the best results. Discover, in howto, how to learn to study with the best tips and tricks.
Study strategies: the best study techniques
Comprehensive reading
The first thing you should keep in mind is that learning to study does not mean memorizing all the data, but rather selecting some of the most important data and understanding them within their context. In a few words: you must understand what you are reading to assimilate it better and that you can easily memorize it.
To develop comprehensive reading you should follow the advice and study strategies that we propose below:
- Read a lot and pay attention to what you are reading. If you like to focus your attention, the article How to concentrate to study can be very useful to you.
- Extract the main ideas of a text (underline them, write them down on paper, etc.)
- Don’t do a summary. Insist on writing short sentences that refer you to the most fundamental ideas of the text.
- During the first reading of the text, write down the most important phrases. Then, do successive readings with the list to the side to help you better understand the essence of what you have written.
Use mnemonic rules
Mnemonics are tricks or tools that allow you to memorize things in a very simple way. This study technique can help you memorize long lists of concepts with the characteristics of each of them.
Let’s see an example: you must remember the provinces of Andalusia (Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and Seville). On the one hand, and as you will see, they are names that you know and with which you are surely familiar… however, being eight names, it is possible that trying to remember them all you end up leaving some along the way. In this case, a possible mnemonic rule would be to create an anagram with the first syllables of each of the names: “Coralca Gramaja Huse”. If you break this nonsense phrase down into syllables, you’ll see the beginning of all the words you need to remember to appear.
How to learn to study in elementary school
In addition to learning to study with the study techniques that we have proposed in the previous section, if you want to know how to study in primary school, you must be very clear about one fundamental thing: knowing how to distribute the work well is the key to passing. Do you know what this means?
Plain and simple, it means that it is better to study a little bit daily than to study a lot the day before the exam. Although it is a very common bad habit among boys and girls around the world, the best way to study is to do it little by little but on a daily basis. If you try to memorize and understand a lot of information in a very limited period of time, chances are you won’t be able to remember everything. On the contrary, if you spend 25-30 minutes a day studying, your retention capacity will be greater and better, so the results will be as desired.
The most important thing, for this study technique, is to establish a daily routine just like you do to go to the gym: what if you only went to the gym once a week and exercised beyond your capabilities? Most likely, other than soreness the next day, you wouldn’t notice any major physical changes. On the contrary, if you go every day but for a short time, the physical changes will begin to be noticed in a matter of weeks and you will achieve the expected results. The same thing happens with the study, the correct way is to do it routinely.
How to learn to study at university
Once again, if you are at university and want to discover new study strategies and techniques, you can make use of the tricks that we have given you in the previous sections. However, university students tend to have a higher level of pressure and, therefore, the task of learning to study can be more complicated. If you want to discover how to learn to study at the university, follow the advice that we present below:
- Distribute the work well: as we said in the previous section, you must learn to work a little each day. At university, the volume of work you will find yourself with will be much greater than you have ever known, so do not leave everything for the last day.
- Create a plan: In addition to the agenda that you use in your day to day, creating a study plan can be very beneficial for running an organization. In this plan, you can write down the hours you dedicate to each subject and you can also discover in which subjects you falter the most.
- Take your own exams: you can do this strategy alone or with your friends. If you have an exam and have started reading everything that goes into it, take a mock exam with some questions that you think might be important. Try to answer them without looking at the notes or the book. To apply this study technique, you can also meet up with your friends and give each other exams. Not only will this be great for comparing ideas and answers, but it will encourage you to do better
- Rest: It may sound paradoxical, but to pass an exam you must rest. Once you have spent many hours reading and studying in a row, you will have to take a break to assimilate the concepts calmly and recover your energy. In this article on How to study for an exam, we explain, in more detail, the steps you should follow.
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