2 Study Strategies You MUST Avoid
Please stop studying like this!
Do you want to learn quickly and effectively using science?
Then this post is for you.
In the last decades, the science of learning has made a huge contribution to the understanding of effective study strategies.
However, most students still study with the most ineffective techniques.
Can you guess what they are?
Hint: I bet you use them or used them.
1. Rereading
Rereading is one of the holy grail study strategies for many students.
However, let me tell you that a review published in Psychol Sci Public Interest found no evidence that this study technique is effective. Worse still, for some students is even counterproductive! (Dunlosky et al., 2013).
Ouch … but why?
Because you’re not absorbing information and linking it to your long-term memory.
To show you this, let me ask you a question.
How many hours did you spend rereading only to forget everything a few hours later?
Also, how many times did you feel like you weren’t learning or that you weren’t getting the information into your head after rereading it over and over again?
See?
This is the reason why rereading is so ineffective.
You are getting fooled by the illusion of learning by thinking you learned something when you didn’t.
More about this illusion in the next article :)
2. Highlighting
Ah, highlighting …
You open your textbook, grab your highlighter, and doodle on the pages.
“If I highlight this and this and this, I will remember it later”, you think.
Wrong.
Double ouch … But why?
Same as rereading, you are not linking the information to your long-term memory. This study found that highlighting is an ineffective study technique many students use (Dunlosky et al., 2013).
How many hours do you highlight to only forget about it once finished?
See the problem?
You’re not absorbing information. You are retaining it in your short-term memory.
The consequences of this are ineffective learning, anxiety, stress, frustration, and more. I’ve met many students struggling and stressing a lot using these techniques when studying for their exams.
So avoiding these techniques will also improve your mental health.
So What Are The Best Science-Based Study Strategies?
A tutorial review published in Cognitive Research pointed out 6 cognitive strategies with robust scientific support:
Spaced practice
Interleaving
Retrieval
Elaboration
Concrete examples
Dual coding
More about this in a next post. If you haven’t yet, subscribe and stay tuned :)
Keep it up, super-learner!
Until the next time,
Axel