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Works
Heres the problem with what Im about to tell you: these tactics may may be news to you,
but in psychology circles most of them have been around for decades. Why does this matter?
Because it means we could all have been getting smarter this whole time. Instead, we seem to
be stuck with the same old notions of how learning works.
Whats especially baffling is that these principles are actually quite easy to put into practice.
Heres one: instead of sticking to one location, simply alternate the room where you study in
order to remember new information better. Heres another: studying for one hour each night
works; studying all weekend doesnt. Still we havent caught on.
We have known these principles for some time, and its intriguing that [institutions] dont
pick them up, or that people dont learn them by trial and error, says Robert A. Bjork, a
psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. Instead, we walk around with all
sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken.
So the question is, what can we do to change this? What can we do save ourselves from
ignoring the facts and perpetuating an endless cycle of poor learning habits?
Lets start with the principles themselves.
attempts themselves change how we think about and store the information contained in the
questions. On some kinds of tests, particularly multiple-choice, we benefit from answering
incorrectly by, in effect, priming our brain for whats coming later.
On one hand, it alerts students to the scope of the subject and what they will likely be tested
on in a final exam. UCLA psychologist Elizabeth Bjork says, Taking a practice test and
getting wrong answers seems to improve subsequent study, because the test adjusts our
thinking in some way to the kind of material we need to know.
Also, pretesting helps with something called fluency illusion. This is the little voice in your
head that says that you know the answer to a question when, really, you might not.
Pretesting will often reveal these fallacies that were carrying around in our heads.
explicit about it you are, the better. Rather than assuming youve been absorbing everything
you read, make a list of everything you actually remember. Then go back and see what
concepts youve missed.
For best results, do this on all levels: for a specific chapter, a whole unit, and your entire
course. Refer to your syllabus if you have one so you can see the bigger picture.
When students expect to teach new material to others, they remember more of that material
correctly and organise their recall more effectively, says John Nestojko, PhD, a postdoctoral
researcher in psychology Washington University in St. Louis.
In a recent study published in Memory & Cognition, Nestojko found that simply telling
learners that they would later teach another student changes their mindset enough so that they
engage in more effective approaches to learning than did their peers who simply expected a
test.
In the experiment, which involved a series of reading-and-recall tests, one group of students
was told they would be tested on a selection of written material, and another group was led to
believe they would be preparing to teach the passage to another student. In reality, all
participants were tested, and no one actually engaged in teaching.
When teachers prepare to teach, they tend to seek out key points and organise information
into a coherent structure, Nestojko says. Our results suggest that students also turn to these
types of effective learning strategies when they expect to teach.