Learning
is a relative permanent change in behavior as result of constant practice. Most
students undergo the process of learning but does not experience any change in behavior
due to forgetfulness.
To
forget therefore is the state of not being able to remember what you have
learnt/studied. As a student, to prevent this from happening, I have outlined
some easy tips to aid you fight forgetfulness.
1. Have enough sleep to rest the brain
i It is very important to give the brain
the much needed relaxation by having good undisturbed night sleep before and
after embarking on a learning process. When you sleep, your brain converts facts from short-term memory
to long-term memory. Aim to get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep at night to achieve good relaxation of the brain. Denying
your brain this rest runs down your memory.
2. Pick a good place to study preferably a quiet environment
It is important to give the brain less work to do by consciously
eliminating distractions and noise. You need to find a quiet space free of distractions, such as a
library or an isolated area of your house. By having an area devoted to
studying, your brain will become used to calming down and absorbing material
once you get there.
3. Focus on a topic at a time
Can you remember the last time you were preparing for an exam? How many topics
did you have to revise? Students preparing for exams will flip through different
topics aiming to catch up but this influences forgetting.
What do you
need to do? Just take the topics one at a time. A writer once said, “The best
way to transfer ten raw eggs from a bag into a basket is by picking them one
after another”. It is more productive to map-out small time for each of the
topics you have to study taking them one after another than jumping back and
forth from one topic to another trying to grasp everything at once. This only
leads to mixing up of information.
4.
Discuss what you are learning
or teach someone else.
The best way to learn is to teach. Similar to reading your notes
out loud, talking about what you are learning can also help you retain the
information better. You can either study with a friend and quiz each other, or
you can try to teach the material to a parent or younger sibling. Using your
brain to figure out a way to teach the material to someone else causes you to
think about the material more in-depth.
5. Try to write something down or underline
some lines while reading.
Putting pen to paper and either taking notes on what you’ve read
or simply re-writing over and over a formula or concept you’re trying to master
can really help. It can also be helpful to write out an outline of the
materials you are trying to learn. Just the process of organizing the materials
in a visual manner can help your brain recall the information in an organized
manner. You can also write out flashcards with important facts or formulas on
them. This is doubly helpful, since the act of writing will help you remember,
and the flashcards are a portable tool you can review while riding on a bus or
waiting for an appointment.
6. Form acronyms
Another useful tool in
building a formidable memory base is by forming acronyms. These acronyms could
be formed from the first letters in a word or group of letters in sentences or
paragraphs. But it is important to advice here that these acronyms should be as
simple as possible and should form familiar words, statements, poems or music.
If you cast your mind back, you will remember that most of the lessons you
learnt in the early years of life in the Kindergarten school were in form of
songs or poems. By simply reciting those songs now, you will remember the
lessons. Try it again today; it still works as ever before.
7. Revise what you read as many times as possible
Having taken much time to 'load' information into your brain, it will be very difficult to retain all these information without revision. The more familiar the information are to you, the more likely you are to remember them.
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