Starting your studies without knowing the main study techniques in college is like jumping into a pool without knowing how to swim. Chances are, sooner or later, you’ll end up sinking.
On the other hand, choosing a university that reinforces the most difficult areas for you, encourages fellowship, and offers you tools to improve your study techniques and concentration can be the key to academic and personal success.
Here are some of the study techniques that can help you the most in college. More info you can read more about this at PaperHelp in a block review of paperhelp.org.
Previous tips before starting to study
How many times have you started to study, and five minutes later, you chatted with college classmates? Have you been turning pages without knowing what you read because your head is elsewhere?
Staying focused during a study session can be a challenge, but there are some techniques to help you do it.
Prepare your mind to study
Having your brain in multitasking mode is the worst thing that can happen when studying. If you want to assimilate the information effectively, you must pay full attention, and for that, it is essential to empty your mind of worries or interferences.
You can use lists to write down everything that occupies your mind. Or you can choose to do some activity that relaxes you, do sports, yoga, or meditation, to tune out your day-to-day thoughts before you start studying.
It has been proven that when we reach a state of peace and happiness, our ability to learn increases.
Set up your study area
When you sit down to study, you have everything you need (water, colored pens, notebooks, etc.) and banish anything that may distract you.
Turn off your cell phone, mute notifications or use applications to block the screen, such as Forest, so you will not lose concentration.
Concentration techniques for studying
To start studying, it is essential to achieve a good concentration level. Here are some strategies that might assist you in accomplishing this:
Create a study schedule
The first study technique you should apply to improve your concentration when studying is to plan your study sessions.
When you design your calendar, you are quantifying the hours you need to achieve your goal and committing to it. Thus, if one day you cannot meet the schedule for some reason, you know that you have a deficit of hours that you will have to make up at another time.
On the other hand, if you cannot meet the established schedule and you do not have a timetable, you will probably reduce your study time, and your results will suffer.
Take advantage of concentration peaks
Our brain works with peaks and valleys. That is, we usually take between 10 to 15 minutes from the time we sit down to study until we reach the maximum point of concentration. Then we enter a moment of high performance, which lasts about 30 to 40 minutes. After this concentration peak, we pass to a valley zone of another 15 minutes. This is the ideal time to rest or perform some mechanical task.
Several study techniques are based on taking advantage of these peaks and valleys to get more out of the time, but the best known is the Pomodoro technique.
Train your brain
Concentration is not an innate gift, and it can be trained. If you want to enjoy greater concentration when studying, you should do exercises to improve it.
Doing puzzles, playing chess, or doing sudoku are some activities you can do daily to increase your ability to concentrate.
Get a good selection of music to study with
Classical music, jazz, soundtracks… Any kind of calm music can help you stay focused while studying. In fact, if you search for ‘study music’ on platforms like Spotify, you will find plenty of pre-set playlists.
5 study techniques to improve your learning and be efficient
It is not enough to memorize at university, you have to understand and know how to apply.
This paradigm shift often poses a problem for many students. Fortunately, Harvard University has conducted a study on the best learning techniques and has collected them in the book Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.
Would you like to know some of these study techniques? We share with you the most relevant ones:
Take notes by hand
According to researchers at this university, taking notes by hand greatly improves the retention of ideas. Apparently, the time this activity takes us forces our brain to summarize the information and extract the most important so that we have time to write it down. So, while we are taking notes, our brain is already processing the data.
Don’t reread texts
Surprising but true. According to this study, reading once the text you are about to study is much more effective than rereading it repeatedly until you memorize the information. Of course, it must be an in-depth reading, analyzing, and working on the information consciously.
Use diagrams, drawings, and mind maps
All these study techniques will help you get more out of your visual memory since you will convert the content to be studied into mental images. This, in addition to facilitating retention, forces you to process and understand the information beforehand in order to be able to represent it.
Translating theory into practical cases
Have you ever wondered why we learn mathematics by solving problems? As you may have guessed, it’s no coincidence. We assimilate theory or abstract concepts much better when we see them in action. That is, when you get ready to study, think of situations in which you could apply everything you have learned and recreate a practical situation in which you could apply it.
The objective of this study technique is that you understand the concept through its application.
Test yourself before the exam
Another technique that is widely used to study is to take mock exams or tests to see how you are doing in your studies. You can do them alone or share them with other college classmates to correct them. In this way, you will help each other, and you will be able to nurture each other’s points of view.
As you may have seen, many techniques help you improve your concentration to study, but we must not forget that other factors influence your intellectual performance.
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