Study+Tips

Tips for Studying Sometimes studying for a test or exam can be overwhelming. How do you know where to start? What do you do to study? How much studying do you need to do to be really prepared? How can you tell you've studied enough for a big test?

Here are some studying tips to help you answer some of those questions, and to get you started. Eventually, you may find that some studying techniques work better for you than others, and you will form your own method of preparing for tests.

Tip #1: Try explaining the material to someone and encouraging them to ask questions. See if you can teach the information to someone else without looking at your book or your notes. Try choosing a friend who is in the same class and explain things to them. Ask them to fact check your explanation, to make sure you aren't mixing up the order of events or using incorrect names.

Tip #2: Write a summary of the material down without looking at your book or notes. Try to explain the period in history by including people, places, important events, and how they were connected to one another. Check your work against your book and your notes for accuracy, and write anything that you missed at the end. Read it to yourself, and then try to write it again including anything you ommitted and fixing any mistakes you had the first time. This could also be a great study group activity, because you could check each other's work.

Tip #3: Make flashcards of terms, dates, and questions about the material. Just writing down the question and answer on the flashcards is a first step to learning the material, and then you can use them to quiz yourself. The human brain needs to be exposed to new vocabulary a minimum of 8 times in order to incorporate it into its memory. Try repeating a small group of flash cards until you can get them all right, and then moving onto new ones. This strategy works best at least several days before the exam, so you can review the flashcards after time has passed to see if you still remember the information. Try spending fifteen minutes with your flash cards every morning or afternoon a few days before the exam. You can also consider making flash cards when you first learn the new material, and then when the test comes around you will already be prepared.

Tip #4: Make a large timeline and put it where you can see it. Putting things on a timeline can help you remember what order things happened in, which will increase your understanding of the period in general. If you keep a timeline on your mirror, or on the front of your notebook, or on the coffee table, you'll be more likely to remember the sequence of events because they've been in front of you. Try reading through your timeline on commercial breaks, and covering events with a piece of paper to see if you can name what comes next.

Tip #5: Make your own exam, take it, and then correct your work! Studying for exams means determining what you will need to know, learning that information, and then making sure you actually know it.

Tip #6: Don't just re-read the information and feel confident when it all looks familiar. This may sound silly, but sometimes you may think you remember something but you wouldn't be able to reproduce it if the book weren't in front of you. Take the time to quiz yourself and make sure you can answer questions without your book or your notes in front of you. Reading through information several times is not as effective as answering the question on your own several times and then checking your work to make sure it is correct.

Tip #7: Quiz your friends! Forming a study group with other people in the same class can be extremely helpful. You can quiz each other, which helps both of you learn. Explaining something to someone who doesn't remember will help you recognize whether or not you have a good understanding of the events.

Tip #8: Change your computer's screen saver to important facts that you want to remember for the exam. Every time you go over to check your e-mail, another one will flash in front of you. The repeated exposure will help you remember things!

Tip #10: Form opinions about the material and practice asking yourself (or a friend) challenging questions. What was the most important event from this period, and why? What underlying force drove the events we studied? Class? Religion? Domestic or international politics? If the exam covers a conflict, what was the biggest cause of the conflict, and what was most important in determining who "won" the conflict? Did anyone win the conflict? Where was there compromise? What could the period in history or events teach us about current affairs? Is it a situation that still occurs, or are there similarities between that event and current events? Think about why it might be important for you to know about the material for the exam, ask yourself difficult questions, and figure out if you could support your answers with evidence from the period that you are going to be tested on. Some of these studying tips help you to memorize things, because it is important to know what happened, where, when, and to whom in order to be able to take it to the next step and ask questions like why and how, and what could have been different. Make sure you think about the material by asking yourself those questions too, it will help you prepare for possible essay questions, test your real understanding of the material, and it's the whole fun of learning about history! Invite your friends over for snacks and a friendly debate.