| Dear Student As we promised last week, we’re focusing on study methods this month, offering some tips and tools for you to make the most of the hours at your desk. We gave you the first tool in our very first newsletter: the pomodoro technique. Get into the habit of using it. It will help you to avoid procrastination and to focus. By giving structure to your study hours, it also helps to prevent fatigue and burnout. The most basic key to effective study is active learning. If you’re only reading over the text, you’re probably taking in very little. Wake up your brain. |
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| WAKE UP YOUR BRAIN: Test yourself all the time. Make flash cards with a question/problem on one side and the solution on the other. Never do it only once. Repeat the information/process/formula until it flows like a melody. Don’t only do a problem once. Pick some of the key ones, do them again, see if you can do them in your head. Learn them like a song. Don’t only highlight or reread information. Look at the page, then look away, and see what you can recall. Explain the material to someone else (or even out loud to yourself) so that a 10-yearold or your grandmother would understand it. Once you know a range of problem-solving techniques, mix them up and work on different types of problems. This also goes for learning facts. Randomly flip through your book and pick out a problem or a section you need to remember. See whether you can solve it/recall it. If not, another pomodoro on that section is the answer. |
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 | A warning especially for stronger students: understanding alone is not enough. You will forget. It has to be combined with practice and repetition in a variety of settings. Get up from your desk and go for a walk while repeating key terms or definitions, matching your words to your footsteps. |
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| Another handy tool for effective study is called chunking. (Click here for a video that explains it.) Our minds can only hold a few thoughts or ideas at the same time. On the other hand, our minds are always looking for patterns. Put information together to make a pattern, then you can remember much more. • Use analogies and metaphors, for example: the body is like a city. The arteries and veins are roads carrying trucks with fuel (oxygen and nutrients). The roads are strictly divided: only full trucks on arteries, only empty trucks on veins. Draw a rough picture. |
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| • Draw a mind map or some stick figures. • Make up a mnemonic, a nonsense sentence using the first letters of a list you have to remember, like the order of operations in maths or the names of the planets. • Build an imaginary “memory palace”, a building in your mind, and “put” every one of the things you need to remember in a specific place. Then imagine walking through your building and finding them one by one. |  |
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| Till next week, happy studying! |
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| GRAD – your guide to university success is a partnership project of Ruda Landman, StudyTrust, Van Schaik Publishers and Capitec Bank |
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