Studies: 5 Tips To Better Learn And Memorize Your Lessons
Throughout life, but especially during schooling and higher education, it is necessary to retain new information and acquire new skills. This learning process, which requires time and personal investment, can be facilitated through certain techniques. We will reveal 5 scientifically validated tips to help you learn and memorize your courses better.
1- Space out the review sessions
As an exam or test approaches, most students tend to concentrate their study sessions in the days leading up to the critical date. However, this strategy is not the most effective for retaining lesson content.
The first of the 5 tips for better learning and memorizing your courses is, on the contrary, to spread the learning over a long period. Neuroscience has proven that we retain more information and for a longer duration if we space out revision sessions.
Instead of doubling down on efforts on the eve of an exam, it's better to rely on the spacing technique. This spaced repetition method involves testing oneself right after the learning session and then reviewing the course content multiple times:
• 3 days later.
• 1 week later.
• 15 days later.
2- Regularly test your knowledge
Whatever the subject studied and your level in that field, the second tip to facilitate memorization is to test yourself regularly. Indeed, the more we practice retrieving information, the more it becomes anchored in the brain in a lasting way.
Scientists refer to this learning method as the testing effect. In the 2008 study by Karpicke and Roediger, students who reviewed their courses by testing themselves achieved exam results twice as good compared to other groups.
Testing yourself not only helps you learn and memorize your courses better but also allows you to work more efficiently by identifying and targeting the gaps to be filled.
3- Learning in groups
Another of the 5 tips for better learning and memorizing your lessons is to form study groups. Indeed, neuroscience has shown that group work facilitates learning by making it more fun and motivating.
Unsurprisingly, working in a group is more enjoyable than solitary revisions, which can be monotonous and demotivating in the long term.
Therefore, if you need to prepare for an exam or a competition as part of your education, it is in your best interest to revise with your peers, especially since the support of others reduces the stress inevitably associated with this deadline.
4- Engage all your senses
Multimodal learning is another one of the five tricks to better learn and memorize your lessons. This term refers to engaging multiple senses at the same time to better retain information.
Specifically, this method involves memorizing information by doing several things simultaneously:
• listening to the lesson and writing in your notebook.
• reading the lesson in a book and writing a summary or a note.
• reciting a lesson out loud while walking.
• reviewing a lesson and discussing it with someone else.
Contrary to what one might think, doing these different things simultaneously does not scatter attention and does not prevent information memorization, quite the opposite! Multimodal learning (by writing, speaking, or moving) allows you to create multiple access paths to information.
Some people retain a text better when they move, like actors moving on stage… It's up to you to find the learning method that suits you best, depending on whether you have a more visual or auditory memory, for example.
5- Putting one's creativity at the service of learning
Another common misconception claims that a review session must be serious to be effective. But that's false! The more fun and personalized the learning process is, the easier it is to retain the content of your lessons.
The last of the 5 tips for better learning and memorizing your courses is to be creative. Neuroscience has proven that it is easier to memorize complex information by inventing stories, acronyms, or mental images.
If you have an auditory memory, one last little tip can help you remember a sequence of information, like a multiplication table or a Latin declension: recite your lesson by singing it... preferably to a catchy tune, so that this little music stays in your head.
