# Reading and Note-Taking

## Helpful Note-Taking Strategies

Questions to Consider:
1. How can you prepare to take notes to maximize the effectiveness of the experience?
2. What are some specific strategies you can employ for better note-taking?
3. Why is annotating your notes after the note-taking session a critical step to follow?
Beyond providing a record of the information you are reading or hearing, notes help you organize the ideas and help you make meaning out of something about which you may not be familiar, so note-taking and reading are two compatible skill sets. Taking notes also helps you stay focused on the question at hand. Taking notes during presentations or class lectures may allow you to follow the speaker’s main points and condense the material into a more readily usable format. Strong notes build on your prior knowledge of a subject, help you discuss trends or patterns present in the information, and direct you toward areas needing further research or reading.
It is not a good habit to transcribe every single word a speaker utters—even if you have an amazing ability to do that. Most of us don’t have that court-reporter-esque skill level anyway, and if we try, we would end up missing valuable information. Learn to listen for main ideas and distinguish between these main ideas and details that typically support the ideas. Include examples that explain the main ideas, but do so using understandable abbreviations.
Think of all notes as potential study guides. In fact, if you only take notes without actively working on them after the initial note-taking session, the likelihood of the notes helping you is slim. Research on this topic concludes that without active engagement after taking notes, most students forget 60–75 percent of material over which they took the notes—within two days! That sort of defeats the purpose, don’t you think? This information about memory loss was first brought to light by 19th-century German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. Fortunately, you do have the power to thwart what is sometimes called the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve by reinforcing what you learned through review at intervals shortly after you take in the material and frequently thereafter.
If you are a musician, you’ll understand this phenomenon well. When you first attempt a difficult piece of music, you may not remember the chords and notes well at all, but after frequent practice and review, you generate a certain muscle memory and cognitive recall that allows you to play the music more easily.
Note-taking may not be the most glamorous aspect of your higher-education journey, but it is a study practice you will carry throughout college and into your professional life. Setting yourself up for successful note-taking is almost as important as the actual taking of notes, and what you do after your note-taking session is equally significant. Well-written notes help you organize your thoughts, enhance your memory, and participate in class discussion, and they prepare you to respond successfully on exams. With all that riding on your notes, it would behoove you to learn how to take notes properly and continue to improve your note-taking skills.

### Preparing to Take Notes

Preparing to take notes means more than just getting out your laptop or making sure you bring pen and paper to class. You’ll do a much better job with your notes if you understand why we take notes, have a strong grasp on your preferred note-taking system, determine your specific priorities depending on your situation, and engage in some version of efficient shorthand.
Like handwriting and fingerprints, we all have unique and fiercely independent note-taking habits. These understandably and reasonably vary from one situation to the next, but you can only improve your skills by learning more about ways to take effective notes and trying different methods to find a good fit.
The very best notes are the ones you take in an organized manner that encourages frequent review and use as you progress through a topic or course of study. For this reason, you need to develop a way to organize all your notes for each class so they remain together and organized. As old-fashioned as it sounds, a clunky three-ring binder is an excellent organizational container for class notes. You can easily add to previous notes, insert handouts you may receive in class, and maintain a running collection of materials for each separate course. If the idea of carrying around a heavy binder has you rolling your eyes, then transfer that same structure into your computer files. If you don’t organize your many documents into some semblance of order on your computer, you will waste significant time searching for improperly named or saved files.
You may be interested in relatively new research on what is the more effective note-taking strategy: handwriting versus typing directly into a computer. While individuals have strong personal opinions on this subject, most researchers agree that the format of student notes is less important than what students do with the notes they take afterwards. Both handwriting notes and using a computer for note-taking have pros and cons.

### Managing Note-Taking Systems

Whichever of the many note-taking systems you choose (and new ones seem to come out almost daily), the very best one is the one that you will use consistently. The skill and art of note-taking is not automatic for anyone; it takes a great deal of practice, patience, and continuous attention to detail. Add to that the fact that you may need to master multiple note-taking techniques for different classes, and you have some work to do. Unless you are specifically directed by your instructor, you are free to combine the best parts of different systems if you are most comfortable with that hybrid system.
Just to keep yourself organized, all your notes should start off with an identifier, including at the very least the date, the course name, the topic of the lecture/presentation, and any other information you think will help you when you return to use the notes for further study, test preparation, or assignment completion. Additional, optional information may be the number of note-taking sessions about this topic or reminders to cross-reference class handouts, textbook pages, or other course materials. It’s also always a good idea to leave some blank space in your notes so you can insert additions and questions you may have as you review the material later.

### Note-Taking Strategies

You may have a standard way you take all your notes for all your classes. When you were in high school, this one-size-fits-all approach may have worked. Now that you’re in college, reading and studying more advanced topics, your general method may still work some of the time, but you should have some different strategies in place if you find that your method isn’t working as well with college content. You probably will need to adopt different note-taking strategies for different subjects. The strategies in this section represent various ways to take notes in such a way that you are able to study after the initial note-taking session.

### Cornell Method

One of the most recognizable note-taking systems is called the Cornell Method, a relatively simple way to take effective notes devised by Cornell University education professor Dr. Walter Pauk in the 1940s. In this system, you take a standard piece of note paper and divide it into three sections by drawing a horizontal line across your paper about one to two inches from the bottom of the page (the summary area) and then drawing a vertical line to separate the rest of the page above this bottom area, making the left side about two inches (the recall column) and leaving the biggest area to the right of your vertical line (the notes column). You may want to make one page and then copy as many pages as you think you’ll need for any particular class, but one advantage of this system is that you can generate the sections quickly. Because you have divided up your page, you may end up using more paper than you would if you were writing on the entire page, but the point is not to keep your notes to as few pages as possible. The Cornell Method provides you with a well-organized set of notes that will help you study and review your notes as you move through the course. If you are taking notes on your computer, you can still use the Cornell Method in Word or Excel on your own or by using a template someone else created.
Now that you have the note-taking format generated, the beauty of the Cornell Method is its organized simplicity. Just write on one side of the page (the right-hand notes column)—this will help later when you are reviewing and revising your notes. During your note-taking session, use the notes column to record information over the main points and concepts of the lecture; try to put the ideas into your own words, which will help you to not transcribe the speaker’s words verbatim. Skip lines between each idea in this column.
Practice the shortcut abbreviations covered in the next section and avoid writing in complete sentences. Don’t make your notes too cryptic, but you can use bullet points or phrases equally well to convey meaning—we do it all the time in conversation. If you know you will need to expand the notes you are taking in class but don’t have time, you can put reminders directly in the notes by adding and underlining the word expand by the ideas you need to develop more fully.
As soon as possible after your note-taking session, preferably within eight hours but no more than twenty-four hours, read over your notes column and fill in any details you missed in class, including the places where you indicated you wanted to expand your notes. Then in the recall column, write any key ideas from the corresponding notes column—you can’t stuff this smaller recall column as if you’re explaining or defining key ideas. Just add the one- or two-word main ideas; these words in the recall column serve as cues to help you remember the detailed information you recorded in the notes column.
Once you are satisfied with your notes and recall columns, summarize this page of notes in two or three sentences using the summary area at the bottom of the sheet. This is an excellent time to get with another classmate or a group of students who all heard the same lecture to make sure you all understood the key points. Now, before you move onto something else, cover the large notes column, and quiz yourself over the key ideas you recorded in the recall column. Repeat this step often as you go along, not just immediately before an exam, and you will help your memory make the connections between your notes, your textbook reading, your in-class work, and assignments that you need to succeed on any quizzes and exams.
The main advantage of the Cornell Method is that you are setting yourself up to have organized, workable notes. The neat format helps you move into study-mode without needing to re-copy less organized notes or making sense of a large mass of information you aren’t sure how to process because you can’t remember key ideas or what you meant. If you write notes in your classes without any sort of system and later come across something like “Napoleon—short” in the middle of a glob of notes, what can you do at this point? Is that important? Did it connect with something relevant from the lecture? How would you possibly know? You are your best advocate for setting yourself up for success in college.

### Outlining

Other note organizing systems may help you in different disciplines. You can take notes in a formal outline if you prefer, using Roman numerals for each new topic, moving down a line to capital letters indented a few spaces to the right for concepts related to the previous topic, then adding details to support the concepts indented a few more spaces over and denoted by an Arabic numeral. You can continue to add to a formal outline by following these rules.
You don’t absolutely have to use the formal numerals and letter, but you have to then be careful to indent so you can tell when you move from a higher level topic to the related concepts and then to the supporting information. The main benefit of an outline is how organized it is. You have to be on your toes when you are taking notes in class to ensure you keep up the organizational format of the outline, which can be tricky if the lecture or presentation is moving quickly or covering many diverse topics.
The following formal outline example shows the basic pattern:
1. Dogs (main topic–usually general)

2. Cats (main topic)
     Siamese
You would just continue on with this sort of numbering and indenting format to show the connections between main ideas, concepts, and supporting details. Whatever details you do not capture in your note-taking session, you can add after the lecture as you review your outline.

### Chart or Table

Similar to creating an outline, you can develop a chart to compare and contrast main ideas in a note-taking session. Divide your paper into four or five columns with headings that include either the main topics covered in the lecture or categories such as How?, What?, When used?, Advantages/Pros, Disadvantages/Cons, or other divisions of the information. You write your notes into the appropriate columns as that information comes to light in the presentation. The table below provides an example of a table that can help you organize topics in a science course.
This format helps you pull out the salient ideas and establishes an organized set of notes to study later. (If you haven’t noticed that this reviewing later idea is a constant across all note-taking systems, you should take note of that.) Notes by themselves that you never reference again are little more than scribblings. That would be a bit like compiling an extensive grocery list so you stay on budget when you shop, work all week on it, and then just throw it away before you get to the store. You may be able to recall a few items, but likely won’t be as efficient as you could be if you had the notes to reference. Just as you cannot read all the many books, articles, and documents you need to peruse for your college classes, you cannot remember the most important ideas of all the notes you will take as part of your courses, so you must review.

### Concept Mapping and Visual Note-Taking

One final note-taking method that appeals to learners who prefer a visual representation of notes is called mapping or sometimes mind mapping or concept mapping, although each of these names can have slightly different uses. Variations of this method abound, so you may want to look for more versions online, but the basic principles are that you are making connections between main ideas through a graphic depiction; some can get rather elaborate with colors and shapes, but a simple version may be more useful at least to begin. Main ideas can be circled or placed in a box with supporting concepts radiating off these ideas shown with a connecting line and possibly details of the support further radiating off the concepts. You can present your main ideas vertically or horizontally, but turning your paper long-ways, or in landscape mode, may prove helpful as you add more main ideas.
You may be interested in trying visual note-taking or adding pictures to your notes for clarity. Sometimes when you can’t come up with the exact wording to explain something or you’re trying to add information for complex ideas in your notes, sketching a rough image of the idea can help you remember. According to educator Sherrill Knezel in an article entitled “The Power of Visual Note-taking,” this strategy is effective because “When students use images and text in note-taking, it gives them two different ways to pull up the information, doubling their chances of recall.” Don’t shy away from this creative approach to note-taking just because you believe you aren’t an artist; the images don’t need to be perfect. You may want to watch Rachel Smith’s TEDx Talk called “Drawing in Class” to learn more about visual note-taking.
You can play with different types of note-taking suggestions and find the method(s) you like best, but once you find what works for you, stick with it. You will become more efficient with the method the more you use it, and your note-taking, review, and test prep will become, if not easier, certainly more organized, which can decrease your anxiety.

### Practicing Decipherable Shorthand

Most college students don’t take a class in shorthand, once the domain of secretaries and executive assistants, but maybe they should. That almost-lost art in the age of computers could come in very handy during intense note-taking sessions. Elaborate shorthand systems do exist, but you would be better served in your college note-taking adventures to hone a more familiar, personalized form of shorthand to help you write more in a shorter amount of time. Seemingly insignificant shortcuts can add up to ease the stress note-taking can induce—especially if you ever encounter an “I’m not going to repeat this” kind of presenter! Become familiar with these useful abbreviations:
See the table above for examples of common shorthand symbols and abbreviations. Do you have any other shortcuts or symbols that you use in your notes? Ask your parents if they remember any that you may be able to learn.

### Annotating Notes After the Initial Note-Taking Session

Annotating notes after the initial note-taking session may be one of the most valuable study skills you can master. Whether you are highlighting, underlining, or adding additional notes, you are reinforcing the material in your mind and memory.
Admit it—who can resist highlighting markers? Gone are the days when yellow was the star of the show, and you had to be very careful not to press too firmly for fear of obliterating the words you were attempting to emphasize. Students now have a veritable rainbow of highlighting options and can color-code notes and text passages to their hearts’ content.
The only reason to highlight anything is to draw attention to it, so you can easily pick out that ever-so-important information later for further study or reflection. One problem many students have is not knowing when to stop. If what you need to recall from the passage is a particularly apt and succinct definition of the term important to your discipline, highlighting the entire paragraph is less effective than highlighting just the actual term. And if you don’t rein in this tendency to color long passages (possibly in multiple colors) you can end up with a whole page of highlighted text. Ironically, that is no different from a page that is not highlighted at all, so you have wasted your time. Your mantra for highlighting text should be less is more. Always read your text selection first before you start highlighting anything. You need to know what the overall message is before you start placing emphasis in the text with highlighting.
Another way to annotate notes after initial note-taking is underlining significant words or passages. Albeit not quite as much fun as its colorful cousin highlighting, underlining provides precision to your emphasis.
Some people think of annotations as only using a colored highlighter to mark certain words or phrases for emphasis. Actually, annotations can refer to anything you do with a text to enhance it for your particular use (either a printed text, handwritten notes, or other sort of document you are using to learn concepts). The annotations may include highlighting passages or vocabulary, defining those unfamiliar terms once you look them up, writing questions in the margin of a book, underlining or circling key terms, or otherwise marking a text for future reference. You can also annotate some electronic texts.
Realistically, you may end up doing all of these types of annotations at different times. We know that repetition in studying and reviewing is critical to learning, so you may come back to the same passage and annotate it separately. These various markings can be invaluable to you as a study guide and as a way to see the evolution of your learning about a topic. If you regularly begin a reading session writing down any questions you may have about the topic of that chapter or section and also write out answers to those questions at the end of the reading selection, you will have a good start to what that chapter covered when you eventually need to study for an exam. At that point, you likely will not have time to reread the entire selection especially if it is a long reading selection, but with strong annotations in conjunction with your class notes, you won’t need to do that. With experience in reading discipline-specific texts and writing essays or taking exams in that field, you will know better what sort of questions to ask in your annotations.
What you have to keep in the front of your mind while you are annotating, especially if you are going to conduct multiple annotation sessions, is to not overdo whatever method you use. Be judicious about what you annotate and how you do it on the page, which means you must be neat about it. Otherwise, you end up with a mess of either color or symbols combined with some cryptic notes that probably took you quite a long time to create, but won’t be worth as much to you as a study aid as they could be. This is simply a waste of time and effort.
You cannot eat up every smidgen of white space on the page writing out questions or summaries and still have a way to read the original text. If you are lucky enough to have a blank page next to the beginning of the chapter or section you are annotating, use this, but keep in mind that when you start writing notes, you aren’t exactly sure how much space you’ll need. Use a decipherable shorthand and write only what you need to convey the meaning in very small print. If you are annotating your own notes, you can make a habit of using only one side of the paper in class, so that if you need to add more notes later, you could use the other side. You can also add a blank page to your notes before beginning the next class date in your notebook so you’ll end up with extra paper for annotations when you study.
Professional resources may come with annotations that can be helpful to you as you work through the various documentation requirements you’ll encounter in college as well. Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) provides an annotated sample for how to format a college paper according to guidelines in the Modern Language Association (MLA) manual that you can see, along with other annotations.

### Providing Needed Additional Explanations to Notes

Consider this scenario: Marlon was totally organized and ready to take notes in a designated course notebook at the beginning of every philosophy class session. He always dated his page and indicated what the topic of discussion was. He had various colored highlighters ready to denote the different note purposes he had defined: vocabulary in pink, confusing concepts in green, and note sections that would need additional explanations later in yellow. He also used his own shorthand and an impressive array of symbols to indicate questions (red question mark), highly probable test material (he used a tiny bomb exploding here), additional reading suggestions, and specific topics he would ask his instructor before the next class. Doing everything so precisely, Marlon’s methods seemed like a perfect example of how to take notes for success. Inevitably though, by the end of the hour-and-a-half class session, Marlon was frantically switching between writing tools, near to tears, and scouring his notes as waves of yellow teased him with uncertainty. What went wrong?
As with many of us who try diligently to do everything we know how to do for success or what we think we know because we read books and articles on success in between our course work, Marlon is suffering from trying to do too much simultaneously. It’s an honest mistake we can make when we are trying to save a little time or think we can multitask and kill two birds with one stone.
Unfortunately, this particular error in judgment can add to your stress level exponentially if you don’t step back and see it for what it is. Marlon attempted to take notes in class as well as annotate his notes to get them ready for his test preparation. It was too much to do at one time, but even if he could have done all those things during class, he’s missing one critical point about note-taking.
As much as we may want to hurry and get it over with, note-taking in class is just the beginning. Your instructor likely gave you a pre-class assignment to read or complete before coming to that session. The intention of that preparatory lesson is for you to come in with some level of familiarity for the topic under consideration and questions of your own. Once you’re in class, you may also need to participate in a group discussion, work with your classmates, or perform some other sort of lesson-directed activity that would necessarily take you away from taking notes. Does that mean you should ignore taking notes for that day? Most likely not. You may just need to indicate in your notes that you worked on a project or whatever other in-class event you experienced that date.
Very rarely in a college classroom will you engage in an activity that is not directly related to what you are studying in that course. Even if you enjoyed every minute of the class session and it was an unusual format for that course, you still need to take some notes. Maybe your first note could be to ask yourself why you think the instructor used that unique teaching strategy for the class that day. Was it effective? Was it worth using the whole class time? How will that experience enhance what you are learning in that course?
If you use an ereader or ebooks to read texts for class or read articles from the Internet on your laptop or tablet, you can still take effective notes. Depending on the features of your device, you have many choices. Almost all electronic reading platforms allow readers to highlight and underline text. Some devices allow you to add a written text in addition to marking a word or passage that you can collect at the end of your note-taking session. Look into the specific tools for your device and learn how to use the features that allow you to take notes electronically. You can also find apps on devices to help with taking notes, some of which you may automatically have installed when you buy the product. Microsoft’s OneNote, Google Keep, and the Notes feature on phones are relatively easy to use, and you may already have free access to those.

### Taking Notes on Non-Text Items (i.e., Tables, Maps, Figures, etc.)

You may also encounter situations as you study and read textbooks, primary sources, and other resources for your classes that are not actually texts. You can still take notes on maps, charts, graphs, images, and tables, and your approach to these non-text features is similar to when you prepare to take notes over a passage of text. For example, if you are looking at the following map, you may immediately come up with several questions. Or it may initially appear overwhelming. Start by asking yourself these questions:
2. Who is the intended audience?
3. Where is it?
4. What time period does it depict?
5. What does the map’s legend (the explanation of symbols) include?
6. What other information do I need to make sense of this map?
You may want to make an extra copy of a graphic or table before you add annotations if you are dealing with a lot of information. Making sense of all the elements will take time, and you don’t want to add to the confusion.

### Returning to Your Notes

Later, as soon as possible after the class, you can go back to your notes and add in missing parts. Just as you may generate questions as you’re reading new material, you may leave a class session or lecture or activities with many questions. Write those down in a place where they won’t get lost in all your other notes.
The exact timing of when you get back to the notes you take in class or while you are reading an assignment will vary depending on how many other classes you have or what other obligations you have in your daily schedule. A good starting place that is also easy to remember is to make every effort to review your notes within 24 hours of first taking them. Longer than that and you are likely to have forgotten some key features you need to include; must less time than that, and you may not think you need to review the information you so recently wrote down, and you may postpone the task too long.
Use your phone or computer to set reminders for all your note review sessions so that it becomes a habit and you keep on top of the schedule.
Your personal notes play a significant role in your test preparation. They should enhance how you understand the lessons, textbooks, lab sessions, and assignments. All the time and effort you put into first taking the notes and then annotating and organizing the notes will be for naught if you do not formulate an effective and efficient way to use them before sectional exams or comprehensive tests.
The whole cycle of reading, note-taking in class, reviewing and enhancing your notes, and preparing for exams is part of a continuum you ideally will carry into your professional life. Don’t try to take short cuts; recognize each step in the cycle as a building block. Learning doesn’t end, which shouldn’t fill you with dread; it should help you recognize that all this work you’re doing in the classroom and during your own study and review sessions is ongoing and cumulative. Practicing effective strategies now will help you be a stronger professional.

### Friends & Family Matter

After a challenging start to her first semester, Ana has made a few good friends and is feeling more like she belongs in college. She has been hanging out with people who are committed to their education and who study all the time. Ana has benefited from these regular study sessions and her grades have reflected the work that she has done. Her study group creates handwritten notes, flashcards, and elaborate mind maps that they use each time they meet.
Ana’s roommate, Jasmine, a member of the rugby team, has not been as focused on her studies and is at risk of failing a few classes, especially the one that both of them have—General Psychology. She has shared with Ana that she is afraid she will fail, which will jeopardize her athletic scholarship. In an effort to help her, Ana has invited Jasmine to meet with her study group, but because Jasmine is a student athlete, she has little time to do more than go to practice, attend classes, and travel for games. Jasmine has not attended any of the sessions.
While Ana is eating lunch with Jasmine one day, she asks Ana if she could have her notes and all the study materials Ana created with her study group, including the notes cards and elaborate mind maps that the group drew out. Jasmine has a big game over the weekend and wants to take the materials with her as she doesn’t have time to copy all of them. Jasmine is feeling desperate as she needs to make a high grade on the next test, or she will definitely fail the course. Ana is torn—she wants to help her roommate, but she also needs the materials to study herself, and she feels as if telling her “No” would not be good for their long-term relationship.

### Let’s Think About It

Ana has several options. Think through the consequences of each one, and choose the best option or create your own option.
1. Ana gives her roommate the notes and materials for the weekend, and hopes that she has studied enough to do well herself.
2. Ana gives some of the materials that she knows the best (and doesn’t need to study) for the weekend, and keeps the rest for herself to study more.
3. Ana keeps the materials for herself, but offers to teach the material to her in person before she leaves and over a video conferencing service the evenings she is on the road.

### Let’s Talk About It

Ana could have told Jasmine “No” and dealt with the consequences of the decision for the rest of the semester. However, as you read above, Ana did want to find a way to help her roommate. Here are some suggestions for communicating with others about the dilemma that Ana is facing:
1. “I would like to help you as I know you have struggled in this course, but because these study materials are part of my study group’s sessions and we are not finished studying, I don’t feel right giving them all to you. Is there another option that we can both feel good about?”
2. “I have invited you to study sessions before, but you have not had time because of your schedule. I have time to get you up to speed on some of the material before you leave, but if you can start to join us after you get back, you may find that it is much more effective than trying to learn the content in a short period of time.”
3. “Teaching you what I have learned so far will benefit us both–and I have time to do some of that over the next few days. Would that help you feel more comfortable when you study over the weekend?”
Whatever choice you would make in this situation, it is always best to communicate clearly your needs, your concerns, and even your uncertainties.

### Summary and Next Steps for College Success

Reading and note-taking are part of the foundation of college studying and learning. The expectation in college is that you read considerable amounts of text for each subject with the goal of learning more about the subjects. You may encounter reading situations, such as professional journal articles and long textbook chapters, that are more difficult to understand than texts you have read previously. As you progress through your college courses, you can employ reading strategies to help you complete your college reading assignments. Likewise, you will take notes in college that need to be complete so you can study and recall the information you learn in lectures and lab sessions. With so much significant information that you need to collect, study, and recall for your college courses, you need to be deliberate in your reading and note-taking.
Honing these fundamental skills can only help you succeed in college and beyond because you will need to be able to take in and recall a vast amount of information. To that end, consider what else about reading and note-taking you would like to learn or practice. Choose one of the following to explore further this term:
1. Develop more curiosity about what you are reading by creating questions about what you will learn or how you will use the information. Look for articles, blog posts, podcasts, books, and films about what you are learning to help you develop more knowledge.
2. Explore the best reading strategy for your most challenging courses. Choose one of them, use it, and determine how well it worked.
3. Practice revising reading and lecture notes as part of organizing your study materials and developing a deeper understanding of the content. Check the results of this reorganization the next time you take a quiz or test.

### Checking In: Your College Readiness Checklist

### Winter


# Studying, Memory, and Test Taking

## Introduction

### Student Survey

How confident are you in preparing for and taking tests? Take this quick survey to figure it out, ranking questions on a scale of 1—4, 1 meaning “least like me” and 4 meaning “most like me.” These questions will help you determine how the chapter concepts relate to you right now. As you are introduced to new concepts and practices, it can be informative to reflect on how your understanding changes over time.
1. I set aside enough time to prepare for tests.
2. If I don’t set aside enough time, or if life gets in the way, I can usually cram and get positive results.
3. I prefer to pull all-nighters. The adrenaline and urgency help me remember what I need come test time.
4. I study my notes, highlight book passages, and use flash cards, but I still don’t feel like I’m as successful as I should be on tests.
You can also take the Chapter 5 Survey anonymously online.
Deep learning is the long-term goal of college students, especially when they start taking classes in their major or that directly connect to their career field. However, deep learning doesn’t happen overnight. After you have read the texts and listened to the lectures, you will want to participate in activities that help you move your understanding from your short-term memory to your long-term memory. And there is only one way to learn deeply: through effective study practices and test taking in which you receive feedback on how well you have learned.

### About This Chapter

By the time you finish this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
1. Describe the key components of deep learning.
2. Outline the importance of memory when studying and note some opportunities to strengthen memory.
3. Discuss specific ways to increase the effectiveness of studying.
4. Articulate test-taking strategies that minimize anxiety and maximize results.
5. Discuss the role that metacognition plays in the learning process.
It makes sense that the better you are at studying and test taking, the better results you’ll see in the form of high grades and long-term learning and knowledge acquisition. And the more experience you have using your study and memorization skills and employing success strategies during exams, the better you’ll get at it. But you have to keep it up—maintaining these skills and learning better strategies as the content you study becomes increasingly complex is crucial to your success. Once you transition into a work environment, you will be able to use these same skills that helped you to be successful in college as you face the problem-solving demands and expectations of your job. Earning high grades is one goal, and certainly a good one when you’re in college, but true learning means committing content to long-term memory.


# Studying, Memory, and Test Taking

## Deepening Your Learning

Questions to Consider:
1. Why is deepening your learning important in college?
2. What are the steps to deepening your learning?
In the chapter that covers Reading and Note-taking, you were introduced to Bloom’s Taxonomy and its role in helping you plan your learning. As you may recall, college professors will expect learning at a higher level than just being able to recall or identify key terms or concepts. To learn deeply, you will need to do more with the content that you are learning besides reading or listening and taking good notes. This is a good first step, but only a first step!
Beyond this step, deep learning requires that you will need to
1. Practice recalling the information (strengthening your memory),
2. Learn how to use the information at different levels (Bloom’s Taxonomy),
3. Use a variety of effective study strategies based on the type of course, content, or test you have,
4. Evaluate your learning process by reviewing feedback that you get from your professors, and
5. Make changes to your learning processes to ensure that you have indeed learned deeply.
Let’s revisit Bloom’s Taxonomy to see how the different levels may show up in your learning process. The table below presents the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and show how it applies to the topic of note-taking methods. If you start at the bottom of the table, you will see that as you move up the taxonomy, the tasks differ. In some cases, they may get more difficult or more time intensive. However, if you only learn the definitions of these note-taking strategies, then you may find it challenging to complete the tasks that are higher-level Bloom’s. The rest of the chapter provides you with information and strategies that can help you “move up Bloom’s”.
Many first-year college students study at the lowest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy by only using flashcards or reviewing their notes so they are able to recognize key terms or ideas. They do not anticipate that they will be asked to put the information in a new context or demonstrate a detailed understanding of the content.
This rest of this chapter provides extensive information about how to deepen your learning so that you know the content well enough to answer any type of question on an assignment or test. This information will also help you on the job when you need to learn new information to help your clients or you need to study for career certifications. Either way, you will continue to learn and use learning strategies beyond graduation.


# Studying, Memory, and Test Taking

## Memory

Questions to Consider:
1. How does working memory work, exactly?
2. How do short-term and long-term memory function?
3. What obstacles exist to remembering?
4. When and how should you memorize things?
5. In what situations is it best to memorize, and what do you memorize?
6. What can you do consistently to improve both your short- and long-term memory?
Memory is one of those cherished but mysterious elements in life. Everyone has memories, and some people are very good at rapid recall, which is an enviable skill for test takers. We know that we seem to lose the capacity to remember things as we age, and scientists continue to study how we remember some things but not others and what memory means, but we don’t know that much about memory, really.
Nelson Cowan is one researcher who is working to explain what we do know about memory. His article “What Are the Differences between Long-Term, Short-Term, and Working Memory?” breaks down the different types of memory and what happens when we recall thoughts and ideas. When we remember something, we actually do quite a lot of thinking.NCBI. “What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory?” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2657600/
We go through three basic steps when we remember ideas or images: we encode, store, and retrieve that information. Encoding is how we first perceive information through our senses, such as when we smell a lovely flower or a putrid trash bin. Both make an impression on our minds through our sense of smell and probably our vision. Our brains encode, or label, this content in short-term memory in case we want to think about it again.
If the information is important and we have frequent exposure to it, the brain will store it for us in case we need to use it in the future in our aptly named long-term memory. Later, the brain will allow us to recall or retrieve that image, feeling, or information so we can do something with it. This is what we call remembering.

### Foundations of Memory

William Sumrall et al. in the International Journal of Humanities and Social Science explain the foundation of memory by noting: “Memory is a term applied to numerous biological devices by which living organisms acquire, retain, and make use of skills and knowledge. It is present in all forms of higher order animals. The most evolutionary forms of memory have taken place in human beings. Despite much research and exploration, a complete understanding of human memory does not exist.”Sumrall, William, et. al. “A Review of Memory Theory.” International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 2016. Vol. 6. No. 5.

### Working Memory

Working memory is a type of short-term memory, but we use it when we are actively performing a task. For example, nursing student Marilyn needs to use her knowledge of chemical reactions to suggest appropriate prescriptions in various medical case studies. She does not have to recall every single fact she learned in years of chemistry classes, but she does need to have a working memory of certain chemicals and how they work with others. To ensure she can make these connections, Marilyn will have to review and study the relevant chemical details for the types of drug interactions she will recommend in the case studies.
In working memory, you have access to whatever information you have stored in your memory that helps you complete the task you are performing. For instance, when you begin to study an assignment, you certainly need to read the directions, but you must also remember that in class your professor reduced the number of problem sets the written instructions indicated you needed to finish. This was an oral addition to the written assignment. The change to the instructions is what you bring up in working memory when you complete the assignment.

### Short-Term Memory

Short-term memory is a very handy thing. It helps us remember where we set our keys or where we left off on a project the day before. Think about all the aids we employ to help us with short-term memory: you may hang your keys in a particular place each evening so you know exactly where they are supposed to be. When you go grocery shopping, do you ever choose a product because you recall an advertising jingle? You see the box of cereal and you remember the song on the TV commercial. If that memory causes you to buy that product, the advertising worked. We help our memory along all the time, which is perfectly fine. In fact, we can modify these everyday examples of memory assistance for purposes of studying and test taking. The key is a deliberate use of strategies that are not so elaborate that they are too difficult to remember in our short-term memory.
Harvard psychology professor George A. Miller in 1956 claimed humans can recall about five to nine bits of information in our short-term memory at any given time. Other research has come after this claim, but this concept is a popular one. Miller’s article is entitled “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two” and is easily accessible online if you’re interested in learning more about this seminar report.Miller, George A. “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our capacity for Processing Information.” Psychological Review, 1956.
Considering the vast amount of knowledge available to us, five to nine bits isn’t very much to work with. To combat this limitation, we clump information together, making connections to help us stretch our capacity to remember. Many factors play into how much we can remember and how we do it, including the subject matter, how familiar we are with the ideas, and how interested we are in the topic, but we certainly cannot remember absolutely everything, for a test or any other task we face. As such, we have to use effective strategies, like those we cover later in this chapter, to get the most out of our memories.

### Long-Term Memory

Long-term memory is exactly what it sounds like. These are things you recall from the past, such as the smell of your elementary school cafeteria or how to pop a wheelie on a bicycle. Our brain keeps a vast array of information, images, and sensory experiences in long-term memory. Whatever it is we are trying to keep in our memories, whether a beautiful song or a list of chemistry vocabulary terms, must first come into our brains in short-term memory. If we want these fleeting ideas to transfer into long-term memory, we have to do some work, such as causing frequent exposure to the information over time (such as studying the terms every day for a period of time or the repetition you performed to memorize multiplication tables or spelling rules) and some relevant manipulation of the information.
According to Alison Preston of the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Learning and Memory, “A short- term memory’s conversion to a long-term memory requires changes within the brain . . . and result[s] in changes to neurons (nerve cells) or sets of neurons. . . . For example, new synapses—the connections between neurons through which they exchange information—can form to allow for communication between new networks of neurons. Alternatively, existing synapses can be strengthened to allow for increased sensitivity in the communication between two neurons.”Preston, Alison. “Ask the Experts: How do short-term memories become long-term memories?” Scientific American, Dec. 2017. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-short-term-memories-become-l/
When you work to convert your thoughts into memories, you are literally changing your mind. Much of this brain work begins in the part of the brain called the hippocampus. Preston continues, “Initially, the hippocampus works in concert with sensory-processing regions distributed in the neocortex (the outermost layer of the brain) to form the new memories. Within the neocortex, representations of the elements that constitute an event in our life are distributed across multiple brain regions according to their content. . . .When a memory is first formed, the hippocampus rapidly combines this distributed information into a single memory, thus acting as an index of representations in the sensory-processing regions. As time passes, cellular and molecular changes allow for the strengthening of direct connections among the neocortical regions, enabling access to the memory independent of the hippocampus.”
We learn the lyrics of a favorite song by singing and/or playing the song over and over. That alone may not be enough to get that song into the coveted long-term memory area of our brain, but if we have an emotional connection to the song, such as a painful breakup or a life-changing event that occurred while we were listening to the song, this may help. Think of ways to make your study session memorable and create connections with the information you need to study. That way, you have a better chance of keeping your study material in your memory so you can access it whenever you need it.

### Obstacles to Remembering

If remembering things for exams or for learning new disciplines were easy, no one would have problems with it, but students face several significant obstacles to remembering, including a persistent lack of sleep and an unrealistic reliance on cramming. Life is busy and stressful, so you have to keep practicing strategies to help you study and remember successfully, but you also must be mindful of obstacles to remembering.

### Lack of Sleep

Sleep and college don’t always go well together. You have so much to do! All that reading, all those papers, all those extra hours in the science lab or tutoring center or library! And then we have the social and emotional aspects of going to school, which may not be the most critical aspect of your life as you pursue more education but are a significant part of who you are. When you consider everything you need to attend to in college, you probably won’t be surprised that sleep is often the first thing we give up as we search for more time to accomplish everything we’re trying to do. That seems reasonable—just wake up an hour earlier or stay up a little later. But you may want to reconsider picking away at your precious sleep time.
Sleep benefits all of your bodily functions, and your brain needs sleep time to dream and rest through the night. You probably can recall times when you had to do something without adequate sleep. We say things like “I just can’t wake up” and “I’m walking around half asleep.”
In fact, you may actually be doing just that. Lack of sleep impairs judgment, focus, and our overall mood. Do you know anyone who is always grumpy in the morning? A fascinating medical study from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) claims that sleep deprivation is as dangerous as being drunk, both in what it does to our bodies and in the harm we may cause to ourselves and others in driving and performing various daily tasks.Nir, Yuval, et. al. “Selective neuronal lapses precede human cognitive lapses following sleep deprivation,” Nature Medicine volume23, pages 1474–1480 (2017). UCLA Health. “Drowsy Driving.” https://www.uclahealth.org/sleepcenter/drowsy-driving
If you can’t focus well because you didn’t get enough sleep, then you likely won’t be able to remember whatever it is you need to recall for any sort of studying or test-taking situation. Most exams in a college setting go beyond simple memorization, but you still have a lot to remember for exams. For example, when Saanvi sits down to take an exam on introductory biology, she needs to recall all the subject-specific vocabulary she read in the textbook’s opening chapters, the general connections she made between biological studies and other scientific fields, and any biology details introduced in the unit for which she is taking the exam.
Trying to make these mental connections on too little sleep will take a large mental toll because Saanvi has to concentrate even harder than she would with adequate sleep. She isn’t merely tired; her brain is not refreshed and primed to conduct difficult tasks. Although not an exact comparison, think about when you overtax a computer by opening too many programs simultaneously. Sometimes the programs are sluggish or slow to respond, making it difficult to work efficiently; sometimes the computer shuts down completely and you have to reboot the entire system. Your body is a bit like that on too little sleep.
On the flip side, though, your brain on adequate sleep is amazing, and sleep can actually assist you in making connections, remembering difficult concepts, and studying for exams. The exact reasons for this is still a serious research project for scientists, but the results all point to a solid connection between sleep and cognitive performance.
If you’re interested in learning more about this research, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) is a good place to start. One article is entitled “College Students: Getting Enough Sleep Is Vital to Academic Success.”

### Downside of Cramming

At least once in their college careers, most students will experience the well-known pastime called . Consider the following scenario: Shelley has lots of classes, works part-time at a popular restaurant, and is just amazingly busy, so she puts off serious study sessions day after day. She isn’t worried because she has set aside time she would have spent sleeping to cram just before the exam. That’s the idea anyway. Originally, she planned to stay up a little late and study for four hours from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. and still get several hours of refreshing sleep. But it’s Dolphin Week or Beat State Day or whatever else comes up, and her study session doesn’t start until midnight—she’ll pull an all-nighter (to be more precise, this is actually an all-really-early- morning-er, but it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it). So, two hours after her original start time, she tries to cram all the lessons, problems, and information from the last two weeks of lessons into this one session. Shelley falls asleep around 3 a.m. with her notes and books still on her bed. After her late night, she doesn’t sleep well and goes into the morning exam tired.
Shelley does okay but not great on the exam, and she is not pleased with her results. More and more research is showing that the stress Shelley has put on her body doing this, combined with the way our brains work, makes cramming a seriously poor choice for learning.
One sleep researcher, Dr. Susan Redline from Boston, says, “Sleep deficiency can affect mood and the ability to make memories and learn, but it also affects metabolism, appetite, blood pressure, levels of inflammation in the body and perhaps even the immune response.”Redline, Susan https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Sleep/health-hazards-linked-lack-sleep/story?id=16524313
Your brain simply refuses to cooperate with cramming—it sounds like a good idea, but it doesn’t work.
Cramming causes stress, which can lead to paralyzing test anxiety; it erroneously supposes you can remember and understand something fully after only minimal exposure; and it overloads your brain, which, however amazing it is, can only focus on one concept at a time and a limited number of concepts all together for learning and retention.
Leading neuroscientist John Medina claims that the brain begins to wander at about 10 minutes, at which point you need a new stimulus to spark interest. That doesn’t mean you can’t focus for longer than 10 minutes; you just have to switch gears a lot to keep your brain engaged. Have you ever heard a speaker drone on about one concept for, say, 30 minutes without somehow changing pace to engage the listeners? It doesn’t take much to re-engage—pausing to ask the listeners questions or moving to a different location in the room will do it—but without these subtle attention markers, listeners start thinking of something else. The same thing happens to you if you try to cram all reading, problem-solving, and note reviewing into one long session; your brain will wander.

### Determining When/What to Memorize

In the realm of learning and studying, some conditions warrant memorization as the most effective way to work with information. For instance, if you are expected to have a working knowledge of conversational French or Spanish, you will have to memorize some words. Simply knowing a long list of terms isn’t going to help you order food in a café or ask for directions in a foreign country because you also need to understand the other language’s grammar and have some sort of context for what needs to be said from your vocabulary list. But you cannot say the words in a different language if you cannot remember your vocabulary. From this scenario, you can assume that memorization is a good fit for some parts of language acquisition.
If you approach all your studying as memorization, you will find your course tests difficult at best. Most college courses will ask you to apply, analyze, evaluate, and create with the information you are learning, which is discussed earlier in the chapter. Merely being able to memorize so that you can recognize or recall information will not get you far in your college classes.
A worthwhile book on memory, thinking, and learning is a short study called Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel. The authors conclude, after extensive research, that our attempts to speed up learning and make studying easier are not good ideas. Studying is hard work, and it should be. For learning to stick, we need to work hard to pull the information out of our memory and use it by continually pushing ourselves to accomplish increasingly difficult tasks.


# Studying, Memory, and Test Taking

## Studying

Questions to Consider:
1. How do you prepare yourself and your environment for successful studying?
2. What study strategies will be most beneficial to you?
3. What are learning preferences and strategies and how can you leverage those to your advantage?

### Preparing to Study

Studying is hard work, but you can still learn some techniques to help you be a more effective learner. Two major and interrelated techniques involve avoiding distractions to the best of your ability and creating a study environment that works to help you concentrate.

### Avoiding Distractions

We have always had distractions—video games, television shows, movies, music, friends—even housecleaning can distract us from doing something else we need to do, like study for an exam. That may seem extreme, but sometimes vacuuming is the preferred activity to buckling down and working through calculus problems! Cell phones, tablets, and portable computers that literally bring a world of possibilities to us anywhere have brought distraction to an entirely new level. When was the last time you were with a large group of people when you didn’t see at least a few people on devices?
When you study, your biggest challenge may be to block out all the competing noise. And letting go of that connection to our friends and the larger world, even for a short amount of time, can be difficult. Perhaps the least stressful way to allow yourself a distraction-free environment is to make the study session a definite amount of time: long enough to get a significant amount of studying accomplished but short enough to hold your attention.
You can increase that attention time with practice and focus. Pretend it is a professional appointment or meeting during which you cannot check e-mail or texts or otherwise engage with your portable devices. We have all become very attached to the ability to check in—anonymously on social media or with family and friends via text, chat, and calls. If you set a specific amount of time to study without interruptions, you can convince your wandering mind that you will soon be able to return to your link to the outside world. Start small and set an alarm—a 30-minute period to review notes, then a brief break, then another 45-minute study session to quiz yourself on the material, and so on.
When you prepare for your optimal study session, remember to do these things:
1. Put your phone out of sight—in another room or at least some place where you will not see or hear it vibrate or ring. Just flipping it over is not enough.
2. Turn off the television or music (more on that in the next section).
3. Unless you are deliberately working with a study group, study somewhere alone if possible, or at least far enough away from others to not hear them talking.
If you live with lots of other people or don’t have access to much privacy, see if you can negotiate some space alone to study. Ask others to leave one part of the house or an area in one room as a quiet zone during certain hours. Ask politely for a specific block of time; most people will respect your educational goals and be willing to accommodate you. If you’re trying to work out quiet zones with small children in the house, the bathtub with a pillow can make a fine study oasis.

### Study Environment

You may not always be in the mood or inspired to study. And if you have a long deadline, maybe you can blow off a study session on occasion, but you shouldn’t get into the habit of ignoring a strong study routine. Jane Austen once wrote in a letter, “I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.” Sometimes just starting is the hard part; go ahead and begin. Don’t wait around for your study muse; start working, and she’ll show up.
Sometimes you just need to plop down and study whenever and wherever you can manage—in the car waiting for someone, on the bus, at the Little League field as you cheer on your shortstop. And that’s okay if this is the exception. For long-term success in studying, though, you need a better study setting that will help you get the most out of your limited study time. Whatever your space limitations, carve out a place that you can dedicate to reading, writing, note-taking, and reviewing. This doesn’t need to be elaborate and expensive—all you truly need is a flat surface large enough to hold either your computer or writing paper, book or notes, pens/pencils/ markers, and subject-specific materials you may need (e.g., stand-alone calculators, drawing tools, and notepads). Your space should be cool or warm enough for you to be comfortable as you study. What do you have now that you consider your study space? Is it set up for your optimal success?
If it is at all possible, try to make this area exclusive to your study sessions and something you can leave set up all the time and a place out of the way of family or roommate traffic. For example, Martina thought setting up her study station on the dining room table was a good idea at first. The view was calming, and the table was big enough to spread out and could even hold all her materials to study architectural drawings, her favorite subject. But then she needed the table for a small family dinner party, so she had to find a cubbyhole to hide away her supplies with some needing to go into a closet in the next room. Now she was spread out over multiple study spaces. And the family TV was in an adjacent room, not visible from the table but certainly an auditory distraction. Martina ultimately decided to forgo her view and create a smaller station in an unused bedroom so she could leave her supplies out and have a quieter area. You may have to try out numerous places to determine what works best for you. In fact, if you have a few comfortable places to study, such as the library, a coffee shop, and your room, you will increase your ability to recall the information you are studying because these different environments will help you encode the information you are studying in multiple ways. The belief that you must study in the same place and in the same way is a myth: Varying your study spaces and your study strategies can help you encode, store, and retrieve the information more effectively.
Wherever you study, try to make it a welcoming place you want to be in—not an uncomfortable environment that makes you want to just do the minimum you must complete and leave. You should include the basics: a good chair, a work surface, and whatever materials, books, notes, and other supplies you need for the subject you are studying.
You don’t need an elaborate setting, but you may want to consider including a few effective additions if you have the space:
1. small bulletin board for often-used formulas
2. encouraging quotes or pictures of your goal
3. whiteboard for brainstorming
4. sticky notes for reminders in texts and notes
5. file holder for most-used documents
6. bookshelf for reference books

### Debunking Study Myths

### MYTH #1: You can multitask while studying.

How many times do you eat in the car? Watch TV while you write out a grocery list? Listen to music while you cook dinner? What about type an e-mail while you’re on the phone with someone else and jot down notes about the call? The common term for this attempt to do more than one thing at a time is multitasking, and almost everyone does it at some point. On some days, you simply cannot accomplish all that you want to get done, so you double up. The problem is, multitasking doesn’t really work. Of course, it exists, and we do it. For instance, we walk and chew gum or drive and talk, but we are not really thinking about two or more distinct things or doing multiple processes simultaneously. You are far more likely to miss important details, and far less likely to retain information, if you try to multitask when studying.

### MYTH #2: Highlighting main points of a text is useful on its own.

Another myth of studying that seems to have a firm hold is that the idea of highlighting text—in and of itself—is the best way to review study material. It is one way, and you can get some benefit from it, but don’t trick yourself into spending too much time on this surface activity and consider your study session complete.
Annotating texts or notes is a first-step type of study practice. If you allow it to take up all your time, you may think you are fully prepared for an exam because you put in the time. Actually, you need much more time reviewing and retrieving your lessons and ideas from the text or class lecture as well as quizzing yourself to accomplish your goal of learning so you can perform well on the exam. Highlighting is a task you can do rather easily, and it makes you feel good because you are actively engaging with your text, but true learning needs more steps.

### MYTH #3: Studying effectively is effortless.

There is nothing effortless, or even pleasant at times, about studying. This is why so many students don’t put in the time necessary to learn complex material: it takes time, effort, and, in some cases, a little drudgery. This is not to say that the outcome, learning—and maybe making an A—is not pleasant and rewarding. It is just that when done right, learning takes focus, deliberate strategies, and time. Think about a superstar athlete who puts in countless hours of drills and conditioning so that she makes her work on the field look easy. If you can also enjoy the studying, the skill development, and the knowledge building, then you will most likely be more motivated to do the work.

### Study Strategies

Everyone wishes they had a better memory or a stronger way to use memorization. You can make the most of the memory you have by making some conscious decisions about how you study and prepare for exams. Incorporate these ideas into your study sessions:
Practicing effective memorization is when you use a trick, technique, or strategy to recall something—for another class, an exam, or even to bring up an acquaintance’s name in a social situation. Really whatever works for you to recall information is a good tool to have. You can create your own quizzes and tests to go over material from class. You can use mnemonics to jog your memory. You can work in groups to develop unique ways to remember complex information. Whatever methods you choose to enhance your memory, keep in mind that repetition is one of the most effective tools in any memory strategy. Do whatever you do over and over for the best results.

### Using Mnemonics

Mnemonics (pronounced new-monics) are a way to remember things using reminders that are linked to the content you are trying to remember. Did you learn the points of the compass by remembering NEWS (north, east, west, and south)? Or the notes on the music staff as FACE or EGBDF (every good boy does fine)? These are mnemonics, specifically , or words created out of the first letters of the terms you are trying to recall. When you’re first learning something and you aren’t familiar with the foundational concepts, these help you bring up the information quickly, especially for multistep processes or lists. After you’ve worked in that discipline for a while, you likely don’t need the mnemonics, but you probably won’t forget them either.
There are a variety of mnemonics that work well for college students, but use them with caution as they are good for learning basic information and not complex material. In addition to acronyms, here are a few that college students have used to help them recall.
1. Acrostic sentences. These are sentences formed from the first letter of each item you are trying to remember. They work best for remembering steps in a process. For example, “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” is an acrostic sentence for the steps in the order of operations when solving an equation. Each word starts with a letter that corresponds to another word in the steps: Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, and Subtraction.
2. Chunking. Grouping items together is another way to improve recall by organizing them by a characteristic they have in common. For example, you may need to remember the countries in Africa and could organize them by relative size, location (north, south, etc.), or letter they begin with.
3. Memory palace. This mnemonic device is more complicated than most because it requires a few steps to create, but many students have found that this strategy works well for them in classes where they must recall a large amount of content. The memory palace, also called a Roman Room or the loci method, requires you to think of a physical space, real or imagined, in which you can “place” items you need to recall within that location. For example, if you are thinking of your own bedroom as the space and you need to remember the parts of speech, you may place “verb” in front of the door to your room as you will need to use an action to open it up. Then, your bed may be where you place “noun” because it is where you add actions such as sleep, read, and daydream. The mirror on your wall may be where you place the term “adjective” because you look into it every day to see what you look like: sad, happy, sleepy.

### Practicing Concept Association

When you study, you’re going to make connections to other things—that’s a good thing. It shows a highly intelligent ability to make sense of the world when you can associate like and even somewhat unlike components. If, for instance, you were reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and you read the line that he had been in Birmingham, you may remember a trip you took with your family last summer through Alabama and that you passed by and visited the civil rights museum in Birmingham. This may remind you of the different displays you saw and the discussions you had with your family about what had happened concerning civil rights in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s in the United States.
This is a good connection to make, but if your assignment is to critique the literary aspects of King’s long epistle, you need to be able to come back to the actual words of the letter and see what trends you can see in his writing and why he may have used his actual words to convey the powerful message. The connection is fine, but you can’t get lost in going down rabbit holes that may or may not be what you’re supposed to be doing at the time. Make a folder for this assignment where you can put things such as a short summary of your trip to Alabama. You may eventually include notes from this summary in your analysis. You may include something from a website that shows you information about that time period. Additionally, you could include items about Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and death and his work for civil rights. All of these elements may help you understand the significance of this one letter, but you need to be cognizant of what you’re doing at the time and remember it is not usually a good idea to just try to keep it all in your head. The best idea is to have a way to access this information easily, either electronically or in hard copy, so that if you are able to use it, you can find it easily and quickly.

### Generating Idea Clusters

Like mnemonics, idea clusters are nothing more than ways to help your brain come up with ways to recall specific information by connecting it to other knowledge you already have. For example, Andrea is an avid knitter and remembers how to create complicated stitches by associating them with nursery rhymes she read as a child. A delicate stitch that requires concentration because it makes the yarn look like part of it is hiding brings to mind Red Riding Hood, and connecting it to that character helps Andrea recall the exact order of steps necessary to execute the design. You can do the same thing with song lyrics, lines from movies, or favorite stories where you draw a connection to the well-known phrase or song and the task you need to complete.

### Three Effective Study Strategies

There are more than three study strategies, but focusing on the most effective strategies will make an enormous difference in how well you will be able to demonstrate learning (also known as “acing your tests”). Here is a brief overview of each of the three strategies:
1. Spacing—This has to do with when you study. Hint: Don’t cram; study over a period of days, preferably with “breaks” in between.
2. Interleaving—This has to do with what you study. Hint: Don’t study just one type of content, topic, chapter, or unit at a time; instead, mix up the content when you study.
3. Practice testing—This has to do with how you study. Hint: Don’t just reread content. You must quiz or test your ability to retrieve the information from your brain.

### Spacing

We all know that cramming is not an effective study strategy, but do we know why? Research on memory suggests that giving yourself time in between study sessions actually helps you forget the information. And forgetting, which sounds like it would be something you don’t want to do, is actually good for your ability to remember information long-term. That’s because every time you forget something, you need to relearn it, leading to gains in your overall understanding and “storage” of the material. The table below demonstrates how spacing works. Assume you are going to spend about four hours studying for a sociology exam. Cramming would have you spending most of those four hours the night before the exam. With spacing, on the other hand, you would study a little bit each day.

### Interleaving

One particular studying technique is called interleaving, which calls for students to mix up the content that is being studied. This means not just spending the entire study session on one sort of problem and then moving on to a different sort of problem at a later time.
If you take the schedule we used for the spacing example above, we can add the interleaving concepts to it. Notice that interleaving includes revisiting material from a previous chapter or unit or revisiting different types of problems or question sets. The benefit is that your brain is “mixing up” the information, which can sometimes lead to short-term forgetting but can lead to long-term memory and learning.

### Practice Testing

You can do a practice “test” in two ways. One is to test yourself as you are reading or taking in information. This is a great way to add a little variety to your studying. You can ask yourself what a paragraph or text section means as you read. To do this, read a passage in a text, cover up the material, and ask yourself, “What was the main idea of this section?” Recite aloud or write down your answer, and then check it against the original information.
Another, more involved, way to practice test is to create flashcards or an actual test by writing a test. This takes more time, but there are online programs such as Quizlet that make it a little easier. Practice testing is an effective study strategy because it helps you practice retrieving information, which is what you want to be able to do when you are taking the real test.
One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else, so ask a friend or family member if you can explain something to them, and teach them the lesson. You may find you know more about the subject than you thought or you may realize quickly that you need to do more studying. Why does teaching someone else rank as one of the most effective ways to learn something? It is a form of practice testing that requires you to demonstrate you know something in front of someone else! No one wants to look like they don’t know what they are talking about, even if your audience is another classmate.

### Recognizing Strengths/Weaknesses of Preferred Study Approaches

Most people don’t learn to ride a bicycle by reading a manual; they learn by watching others, listening to instructions, and getting up on the seat and learning to balance—sometimes with training wheels or a proud parent holding on, but ultimately without any other support. They may fall over and feel insecure, but usually, they learn to make the machine go. Most of us employ multiple methods of study all the time. You usually only run into trouble if you stubbornly rely on just one way to learn or study and the material you’re studying or the task you want to accomplish doesn’t lend itself to that preference. You can practice specific strategies to help you learn in your preferred learning approach. Can you think of a time when the way you usually study a situation didn’t work?
When deciding on a study approach, consider what you know about the material and the type of knowledge it involves. Is it a group of concepts related to problem-solving methods, such as those you’d find in a physics class? Or is it a literary analysis of a novel? Consider as many elements as possible about the material -- and the way the material will be assessed -- to help choose a study approach.
You should also consider your instructor’s preferred method of teaching and learning. Watch the way they teach lessons or convey necessary course information to the class. Do they almost always augment lessons with video clips to provide examples or create a memorable narrative? Do they like to show you how something works by demonstrating and working with their hands—for instance, assembling a piece of equipment by taking it apart and putting it back together again? Echoing their teaching approach may help your studying approach. That doesn’t mean you have to change your entire learning approach to match your instructors’ methods. Many instructors understand that their students will have different ways of learning and try to present information in multiple ways.

### Practicing Active Continuous Improvement for All Preferences

You can certainly learn through specific approaches or according to specific preferences, but you will also need to adapt to different situations, skills, and subject areas. Don’t limit yourself to thinking you can only learn one way or another. That mindset induces anxiety when you encounter a learning situation that doesn’t match your preference. What if your instructor only uses a spoken lecture to teach concepts in your chemistry class, and you consider yourself a visual learner? Or what if the only method presented to you for learning mathematical computations is to see videos of others working problems, and you’re more hands-on? You may have to concentrate in a different way or devise other strategies to learn, but you can do it. In fact, you should sometimes work on the styles/preferences that you feel are your least favorite; it will actually strengthen your overall ability to learn and retain information.Newton, Phillip M., & Miah, Mahallad. “Evidence-Based Higher Education—Is the Learning Style ‘Myth’ Important?”
Dr. Stephen Covey, famous leadership coach and businessman, called this attention to knowing and honing all your skill sets, not just your favorites, sharpening the saw. He advised that people should be aware of their strengths but should always hone their weaknesses by saying, “We must never become too busy sawing to take time to sharpen the saw.”Covey, Stephen. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People ® https://www.franklincovey.com/the-7-habits.html For instance, in the chemistry lecture example, you may need to take good notes from the spoken lecture and then review those notes as you sketch out any complex ideas or formulas. If the math videos are not enough for you to grasp difficult problems, you may ask for or find your own problems for additional practice covering that particular mathematical concept to solve on your own.