Top TEN Learning Techniques That You Should Be Aware Of

School is for learning. But unfortunately, one of the fundamental things that students don’t really do well in school is knowing how to learn.

Most of us are taught via rote memorizations without being shown the appropriate ways to effectively absorb the material.

Here, in this post, we have come up with a few learning techniques in terms of effectiveness from the best to the worst for your reference. Have a look.

1. Practice Testing

Efficiency – High

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Practice testing has been lauded by experts as one of the most efficient ways of retaining information

These form of assessments do not precisely require an actual test or a testing environment. You may test yourself anytime, anywhere, with anything you like.

2. Distributed Practice

Efficiency – High

It’s the method of dividing your study time over intervals rather than doing it one large chunk.

Studies have pointed to the fact that distributed practice is much better for material absorption and retention. The reason is that distributed practice gives the brain ample time to absorb information by shifting back and forth between the diffused and focused mode of thinking.

3. Elaborative Interrogation

Efficiency – Moderate

It’s the process of forcefully asking yourself the question “why” in an honest attempt to understand concepts.

For example,

If you are studying about the theory of relativity, you should consider asking yourself the question as to “why should E be equal to MC^2?”

This technique can be very effective while studying factual statements. So as you are reading, make sure you ask yourself questions related to the text every couple of paragraphs or so.

4. Self Explanation

Efficiency – Moderate

This one’s a close relative of elaborative interrogation.

The method involves the participant explaining and recording the way one reaches to a conclusion. This is actually a very popular method for solving abstract problems in math classes.

One of the fundamental upsides of this learning strategy is that it can be applied to a variety of tasks and subjects.

5. Interleaved practice

Efficiency – Moderate

It’s the implementation of a schedule of practice that mixes various kinds of problems, or a dedicated schedule of study mixing different types of material in a single study session.

The least useful techniques are:

6. Underlining or highlighting: Marking potentially important points of to-be-learned materials while reading.

7. Rereading: Studying the text over and over again after an initial session of reading.

8. Summarizing: Writing brief summaries of to-be-learned text.

9. Mnemonics: Using mental imagery and mnemonics to remember facts and figures.

10. Text Imagery: Attemptingto form mental images of text materials while listening or reading.

So that sums up this post for now. To know more about the different styles of learning, refer to the below infographic.