Actually Helpful Study Techniques
Before starting, I would like to say that every technique does not work for every person. A technique may not help you out, but it'll be advantageous for another person, and vice versa. You should always keep looking for study tips that aid you with your studies.
1. The A.S.P.I.R.E system -
A - Approach/attitude/arrange -
Approach - approach your studies with a positive mental state.
Attitude - your attitude towards your studying should be optimistic.
Arrange - your environment and your daily routine to lower the number of distractions.
Select - the tasks you want to complete.
Survey - your content to get an idea of what you are going to be studying.
Scan - the content to see what is important and what is not, also to see what you understand and what you don't.
P - Piece together the parts -
Do a quick review of what you have studied, either with yourself or with other people.
Make a summary of what you learned/understood.
I - Investigate/inquire/inspect -
Investigate - sources of information other than the ones you already have.
Inquire - from professors and textbooks what you did not grasp.
Inspect - again what you could not understand.
R - Reexamine/reflect/relay -
Reexamine - the content to see if there is still something that needs to be understood or memorized.
Reflect - on the study matter, to see if it can be applied anywhere, etc.
Relay - the information to fellow students.
E - Evaluate/examine/explore -
Evaluate - your results on tests/exams.
Examine - your progress towards your achievements.
Explore - people/resources from which you can learn if you still don't comprehend well.
Review your notes frequently.
Write down questions about the material you are studying.
Also, write down important terms.
Write a question or term on the back of an index card. On the front of the index card, write an answer for the question, or an explanation for the term. Shuffle the index cards so that answers can't be figured out due to the location of the index cards. Look at the top card and try to give the required answer. If you know it, then put the card at the bottom of the deck. If you don't know it, look at the answer, and put it a little down in the deck so that you come back to it later on. Repeat the steps until all the information is memorized.
3. The Feynman technique:
There are four steps to this learning technique:
Think of something you want to learn. Take a blank piece of paper, at the top of it write the name of the topic you want to learn about.
2 - Pretend you are teaching said concept to a student
Write down an explanation of that topic on that page. But try to make it as simple as possible and use easily structured English, as if you were explaining to a person much younger than you. When you clarify the subject in simpler words and phrases, you will notice what you understand in the material and what you don't.
Most of the time, we learn information and definitions written in complicated terms. Here, we do not understand our material, rather just cram off the page. If you instead focus on the material after simplifying it, you'll be able to see what part you comprehend and what you don't. So that, when in a simple form, you can learn and memorize better after understanding.
3 - Identify gaps and go back
When you encounter 'gaps' i.e. when you forget something while explaining, can't explain something, or don't know how the info is connected with eachother, can you begin to re-understand and re-learn those 'gaps'.
Read your source material again and re-learn the part where you got stuck. Learn it in such a way that you are capable of explaining it in easy terms and will not explain it in complicately structured sentences.
If you are now able to do your explanation in simple words, then that means you understand the concept. And if not, then your knowledge is not actual 'knowledge' and is only a sort of 'cramming' that you did of difficultly phrased statements.
To put it simply, review what you didn't know when you had been analyzing. Go back to the source material, re-read the pinpointed parts (the parts you got wrong when elucidating), and re-learn them. Now, write the matter in simple English again (after having re-learned it).
Make your notes using this technique for most of your subjects that are written in the textbook complicately. Assess these notes regularly to see that none of the sentences is confusing like the source text. If you read and the notes are still complex to you, then that is a good sign of you needing to redevelop your comprehension. To be even further sure that you know it well, you can explain it to another person - ideally, a younger person or someone who has little to no awareness of the subject.
