chocolate bars: piano music in the background, notecards with definitions that are too long, carefully chunks study time, calm studying, light blue highlighters, works to their strengths
milkshakes: soft pop music, furiously scribbled notes on study guides, studying during all available free time after leaving it to the last minute, quick, fast-paced studying, pink sharpies, knows their limits
cherry soda: slow rap from headphones, memorizing class notes and adding new annotations, studies the weekend before the test for six hours, structured studying, red pens, perfected their study methods three years ago
pixie stix: humming along to EDM and Lo-fi songs, studying a friend’s quizlet, studied the night before for a maximum of one (1) hour, barely completed studying, keyboard stickers, works well under pressure
lucky charms: classic rock from expensive speakers, making study guides that get used by the whole class, studying begins a week before the test or earlier, unnecessarily thorough studying, mechanical pencils, knows more than the teacher at this point
cotton candy: today’s hits playing on a alarm-clock radio, writing on a whiteboard to memorize spellings, impromptu study groups during free periods, laughing, fun studying, neon gel pens, self-motivated student
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Disclaimer:
Before I even begin this post I want to say that these are suggestions and if you have a method that works better than these, by all means, keep with it (I do have to say that experimenting is always a good and fun thing and you may find other ways that work just as well, therefore varying the way you study and making it less of a “chore”).
Ask yourself: how do I usually study?
Do you write things over and over, do exercises, explain to other people, record yourself and listen to eat over and over, schematize the material, …?
Does it work? Do you learn the material easily when you follow your usual study method?
http://vark-learn.com/the-vark-questionnaire/ (temporarily unavailable, will update, in the mean time, you can just type “learning style” or “study style” on your favourite search engine)
They have different types of learning processes but together they complement each other so I’d suggest taking them both.
Test them out!
Take a few materials you find harder and try to study them according to each styles (I’d say to focus on the one(s) that matched you on the tests above but you can try them all). Also, preferably do this when you have some time because the style might not work for you.
Choose one or more that work
Do keep in mind that different subjects might require different study methods and also you might work with different styles at once because they tend to, sometimes, mix!
Generally, there exist the following learning styles:
Aural/Auditory
You remember/learn best by listening to what others say, repeating info out loud, discussing ideas, …
Visual
You remember/learn best by looking at things like pictures, summaries, words, diagrams, etc
Kinesthetic/Tactile
You learn by doing, touching, gesturing, basically by getting physical
Read/Write (Verbal)
Very straight forward: the more you write and read the things you’ve written, the higher the chances to learn something
Logical/Analytic
You tend to follow steps, and keep a very sequential way of learning (for example action-reaction: if something does this, then that happens)
Global
(this method is not like other since it only refers to the way you look at things while studying, combine it with other methods)
You tend to look at the whole of things, and essentially study several things at the same time.
Also, the following might influence you:
Social
You prefer working in (small) groups – You study better when you get with some people and you discuss and “teach” each other
Solitary
You prefer working by yourself and maybe even teach yourself a lot of things.
Tips on what to do for each method.
If you are an Auditory learner:
Record yourself/Record lectures and play them on the go, when you’re sleeping, just everywhere
Talk out loud when reading and repeat, repeat, repeat
If you’re a Visual learner:
Make diagrams, look at pictures, read, make mind-maps…
If you’re a Kinesthetic learner:
Find ways to touch what you’re learning (make models for example)
Gesture when you speak, make motions (this might not work for some subjects so I suggest finding an alternative/secondary style)
If you’re a Read/Write learner
Like the name says: read, read, read and write, write, write. Here, like most cases, the key is repetition.
If you’re a Logical/Analytical learner
Make direction diagrams: find the way things connect and put it in diagram form.
Organize your information and structure it by connecting the info
Ask yourself why you’re studying what you’re studying.
Try to find connections in between materials (how chemistry connects to human/animal physiology, for example)
If you’re a global learner:
Look at the big picture and then go in detail
Sorry for the long post. I did try to give you as much info as I could but still keep it “short”. Hope you liked it. As always if you have any doubts, let me know!
HELLO. i'm a month away from finishing M1, and i know M2 is the year everybody starts studying for the USMLE and things get dark and scary. but i was wondering what your personal take was on attending lectures? so many med students on forums are like "lectures are a waste. stay home and study for boards". which i find odd because so much of the stuff i retain is because i've attended lectures. different people different strategies? what are your thoughts? what works for you?
Hey friend!! Sorry I got back to you so late in the game!
I think it totally depends on you. If what your retain is mostly from lectures, do it! I was a lecture-going girl. I needed to see the lecturers move and speak (I'm a visual and kinesthetic learner) so just listening to a podcast or reading a textbook just didn't do it for me.
But as you said, people have different strategies. I am like you, and I dig lecture :)
how i trick my brain into euphoric states or something like that
I end up doing this thing a lot where I buy something that I think is where I'm at, and it turns out to be just a bit too exhausting to use at the moment, even if technically I could use it if I was really determined. So I just set it aside and only keep up with the regular routine, and the next time I poke it, it feels like I've made a significant improvement.
Generally this doesn't seem like it's in keeping with a lot of the advice you'd get from people learning ... anything, really, because just avoiding something that's hard means you'll never really improve. But that is sort of my way around the feeling of stagnation and demotivation being at this kind of intermediate stage tends to lend to. If I avoid 'checking' for a while on something that's hard, then even the relatively small progress I've made in the past three months feels more exciting. "I couldn't read this before, but now I can, and it seems kind of magical because I wasn't trying!" kind of thing.
As opposed to if I had pressed myself and made myself read these materials then, I probably would have had the same result (or better), but I also would have had a month or so of feeling really frustrated with everything I was trying that might have made me stop everything altogether. It seems like since I keep doing my 'regular' things (vocab/grammar/'conversation' practice), it's kind of okay even though sometimes I stop doing all the 'extras'.
Honestly, I know it's popular and I do think there might be some benefit to it, but immersion is far too difficult for me to sustain without becoming a source of demotivation in itself. I watch English-language programs on TV (well, on Hulu and Netflix) and almost none of my friends know any Japanese, so 99% of my conversations are English, and given I've always had trouble with audio processing and audio learning anyway, especially in the case of understanding music, I don't really go out of my way to find Japanese songs to listen to either.
From my own experience, I feel like it's far more important to like what you're doing and do it at all, even if it seems like you're hardly doing anything (my study time amounts to maybe 5 hours a week max, often less, including time spent 'passively' studying since I often don't do that at all), than to stress yourself out about how much or how well you're studying.
Though I do say this as a learner who assessed the life options available to themself and decided that it's not worth it to me to quit doing everything else I do (work as a programmer, drawing, having any sort of meager social life) to study language(s), just to learn them more speedily. So obviously if your goal is to learn a language to your desired level in a short period of time, it's probably going to make you unhappy to move as slowly as I probably am doing right now (I guess? I don't know how to judge how slowly I'm learning anymore..). Sacrifices always have to be made, but minimizing stress ends up being key for me. And since I just can't have more time, I had to learn to be happy with the idea that I might be forty before I'm really where I want to be in both Japanese and Mandarin.
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