How to study hundreds of pages in the shortest time possible
First of all a disclaimer: No, you can not study them in one or two days. But depending on the topic and how fast you can read, you can do it in one or two weeks!
Factors on which your needed time depends on:
How long you need to read a page
How easy it is for you to understand the text
Basic explainations before I go into detail:
There are two ways of studying: global and and analytical studying
Analytical studying means you really go into detail, try to understand every single word and try to get as much information in the topic as possible. You are studying the topic very precisesly and need the small details to understand it. This is great to understand the topic profoundly.
Global studying means you barely go into detail, but rather try to get an overview over the topic, its most important aspects, and the basic connections. This is great to realize what the most important connections and facts of this topic are, and in what relation the facts stand to each other.Ā
1. The first thing you need to do is read through the whole text and make an excerpt. This step will take you the longest, some days or even some weeks. Basically the best way to do this is to follow these steps:
Look through what you have to study. Hopefully it has chapters, if not, try to split it up into chapters of about twenty pages. This amount works at least for me best. If you have a short concentration span, rather make more chapters with less pages. If you have a long concentration span, make less chapters with more pages per chapter.
Set a realistic goal how many chapters you can read and excerpt in a day. Try to stick to this goal. If the text is easy to read and the font a normal size, one needs about one to two minutes to read a page. If it is difficult to understand or a small font, you may need three to five miutes, so keep this in mind when setting your daily goals.
This goal can vary from day to day. If you know that one day you have a long and exhausting lecture, set the goal lower than for a day were you wonĀ“t have any distractions.Ā
Make sure you make this plan early enough. The later you do it, the higher is the chance you have not enough days to get through the text!
Now read a chapter and try to understand as much as possible of it. Focus on it as best as possible, because this is one of the most important steps. If you have problems staying focused, here is my masterpost on how to stay focused.
If your concentration is lost after reading this chapter, take a short break. Then, and it is really really important that you only do it afterwards you read the whole chapter, do an excerpt of this chapter. If you do not know what an excerpt is or how to make on, click here.
By doing the excerpt at the end of the chapter, you revise it for the first time already.
Do this for every chapter you need to study. If you have time left, you can revise the excerpts you already made, but your focus should be on getting through the whole text once.Ā
2. Read thoroughly through your whole excerpt. While doing this, try to recall as many details of the original text that you didnĀ“t write down. Not only read the excerpt, but focus on the relations and connections, realize the meaning and consequences of what you are reading, understand their impact on the subject matter and the topic. DonĀ“t learn it by heart, instead understand it and try to comprehend it with a logic that allows you to recall the realtions without studying them intensively. Do this at least once, if you have the time better do it twice. The harder the topic is for you, the more often you should do this step. This step should take you about one or two days.
3. Skim over your excerpt. Set your focus on the keywords you wrote down in colour and try to recall the most important keywords associated with them. If you have enough time, repeat this once or twice, but you do not have to if you feel you are already very good.This step should take you some hours or a minimum of one hour.
4. Skim over the headings and subheadings of your excerpt. While doing this, try to recall the words you focused on in step three. Only the most important keywords, realtions and connections should cross your thought in this step. This step should take you less than an hour.
After step four, you will be prepared for your exam! Just try to calm down, and most importantly, do not try to recall every little detail now. It will only stress you and give you the feeling that you cannot recall them, which is more often than not totally false. Everytime I used this strategy, I could recall most of the details when writing the test! Also do not revise right in front of the test. You will only confuse yourself and start to panic.
The concept behind this method:
Remeber I tought you the basics of global and analytical studying in the beginning? Well, these are exyctly the background for this method.
Step 2 = semi - analytical
Pretty easy once you see it this way, right?
It helps a lot of people to walk around while doing step 3 or 4!
Good luck everyone and hope this helps!
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