5 Study Techniques to Improve Your Grades

Are you already getting a bad feeling just hearing about studying, or your guilty conscience is getting to you telling you that you really need to get started or you will get a bad grade? However, you are still missing the motivation to get started or simply don’t know how? Well let me tell you, you are most certainly not alone with this feeling. Rest assured that studying doesn’t have to be uncomfortable, and there are some effective strategies that will help you improve those grades and likewise increase your knowledge and make you feel more confident. Videos, portable learning environments, and online support are only some new assets that can increase the effectiveness of your study time. So let’s take a look at 5 study techniques to help improve your grades.

Schedule

Your exam is likely not announced a day beforehand, you’ll learn about it in advance. Therefore it is important that you make a schedule to work on the content, review it, and actively study for it. Make a plan for yourself, examine how you learn best, and start planning accordingly. Think of the resources you need like a computer, videos, paper, pencil etc. and set exact dates in your calendar. This will make it easier for you to stick to study times and decrease the likely event of procrastination. Remember cramming may get you through it, but you won’t get the top score you are hoping for or actually learn something about the topic.

Study Environment

Another factor influencing the effectiveness of your study is the location, the environment in which you choose to study. Evaluate possible locations and consider your personal learning needs in regards to noise level, resources, and company. This will help you determine the optimal learning space for you. This could be a quiet library, a common area with your friends, your room with music on, or the living room with your parents to quiz you or help you when you are stuck. Whichever environment you end up in, make sure it suits YOUR NEEDS.

Nuggets

Cramming is not an effective strategy and research suggests that receiving information in nuggets is of greater benefit and increases the chance of memorization and retention. A perfect way to support this is through explainer videos like mysimpleshow videos. They provide important information in videos under 2 minutes. During that time, key concepts are defined, examples are stated, and the connection between theory and practice is made.

Personal Relevance

Probably the most valuable technique to really get those grades up? HAVE ( at least a little) FUN and MAKE IT RELEVANT for yourself. Learning something out of context, without interest is useless. Even though a concept, a topic, or a subject may seem dull to you, find something within it that you are interested in and challenge yourself to relate topics to one another and make the connections. Create your own stories, mnemonics and anecdotes to each concept you have to study. By taking it from the abstract level to a more personalized level, you may not only discover something of interest, but you deepen your learning and understanding and likewise boost the chance to get a good grade.

Testing

Last but not least, test yourself. This technique has many different facets. For instance, you could use the knowledge you have and create your own video stating the key facts and relating text to visuals. Hence you not only test your own knowledge, you continuously create connections between the knowledge and visual representations, which is shown to have a positive impact on memorization and retention.