How to memorize things that we learn in school/colleges?

In General term, learning is the routine activity that helps in the development of our behavior and thinking ability. In scientific term, learning means development in the processing capacity of our brain whereas in psychological term, it is step- wise process that result in permanent transformation of behavior and knowledge. Moreover, there can be difference in way of expressing the process of learning, but the core meaning always remains the same. It is development of brain to receive and process information, thus bringing changes in our behavior and knowledge.

During childhood, our brain is not completely developed to understand and grasp things spoken by the adult. But as we grow up, we learn different things thus preceding in the path of development.

Though we learn lots of things in everyday life, but the motive of academic learning turns towards different direction. It is done to bring improvement, to set up goal in life, to do something progressive for country, society or the family and most importantly, to become a better human being.

Learning is highly enhanced by our grasping capacity. The things we learn turns out to be effective only when we are able to remember it for longer period of time. Students in any level of their academic curriculum grasp things differently, some are slow learner whereas others tend to quickly pickup lines delivered to them. Similarly, there are students who keep up their focus in the class for certain period of time and then they tend to lose interest in the delivered information, thus losing control over all the important facts.

 Below are few strategies that help to learn and remember information’s delivered in the class:

1.      

\    Listening: This is a basic mechanism of learning. Until and unless, ears are not kept open; our mind can never process the information that is provided to us.Yes, listening means you hear what the teachers dictate or deliver during the class hour. Though sometimes we tend to lose concentration, still if we keep hearing, even 10% of the information is processed by our brain that later makes it easy to re-construct the details of the topic.

 

 

      Reviewing: Once our classes are over, it does not mean that we are finished with today’s work. The job is not yet complete, because we need to review the chapters/topics that are focused in the class. Re-viewing doesn’t means mugging up every points noted during the class hour, rather reviewing refers to having a look at the respective topic. This will makes you certain about the things that is covered in the class, so that you became aware about the information loaded in that particular section. It best works when done on daily basis.

2.       Highlight: After a period of time, may be a week or later; when the topic is covered and before the time you are assigned work on that particular topic, highlighting the important points would be fruitful. Now, everything included in textbooks is not an important material for our use. There may be many points that are not relevant for your topic. So, highlighting or outlining the important section will save time for you in upcoming days.

3.       Making notes: Highlighting is done not only from a single text-book or notes; rather it may involve number of mediums for gaining the required information. Therefore, properly structuring of these notes is important to get all the information engraved at a single place. Once this task is done, you really don’t need to look for text-books, run to libraries and most importantly, borrow notes from friends to learn things. So, learning can be made effective with the notes that is written by you.

4.       Watching videos and ppts: Presently, most of the schools and colleges have made the process of learning easier thorough PowerPoint presentations or videos that is revealed in the class. But it would be worth the effort if you come back home and have a look at videos or ppts on the respective topic in your PC or laptop. You may fail to get every details of videos/ppt in the classroom but on the other side, if you prefer to do it personally at your residence, even the slight details can be locked in the brain.

Human brain learns and remember things quickly through vision, hearing and experience. In our day to day life, beside the academic field we tend to learn lots of things quickly and easily just because we see it, hear it or experience it. We can easily remember what we ate in the lunch if asked a day after, but what a particular teacher taught in the classroom? We will usually take time to recall that information back. So, applying logic and trick of daily life in academic curriculum would be of great help to remain updated with the syllabus and memorize things easily without lots of hard work. Moreover, it’s not your brain, but it’s your learning style that is to be improved in order to make learning and memorizing worthy.