Don’t you feel that, after summer, when you start university, you have the enormous inconvenience of having to STUDY?
We forget about this word in summer, little by little it loses its meaning with the lack of practice.
The RAE defines to study as ‘exercising the comprehension to reach or understand something’.
In this basic concept, we can find 3 interesting ideas:
- The part of exercising, that implies a dynamic task with certain frequency
- Training, that suggests an intellectual activity where we make our thoughts work and we relate new content with knowledge we already had
- The comprehension, that indicates that studying means to understand something, giving the knowledge some meaning
Now, how should we study?
Many insist that there aren’t any formulas or recipes, but it isn’t true. There are as many ways to study as people that study. Each person must find a good studying method and adapt it to their capabilities.
For this, we must part from some basic ideas:
Reading: when we start studying a text we must start by reading it quickly and then reading it a second time paying more attention. Here is where you must identify the main ideas and differentiate them from the least important ones.
After these previous steps, some people prefer to summarize the text, others simply repeat it once and again. Some even prefer to record themselves and listen to the recording on the subject.
Some people, who have good visual memories, do this marking the text in different colours. This allows them to quickly identify the main ideas and distinguish them, for example, from anecdotes.
All this taken into consideration, it is also necessary to emphasize on the importance, not only of memorizing ideas, but relating them to what we have previously learnt.
It’s important to know that memory is a fundamental part of study, without elements to associate the concepts that we are trying to learn, it’s impossible to study correctly.
Using your memory to study doesn’t mean studying by heart.
Memorizing without understanding isn’t useful, you will forget everything you thought you had learnt. If you think back, you will realise that you have often learnt many things by heart without having studied them: film quotes, cards, lyrics… things that you can remember practically perfectly by repetition or out of interest
And that is the key to studying: interest, desire to learn and making the subjects’ information yours.
The last advice: to study, it’s important to choose the most comfortable moment of the day for you, except for night time, which is made to rest and recover your energy. Always study in a good atmosphere, alone or with friends, and put your willpower into it.
If with this advice you still have problems studying, don’t doubt in talking to one of RUT’s workers. We will do everything in our hand to help you.