7 Tips for Studying

1. Take Care of Yourself

You are not going to be able to study effectively if you don’t look after yourself.

Nobody can work well if they are ill or not eating properly. Take a look at our pages Caring for Your Body and Keeping Your Mind Healthy for some ideas about how you can stay healthy and happy and make the most of your study time.

2. Find The Right Time and Place

Everyone has their own ideal way of working.

Some people find they work best in the morning, some in the afternoon, and others find evening is their ideal time. You also need to experiment with level of noise. You may find that a quiet library is best, or you may prefer some music playing.

3. Ask for Help When You Need It

When you’re at school, teachers are trained to assess who is struggling and offer them extra help. But once you’re studying independently, the only one who is going to assess whether you can cope is you.

Yes, your course tutors may notice that you’re having trouble, but they’re not going to say anything unless you do.

It is up to you to ask for help when or if you need it.

4. Make a Study Plan

Time is precious. Nobody is more aware of this than the poor student who hasn’t studied a thing until the night before an exam. By then, of course, it’s too late. The key to breaking the cycle of cramming for tests is to think ahead and create an effective study plan. Not only will this help you get organised and make the most of your time, it’ll also put your mind at ease and eliminate that nasty feeling you get when you walk into an exam knowing that you’re not at all prepared. As the old saying goes, fail to prepare and be prepared to fail.

5. Test Yourself

It’s a strange thing, but sometimes simply entering an exam environment is enough to make you forget some of the things you’ve learned. The solution is to mentally prepare for the pressure of having to remember key dates, facts, names, formulas and so on. Testing yourself with regular quizzes is a great way of doing this. And don’t worry of you don’t perform brilliantly at first – the more you practice, the better you’ll become. Don’t believe us? Then just take a peek at what the experts have to say.

6. Go Over Your Work Regularly

Our memories work in two ways: short-term and long-term.

When you first learn something, it is generally stored in your short-term memory, where it has a strict ‘shelf life’. If you keep reading and reviewing that idea or piece of information, it will be transferred to your long-term memory, and can be accessed indefinitely.

Research also shows that it’s easier to remember something if you can link it to other information that you already know.

7. Be Positive

Your attitude has a big impact on the level of study that you get done and the effectiveness of your learning process. If you keep saying that you can’t do it and won’t commit to the idea of learning, attempting to study is only likely to become more difficult. Instead, focus your mind on positive outcomes and on how you can use your own individual strengths to achieve them. When you think positively, the reward centres in your brain show greater activity, thereby making you feel less anxious and more open to new ideas.