41 Learning Methods That Benefit a Lifetime

Chapter 28 Memorizing Articles with Pictures (3)
Ⅰ.After reading a paragraph, draw the main points.If you draw key points while reading, you will find that some key points are not important.

Ⅱ.Don't draw too many points.Draw too many points on the book, but you can't see the point.In principle, the emphasis on each page should not exceed 20% of the information on the page.

Ⅲ.Focusing helps to make reading notes.

IV.Use double lines, curved lines or yellow highlighters to draw the most important concepts, only draw one most important concept in each paragraph, and only draw lines at its key points.If the main concept is scattered in several paragraphs, it can be marked with numbers such as 1, 2, 3, etc. to facilitate memory.

V.Draw important details with a single line.Usually do not draw more than two important details in each paragraph, and only draw lines at its key points.

VI.The most important concepts can be marked with "※" in the blank space of the book to facilitate review.

VII.The definitions of important academic terms can be marked with circles.

VIII.Important details such as examples, cause and effect, steps, characteristics, etc. can be noted in the margins of the book with words such as "example", "cause", "effect", "step" and "feature" to facilitate reference.

Retell the material and test the effect of reading
The fourth step, Recite, narrates and elaborates. In this step, you can restate or explain the materials you have read to yourself or your study partner, and you can also answer various questions you raised earlier.Better to say it out loud.This process can help learners clarify their understanding and mastery of the material they read. The psychologist's suggestion is to share the material with peers or repeat it out loud by themselves.It is more effective for learning than not doing it.

This stage is called recitation (recording, summarizing or quiz) in other learning methods.They are all about retelling—going over what you have just read or learned from cover to cover, either through oral retelling, taking notes in some way, or by answering questions.

Without this stage of retelling, within a day or two, you will forget 80% of what you read.Only with immediate retelling, you may remember 80% or more.

①Close the book (or put it aside).In some subjects, especially the sciences, you may spend half of your studies closing your books when you have to prove what you understand and remember.

② Try to answer the most important questions, and try to use your own language to illustrate when answering.When examining your retelling situation, it is a good way to come up with a model.Models can become progressively more complex as the amount of comprehension and retelling increases.

③ Use charts, curves or block diagrams and other intuitive expression methods as much as possible.If these visual forms are important in themselves, they are best described from memory.

④ Grasp more details on the points you want to remember (your subconscious will find more details).

⑤ Write down the questions you still have to answer or the terms you don't fully understand.

⑥Open the book again, browse this section or this chapter again to check the understanding and accuracy of your answers and visual representations, and further supplement the question list that you need to answer.

⑦If necessary, the two stages of questioning, reading and retelling can be carried out again, specifically focusing on: Ⅰ.Clear up the difficulties. Ⅱ.Perfect understanding.

⑧Restate the main points and main details of the whole chapter, specifically two pages can be used:

Ⅰ.One page breaks down the entire chapter into keyword models, and each keyword should remind us of the main points and ideas associated with it.

Ⅱ.Another page collects specific material such as formulas, definitions, statistics, diagrams, and questions that cannot easily be put into a model.You can associate these materials with the model using numbers or symbols.

⑨Look for opportunities to repeat or apply what you have learned.Each retelling not only helps you remember new information, but also reinforces what you already have.

Timely review materials to achieve long-term memory

The fifth step, Review, review (should also be accompanied by comments) is a necessary condition for memorizing the materials you have learned.Revisiting and reflecting on the previous steps allows you to notice how different parts of the material fit together, and it also helps develop learners' panoramic understanding of the learning content.

Regular review will consolidate what is memorized.That is, it converts information initially stored in short-term memory into long-term storage.Furthermore, it ensures that stored information can be easily retrieved if necessary.

If you have used the SQ3R method, each review should only take a few minutes, this is because you have to review what you have learned over and over again, rather than learning what you did not master the first time or re-doing what you have forgotten. Learn it again.

①The first review should be done immediately after the study.It should usually only take 2 to 5 minutes, because the impression is still fresh in the brain at this time, and the review can catch the information before it slips away.In other words, instant review prevents forgetting.

▲ After completing the retelling stage, rest for 5 to 10 minutes, stretch your shoulders, stand up and walk around, rub your eyes, etc.While you are resting, your brain will make stronger internal connections to what you have learned.

▲ When you start reviewing after a break, you should consider which of the following review methods is more appropriate.

▲You can use the prepared keyword model.First, don't look at the model, see if you can paraphrase the main points at the same time, and check.Then go back and check the main points again to see if you can paraphrase more detailed points at the same time and check again.If a keyword does not lead to the desired information, it means that you need to find a more appropriate keyword instead.

▲If you are re-reviewing the entire chapter you have read, you need to prepare a keyword model that can summarize the entire chapter. When you can retell each main point and sub-point, your brain will re-search and Keyword model associated details.

▲If you have taken notes from a book or a teacher's lecture, you can browse the notes briefly to see how the content of these notes fits with the keyword model.You can use lines, numbers, symbols, etc. to connect the content of the notes to the keyword model.

②The second review should be carried out the next day, so that the information can be strengthened again before the information is gradually forgotten.This review should also only take 2 to 5 minutes.The first review and the second review take a total of 4 to 10 minutes, but it can save you several hours of reviewing before the exam in the future.

③ The third review should be done one week later.The fourth time should be a month later.This not only strengthens the memory, but also provides an account of your own progress in the course.

④Obviously, one last review is needed before the exam.The more effective the previous few revisions are, the less time you will spend revising before the exam and the more knowledge you will gain.

In fact, the above steps may be used in different ways when learning. The teacher has mentioned it, and we may have used it unconsciously.However, the linking of their systems has not been divided into several progressive steps.The most important thing is that there is no corresponding training in this area, so the effect is not very satisfactory. It can only be obtained by self-awareness and enthusiasm for learning.If we can implement this method and persevere, we will be able to receive good results.

Finally, it must also be stated that any learning method is not a panacea, let alone a fixed dogma.The only criterion for testing a learning method is to see whether it is effective for improving your academic performance.Therefore, when choosing and using learning methods, in addition to paying attention to absorbing other people's experience and learning those recognized excellent methods, we must also emphasize that in the learning practice, we must transform and innovate them according to individual specific conditions.

Learn the five-step reading method of classical Chinese.

[-]. Pre-reading

Its main goals are: read the pronunciation accurately, pause accurately, and grasp the rhythm; understand the general knowledge of the author's works; grasp the basic content of the article as a whole.

The specific method is: ① consult the reference book, and combine the annotations to phoneticize the new words and words.

② Read the text clearly and accurately according to the teacher's model reading or text recording.

③ Combining text annotations and language reference books, understand the general knowledge of the author's works.

④Understand the text as a whole by combining preview tips or self-reading tips.

⑤ Grasp the basic content and stylistic features of the article by solving questions and reading the full text.

Second, copying.

Its main goals are: familiarize yourself with the text, self-study doubts, and clarify the key points and difficulties of learning.

The specific approach is:
① Outline or copy the new words, new words and famous aphorisms in the text.

② Sketch or copy the difficult sentences in the text.

③ Record the difficult problems that arise when reading the text.

④ Read or extract (or make a summary, table of contents) the auxiliary materials related to the text.

⑤ Combining the summaries of unit learning, text preview reminders, thinking and exercises, determine the key points and difficulties of learning.

[-]. Interpretation

Its main goal is: through language analysis, to perceive the content of the text specifically, and to grasp the author's point of view, attitude or ideological tendency expressed in the article.

The specific approach is:
①Combined with the context, deeply understand the meaning of difficult words and sentences from the sentence structure and context.

②Analyze the special language phenomenon in the text by using common sense of ancient Chinese.

③Translate (either oral or written) texts or fragments of texts, in order to grasp the text as a whole in depth.

Like to read, eager to read, but never just read.Because there are so many books in the world, there are too many to count.Such a large number of books always meet each other—there are good books that increase our knowledge and broaden our horizons, and there are also rubbish books that tempt us to degenerate.Therefore, when we are reading, we must not "take everything as it is ordered", but choose the most valuable and most suitable reading materials for our needs.

(Engels attaches great importance to reading the original work) On August 1884, 8, German Social Democrat Georg Heinrich Vollmar wrote a letter to Engels, saying that there was a lady who was interested in socialism and planned to study social science, but I don't know which college to enter.Engels replied that it is difficult to answer this question, because every science in the university, especially economics, has been ruined. The key is self-study and mastering effective self-study methods.

Engels said in the letter: "Start from the real classical books, not from the most insignificant briefings of German economics or the lectures of the authors of these readings." From the classical economics of Smith and Ricardo and their schools, to the works of utopian socialism Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen, as well as the works of Marx, at the same time, we must constantly strive to come up with our own insights.” That is to say, to systematically Read the original work, because "studying the original work itself will not let some brief readings and other second-hand information lead you astray."

Judging from the bibliography that Engels has read, although he also read a large number of popular pamphlets, newspapers, etc., he spent the most time and read the most classic original works.He believes that systematically reading original works is a correct reading method for research.In this way, it is possible to understand the process of the generation, development and improvement of a theory, not only to grasp the basic principles comprehensively and systematically, but also to grasp its development process and understand the whole picture of the theory.

What books should we read?This is the "screening and selecting the best reading method" to be introduced below.

Expo - comprehensive reading - intensive reading is a process of gradually screening and selecting excellent reading.Exposition (browsing) is the basis for screening the amount of reading. There is no screening without browsing a large number of books, but it is not conducive to the development of specialized knowledge if it only stays at the browsing stage.From the books you have browsed, select the best part to read through, you can understand the outline of the books and decide to choose, and then choose the best ones from the books you have read through for intensive reading.Only on the basis of a large number of browsing can the selection be accurate and precise, and only after intensive reading of some books can the in-depth study of the main direction of attack be guaranteed.Only by browsing under the guidance of the main direction of intensive reading, can you know what you want and not be boundless.This kind of browsing under the guidance of the main attack direction and in-depth selection on the basis of browsing are the principles of screening and selecting excellent books.

(End of this chapter)