Mastering Study Skills: Key Strategies for Long-Term Retention

Key Highlights

• How you can master study skills that can help you in long-term retention, not just short-term memorization.
• The science behind learning and memory to provide insights into how our brains process and store information.
• Understand how effective study skills like spaced repetition, active learning, interleaved practice, and visual aids help effective long-term retention.
• Learn practical tips for mastering time management and study planning, including creating a study schedule and prioritizing tasks.
• Understand the importance of self-testing and explore effective techniques to reinforce your knowledge and boost retention.

Introduction

Long ago, a student came to me and asked how she could get more out of her study efforts. I told her that she must sharpen the axe before she tries cutting a tree. It is the same thing I tell any student, even today. If you want to learn more in less time and retain it for longer, you must use a sharp axe. And what does sharpening the axe mean for you? It means that you must master effective studying skills.

Mastering study skills for long-term retention is a time-tested investment of your time to get the most out of your time. That can also put you on a fast track to academic success and prevent that burnout and anxiety that may be waiting for you around the corner if you don’t study effectively in the limited time that you get.

All of us have 24 hours in a day, and students are no different. In fact, they need to better manage their time. In my experience, the students who focus on the quality of their study efforts generally fare better than the ones who just clock endless hours studying without any time and learning management skills.

If you are convinced that you want to improve your long-term retention by sharpening your axe, i.e., by mastering study skills, read on for some valuable insights, practical tips, tricks, tools, science-backed methods, and hacks.

The Science of Learning and Memory

What should you do so that your brain remembers something over a long time when it learns something anew? Effective study habits come from this science. Learning something new leads to your brain making or remaking neural connections.

Once these connections are made, their strength and life depend on how and how often you engage with the subject matter. By using repetition, active recall, and other study strategies discussed here, you can make these neural pathways stronger. That, in turn, makes it easier to remember and make sense of the information later.

Proven Study Techniques for Effective Learning

To promote long-term retention, let’s look at some study methods that use this information. These methods can help you understand better, remember more, and improve your grades.

When my students ask me about the study methods they shall master so that they remember the lessons for a long time, I tell them about spaced repetition and visual aids. Those are the ones with the biggest bang for the buck.

Use Spaced Repetition to Forget Less

According to Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve, we forget 70% and 90 of things over 24 hours and a week, respectively, if we don’t study them. Spaced repetition, a method suggested by Hermann Ebbinghaus himself, is an antidote to this tendency. It helps us remember better by reinforcing information at the right times before we forget most of it.

Spaced repetition helps us by reminding us to look at what we need to remember just before we forget it. By spacing out our review sessions, we help our brains pull information from long-term memory. This helps to make memory stronger and improve retention.

Apart from reviewing study materials or notes, you can also use flashcards, study schedules, or apps that support this method. The end goal is to review the material regularly and slowly increase the time between study sessions.

Active Learning Strategies

Just like you can’t learn how to play a sport by passively watching it from the sidelines, you can’t get a lot from your study sessions without being actively involved. Though we need to read the topics once or twice for familiarity, active learning should not be confused with repeatedly reading text hoping to memorize it. It involves including methods and techniques in learning to help you understand and remember better. Here are some useful active learning strategies:

• Meaningful study notes: You can arrange the study notes by topic and include examples and problems that may help you review the course material.
• Teaching Others: By teaching someone else, you will put your thoughts in order and express the information clearly, making it a powerful revision cycle also for you. You will get a chance to explain ideas to others and clarify their doubts.
• Summarization: Write down the main points in your own words in your notes during or right after you complete a study session or attend a lecture. It can help you revise the key ideas, resulting in better retention.

The Benefits of Interleaved Practice

Interleaved practice, also called distributed practice, allows you to mix different subjects during your study time. Make a study schedule that regularly switches over to different topics and subjects, for example, after every 25 minutes. Interleaving may sound like bad advice, but this method helps you learn and remember better, especially when you are dealing with complex concepts (Newport, 2007).

When you distribute your study time in this manner, your brain pulls information from different areas and connects them, thus building stronger neural connections. This results in a deeper understanding of the topics and an ability to use your knowledge in different ways. Keep in mind that distributed practice isn’t multitasking.

Visual Learning and Retention

A picture is worth a thousand words, and visual learning brings that adage to life. Our brains naturally work well with visual information. You shall liberally use pictures, diagrams, and other visual tools to help understanding and memory.

It has worked especially well for some of my students, who assimilate information visually much faster than they would from plain text. Their grades improved when they started adding visual elements to their study material to make it more engaging.

Incorporate Visual Aids into Study Sessions

Visual aids are lively learning tools that aid active learning. Pictorial information represents a lot of information compared to text. They can be basic diagrams and charts or more advanced ones like:

• Mind Maps: Mind maps can help you deal with tough concepts and topics. This visual organization method helps with understanding and retention by linking different concepts to a central idea.
• Flashcards with Images: If you add images, diagrams, or even real-life examples to your flashcards, something I recommend to many of my students, you will make them more effective. Visual cues add meaningful information to them without adding unnecessary bulk.
• Color-Coding: This simplest of methods can improve how you organize your study materials. By using different colors for different categories, concepts, or important terms, you will focus on them in your review sessions.

Use Mnemonics for Better Memory Recall

Think of mnemonics as personalized shorthand, like tricks and tools. They work great for remembering a chain of things. Using them, you can learn and relearn lists, sequences, or challenging ideas in your own way. To make your mnemonics, use something fun, creative, and easy to remember, like a catchy phrase, rhyme, or picture.

Mnemonics act as helpful clues during this information retrieval. They are a fun way for you to remember structured information. Didn’t we all use the acronym ROYGBIV (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) to remember the color sequence of the rainbow?

Time Management and Study Planning

Effective time management and a good study schedule will build the foundation for you to effectively use the techniques discussed till now. Without a good plan and the ability to implement it, students struggle to cope with the pressures of academic life. You can carefully craft a practicable study plan and hold yourself accountable to the timelines and milestones.

Create a Study Schedule That Works For You

Think of your study schedule as a friendly personal assistant who assists you with tasks on your calendar and gets you through the day. I work with my students to help them craft their study schedules, but I insist that they make it themselves as it is highly specific to them.

You must account for other commitments, like classes, activities, and jobs. Prioritization and regular review of the schedule also play a key role in how well the schedule will serve you.

It will help you avoid procrastination and be regular in the long run. Don’t forget to include regular breaks to help you stay focused and avoid burnout.

Prioritizing Tasks for Maximum Efficiency

If you find yourself regularly missing important tasks, you should start prioritizing them. It will help you get the most out of your time to better meet commitments and deadlines. The inputs will come from your academic calendar and study plans. The output will be the tasks you successfully complete and the goals you achieve within the timelines you set for them.

If you maintain a sharp to-do list and review it regularly, you can order your assignments, quizzes, and exams based on importance and urgency.

How Long Can You Study Before You Stop Retaining Information?

Most research suggests that taking regular breaks reduces study fatigue and helps longer-term retention. I encourage the freelance online tutors in my company to employ the Pomodoro technique, which generally recommends taking a 5-minute break every 25 minutes. I have observed greater attention from both the tutors and students with it.

You can also self-regulate your breaks, but they don’t appear to be as effective as the ‘Pomodoro‘ breaks. Studying continuously for long hours isn’t helpful for long-term retention for most.

The Importance of Self-Testing

If you regularly test yourself, you can fine-tune your study strategies. By its very nature, it is different from a regular study session. It gets your brain to work on retrieving information under stressful conditions, which helps to connect your brain with what you’ve learned. So, It will also help you get used to exam pressure.

If you often test yourself, you can identify the areas that require your focus. Many of my students got stronger in their weak areas only after the realization. It is better to score poorly in a simulated practice test than in your final exam.

How Regular Quizzing Can Aid Retention

The best way to prepare for the actual quizzes, tests, and exams is to self-test. It forces your brain to look for information in a way nothing else can. The result is an increased capacity for active recall. This proactive approach even helps you face your fears using practice problems.

Don’t see self-testing as something alien to your ongoing learning process. Instead, when you make self-quizzing a part of your study habits, you are really working with the material. Active recall resulting from self-testing covers a major chunk of processes involved in long-term retention. I encourage my students to regularly use flashcards, make quizzes from their own study notes, and even try online quiz sites.

Implement Effective Self-Testing Techniques

If you practice good self-testing techniques, you make a habit that helps you practice retrieving information under controlled conditions like a quiz or exam. Many of my students have overcome exam fear by regular self-testing. These are some ways to help you get the most out of self-testing:

• Create a Dedicated Study Space: Your brain will find it hard to focus if you do it in a place that has many distractions. A special study area, quiet and comfortable, is the kind of environment you want to use for self-testing.
• Use a Variety of Question Formats: Rather than making it monotonous, mix up things. Don’t just stick to one format of questions. Use different types of questions, like MCQs, short answers, fill-in-the-blank, true-and-false, and long-form answers, to prepare yourself for a variety of test formats.
• Take Practice Tests: I would also suggest taking timed, full-length practice tests. This will not just tell you about the areas that require more of your time. It will also teach you a lot about strategizing to make the most of the time you will get in the actual tests and exams. You can get help from a seasoned online tutor from MEB to review the test results and solutions.
  

Summary

If you want to master study skills, it helps to know how we learn and how memory works. Techniques like spaced repetition and active learning are at the top of the pile as far as memory retention study skills go. Visual aids and mnemonic devices are great tools for increasing memory recall.

Using those study skills with a time-managed study schedule, prioritization techniques, and regular self-testing can enhance what you retain from your time studying. If you regularly quiz yourself using self-testing techniques, your brain will get better at active recall under simulated test environments.

Hard work has its own role, but it is important to be smart and adopt effective study strategies. If you find yourself forgetting lessons and concepts when you badly want to recall them, don’t blame yourself. The brain only has a certain capacity to retain information. However, by applying these strategies, you can achieve long-term retention and do well in school. You can use some or all of these and master the ones that work for you!

Additional Resources

• Making the Grade: How to Study at the College Level
• Studying 101: Study Smarter, Not Harder
• Brain-based Techniques for Retention of Information

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Most Effective Study Technique for Long-Term Retention?

There are proven research-backed study strategies that can help you remember things for a long time. Combining spaced repetition with active learning methods is a great way to retain information. Tools and techniques like flashcards, mnemonics, and self-testing reinforce memory. Fit them into a well-planned study schedule and manage your time well for long-term retention.

How Often Should I Review Material for Best Retention?

Though it may vary from person to person, a good rule of thumb is to start by reviewing it within 24 hours. Then, review it again after a week and once more after a month. After that, the review frequency would depend on which subjects and topics you consider to be your strengths and weaknesses.