Ah, spring. Even though I haven’t been in school for fift–um, several–years, it used to be in spring that this young man’s fancy turned to thoughts of…final exams.
Final. Exams. The phrase has a kind of closing-of-the-crypt-doors solemnity, doesn’t it? But, we were told, final exams need not be a time of panic, of frantic cramming and sleepless nights. Not if you knew how to study.
Which brings me to my topic. This week, in a nostalgic mood, I decided to study study.
Many students study not so much to learn as to avoid the adverse effects of not studying. However, learning is, really, what school is all about. (Really!)
There are two main types of memory, short-term and long-term. Short-term memory is for information “in use”–for example, a phone number we’ve just looked up. It lasts only about 20 seconds and is very limited: most people can repeat a seven or eight-digit number but not a 10 or 11-digit one.
In school, you use short-term memory to take notes, keeping information in your brain just long enough to get it down on paper. If you don’t get it down, it’s probably gone forever, unless, through intense concentration, you install the lecturer’s words in long-term memory.
Four different types of long-term memory have been identified: recollection, recall, recognition and relearning, all of which come into play when you’re faced with an exam.
Recollection is “the reconstruction of events or facts on the basis of partial cues”–hopefully the partial cues provided in the exam question.
Recall is “active and unaided remembering.” This is even better than recollection; if you can recall exactly what the teacher said, you’re going to nail the question.
Recognition is “the ability to correctly identify previously encountered stimuli as familiar.” This isn’t much use in an exam, since it amounts to, “Photosynthesis. Gee, that sounds familiar.”
Relearning refers to the fact that material learned once and then forgotten is easier to learn a second time. You can’t do this during an exam, but you may while studying for it.
The flip side of remembering is forgetting: even stuff in long-term memory slips way with time. In a rather nasty twist, from a student’s point of view, forgetting may be increased by interference from other material learned–especially if the information is similar. (Let’ s see, the volume of a cylinder is pi times…no, wait, that’s the volume of a sphere…or is it the area of a circle?)
One key to maximizing remembering and minimizing forgetting is organization. For example, it’s harder to remember a list of unrelated words in arbitrary order than to remember the same words grouped by type: animal, vegetable, mineral. That’s why outlining works well: it forces you to organize information in a fashion most useful to you.
Another famous method of remembering things is mnemonics, such as “Richard of York gains battles in vain,” for the colours of the spectrum, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. A related technique is acronyms: I remember the spectrum with the acronym “ROY G. BIV.”
Different techniques work best for different students. A recent magazine survey of top students revealed a variety of approaches, although with some constants: good note-taking skills and a devotion to doing daily homework assignments. (Why do I have the feeling this column is going to find its way to the bulletin boards of an awful lot of teachers?)
Suppose, however, having neglected study for nightly binges of Parcheesi, you get to exam time and realize you’ve got to learn everything at once. Can you?
That depends. Some people can cram a lot of information into their brains just for the exam, and pass it. But unless that cramming is followed by review (not likely!), most of that information is gone soon after. And cramming is a bad for another reason: fatigue interferes with your brain’s ability to process information.
I speak with the voice of experience, because in university I was always too busy playing Dungeons and Dragons to study, which meant that come exam time, I had some catching up to do. Every year I’d console myself with the knowledge that at least I’d soon be finished with schoolwork for the rest of my life.
So naturally I’ve committed myself to writing a 750-word science essay every week–which I’ve just handed in.
My grade is up to you.
