Once you have created an effective learning environment and a detailed study plan, you can begin to review the material that will be tested on the GED. But how can you remember all that you need to know? This article reviews several key learning strategies, including effective note-taking, outlining, and memory techniques.
How successful you are at studying usually has less to do with how much you know and how much you study than with how you study. That's because some study techniques are much more effective than others. You can spend hours and hours doing practice tests, but if you don't carefully review your answers, much of your time will be wasted. You need to learn from your mistakes and study what you don't know. The best method is to use several of the following proven study techniques. They can help you make the most of your learning style and store information in your long-term memory.
Asking Questions
Asking questions is a powerful study strategy because it forces you to get actively involved in the material you want to learn. That, in turn, will help you better understand and remember the material. And there's another important benefit—asking and answering your own questions will help you be comfortable with the format of the exam.
For example, when you are reading a short story, you can ask yourself questions like those you might see on the GED, such as:
- What is the theme of the story?
- What is the narrator's attitude toward her mother?
- Why is the setting important?
- Which adjective best describes the narrator?
- What is the narrator's main motivation for her actions?
- What is the significance of the empty basket?
- What is the narrator's relationship to the woman in the window?
Similarly, if you are analyzing a diagram of the human ear, you can ask:
- What is immediately below the auditory tube?
- What is the scientific name of the ear drum?
- Where is the incus located?
- What parts of the ear must a sound wave travel through to get to the pharynx?
- How many bones are in the middle ear cavity?
Of course, you may not be able to answer all of your questions right away. You may need to do some extra work to find the answer.
Highlighting and Underlining
Here's a good habit to get into: Whenever you read, have a pen, pencil, or highlighter in your hand. That way, as you read, you can mark the words and ideas that are most important to learn or remember. Highlighting and underlining help make key ideas stand out. Important information is then easy to find when you need to take notes or review.
The key to effective highlighting or underlining is to be selective. Don't highlight or underline everything. If you highlight every other sentence, nothing will stand out for you on the page. Highlight only the key words and ideas.
But how do you know what you should highlight or underline? As you study for the GED, you should highlight or underline:
- words that are defined in the text
- main ideas
- key details that support or explain main ideas
- words, grammar rules, and other items that you need to remember
- ideas or concepts that are new to you
- unfamiliar vocabulary words and idiomatic expressions (so that you can look them up and learn their meaning)
Taking Notes
Taking notes is a terrific study strategy. It helps you understand, organize, and remember information. The secret to taking good notes is knowing what you should write down. As with highlighting, the key is to be selective. Take notes about the same things you would underline, especially main ideas, rules, and other items you need to learn. Whenever possible, include examples so that you can see the concept clearly. For example, below are some notes on the structure of an animal cell:
Animal Cell Structure
Three parts: plasma membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus.
Plasma membrane: Isolates cell from the environment, regulates movement of materials in and out of cell, communicates with other cells.
Cytoplasm: Includes water, salts, and enzymes that catalyze reactions. Contains organelles such as mitochondrion, which capture energy from food molecules.
Nucleus: Includes nuclear envelope (isolates nucleus), nuclear pores (regulate the passage of materials, including water, ions, proteins, and RNA; controls flow of information to and from DNA), chromatin (DNA and associated proteins) and, at innermost core, nucleolus (site of ribosome assembly).
Making Notes
Making notes is often as important as taking notes. Making notes means that you respond to what you read. There are several ways you can respond (talk back) to the text:
- Write questions. If you come across something you don't understand, write a question. What does this mean? Why did the author choose this word? Why is this the best title? How is this different from previous examples? Why is the information in thischart important? What was the impact of this discovery? Then, answer all your questions.
- Make connections. Any time you make connections between ideas, you improve your chances of remembering that material. For example, if you are studying the Industrial Revolution, you might make connections between a number of key inventions by imagining how cotton might move from a farm in Georgia to a shirt in a British store: cotton gin, steamboat, steam engine.
Similarly, when you are reviewing the Constitution, you might make a connection between the Nineteenth Amendment (granting women the right to vote) and your only female cousin's age (she's 19). (If you then picture your 19-yearold cousin in a 1920s flapper outfit in a voting booth, you'll have a much better chance of remembering which amendment granted women the right to vote.)
- Write your reactions. Your reactions work much like connections, and they can help you remember information. For example, if you are reviewing the Constitution, you might note the following:
Why did it take 50 years after the Fifteenth Amendment, granting people of all races the right to vote, for the Nineteenth Amendment, granting both genders the right to vote, to be passed?
Outlining and Mapping Information
Outlines are great tools, especially for sequential learners. They help you focus on what's most important by making it easier to review key ideas and see relationships among those ideas. With an outline, you can see how supporting information is related to main ideas.
The basic outline structure is this:
- Topic
- Main idea
- Major supporting idea
- Minor supporting idea
- Additional supportive information
Outlines can have many layers and variations, but this is the general form. Here are the notes for animal cell structure presented in outline format:
Animal Cell Structure
- Three parts: plasma membrane, cytoplasm, nucleus
- Plasma membrane
- Isolates cell from the environment
- Regulates movement of materials in and out of cell
- Communicates with other cells
- Cytoplasm
- Includes water, salts, and enzymes that catalyze reactions
- Contains organelles
- Example: mitochondrion, which captures energy from food molecules
- Nucleus
- Nuclear Envelope
- Isolates nucleus (like plasma membrane)
- Nuclear Pores
- Regulate the passage of materials into the nucleus
- Water, ions, proteins, and RNA
- Controls flow of information to and from DNA
- Chromatin
- Clusters of DNA and associated proteins
- Nucleolus
- Site of ribosome assembly
Mapping information is similar to making an outline.The difference is that maps are less structured. You don't have to organize ideas from top to bottom. Instead, with a map, the ideas can go all over the page. The key is that you still show how the ideas are related. The next page shows the same example in a map instead of an outline.
Making Flash Cards
Flash cards are a simple but very effective study tool. First, buy or cut out small pieces of paper (3 × 5 index cards work well). On one side, put a question or word you need to learn. On the back, put the answer. You can use different colors and pictures, especially if you are a visual learner.
For example, if you are studying the history of life on Earth, you could make flash cards like the following:
Memorizing vs. Remembering
Imagine that you need to memorize a list of homonyms for the GED. You go over and over the list until you are sure you know them. Then you take a practice exam. Suddenly, you can't seem to remember the list. The words are used in context (within sentences), and they are not in the order you memorized. You fail the practice exam.
What happened? The problem is not that you didn't study. The problem is that you didn't study wisely. You focused on memorizing, not remembering. You didn't learn the words in context. You didn't use the words or practice them by writing sample sentences with the correct spelling. That's why, on the exam, you couldn't remember them.
It's true that "repetition is the key to mastery." Try repeating a new phone number over and over, for example. Eventually you will remember it. But it may only stay in your short-term memory. In a few days (or maybe even a few hours), you are likely to forget the number. You need to use it to really learn it and store the information in your long-term memory.
While there are some tricks you can use to help remember things in the short term, your best bet is to use what you are learning as much as possible and as soon as possible. For example, you can use new vocabulary words or idioms in your conversations throughout the day; you can also teach the new word or idiom to others. Likewise, you can share something you learn about world history or life sciences with a friend.
Here are some general strategies to help you remember information as you prepare for the GED:
- Learn information in small chunks. Our brains process small chunks of information better than large ones. If you have a list of 20 scientific vocabulary words, for example, break that list into four lists of five words each.
- Spread out your memory work. Don't try to remember too much at one time. For example, if you break up those 20 words into four lists, don't try to do all four lists, one after another. Instead, try studying one list each day in several short, spaced-out sessions. For example, spend 20 minutes in the morning studying the new words. Review the words again for 15 minutes at lunchtime. Take another 15 minutes while you are waiting at the bus stop on your way home. Add another ten-minute review before bed. This kind of distributed practice is very effective. It's also a sneaky way to add more study time to your schedule. And, it provides lots of repetition without tiring your brain.
- Make connections. You learn best when you make connections to things you already know. (See "Make connections".)
- Use visual aids, especially if you are a visual learner. Help yourself "see" in your mind what you need to learn. For example, if you are studying the Great Depression, you can imagine yourself living in that time period. This can help you remember many facts about the Great Depression.
- Use your voice, especially if you are an auditory learner. Say aloud what you need to learn; you can even sing it if you like, especially if you can make a rhyme (for example, you might say "speak, spoke, spoken; break, broke, broken" to memorize some irregular verbs). Anytime you are learning grammar and structure, say a sample sentence aloud several times. Try different variations, too. For example, if you are trying to memorize the irregular past tense of a verb like tear, you can say a sentence like:
My dress has a tear. It's torn.
Her dress has a tear, too. It's also torn.
Thinking of the sentence helps; hearing it aloud helps even more. And if you also write it down, you take an extra step toward sealing the material in your memory.
- Use mnemonics. Mnemonics are tricks to help you remember information. The most common trick is to create an acronym. Say you need to remember a list of words. Take the first letter from each word, then make a word from those letters. For example, imagine you want to remember the three main civilizations of the early Americas: the Aztecs, the Incas, and the Mayans. You could use the acronym AIM to help you remember.
Another trick is to make a sentence using the first letter (or first two letters) of each word you want to remember. For example, if you want to memorize the order of the major historical ages—Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic—you could write the following sentence:
I promised Patty my car.
Of course, the sillier the better (the easier to remember). So you might try something crazy, like:
Prancing pandas make cookies.
There are all kinds of other mnemonic tricks you can make up on your own. For example, to distinguish between the homonyms where and wear, you might remember the sentence:
You wear an earring in your ear.
If you remember that wear includes the word ear, you can remember which meaning goes with which word.
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