[HN Gopher] How to Study (2023)
___________________________________________________________________
How to Study (2023)
Author : Tomte
Score : 115 points
Date : 2024-02-10 16:50 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cse.buffalo.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (cse.buffalo.edu)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| How to study: Start by actually doing it. I see people spend more
| time on study planning than on actually learning. Others spend
| hours trying to determine what will or won't be tested rather
| than just learning the material. See Arnold Rimmer.
| dustincoates wrote:
| It's a really common problem with language learners. They'll
| spend so much time deciding what is the "right" language, what
| are the "best" resources, and how to plan out their study to
| learn as quickly as possible. And they learn so much less than
| the people who just get started.
|
| There's nothing wrong with a little bit of "learning to learn,"
| but you have to be on guard against using it to do the hard
| work.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I used to teach a 300-level class that had many ESL students.
| They asked me how best to learn _proper_ english. I told them
| to watch BBC comedies. Not antiques roadshow but Blackadder,
| Blacks Books and The Thick of It. Or anything with
| Attenborough. Listening to Rowen Atkinson tell a joke would
| improve their language skills far faster than coming up with
| mnemonics to better-memorize the Queen 's order of
| adjectives.
| shikshake wrote:
| It's funny that I took the parent comment as referring to
| programming languages, but it totally works for people
| learning spoken/written languages as well. It really is a
| universal thing.
| bitwize wrote:
| "College... and the _Police Academy_ movies. "
|
| --Cassandra Wong (Tia Carrere), _Wayne 's World_, on how
| she learned English
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| This resonates with me. I feel this pretty strongly whenever
| I see people criticizing Duolingo. I've had so many people
| tell me it's not the best way to learn a language (and
| honestly they're right I'm sure) but on the other hand a few
| years of doing Duolingo for like 5 min a day has given me
| functional enough spanish to get around mexico on my last
| trip. I don't really care if it's not the best way because
| it's something that's easy to get started on and do every day
| consistently.
| lordnacho wrote:
| But that is the actual problem. It's like telling people how to
| lose weight. Eat less. It's true, and it doesn't help.
|
| How do you actually get yourself to do it? What are the
| blockers, and how does one deal with them?
| tomcam wrote:
| Not sure if this helps, but I grew up in a bad place and had
| some unpleasant jobs. For me, the thinking was always
| straightforward. Studying is free, moves me forward
| professionally, and can therefore keep me from falling
| backwards to those times. I have always had horrendous sleep
| problems so studying is just physically tough. But it beats
| the shit out of being poor or harassed by idiot bosses.
|
| Retired now, but his has helped me for all 40+ years of my
| programming & business careers.
| sankumsek wrote:
| Sure - but imagine someone doesn't have your drive or
| experiences of studying being an opportunity climb upwards.
| IMO, individuals that are lacking your desire +
| intentionality would benefit from this.
| tomcam wrote:
| Well I started out not being motivated to study, and not
| knowing how. I had to cobble these skills together as an
| adult.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > but imagine someone doesn't have your drive
|
| Sometimes, the lack of drive is because it's not
| something you really want to do.
|
| Caveat: while not super common, in my case the "not
| having the drive despite being x/y/z good traits" just
| turned out to be undiagnosed ADHD. Dopamine is strongly
| linked with willingness to do tasks and is affected in
| ADHD. Of course this isn't the case for everybody, but if
| you/someone is chronically late/procrastinates, is very
| unorganized/messy, struggles to finish tasks etc - it's
| worth googling executive dysfunction at the very least,
| and then perhaps talking with your doctor.
| ksd482 wrote:
| Good point. And agree that it's insufficient. We must
| understand the why behind it and also learn how to create a
| supportive environment.
|
| For instance, remove all the bad food from sight and replace
| with good ones. Put on shoes and active wear before even
| deciding to do some exercise. And many many other tricks..
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| Like most things, getting the habit is the hard part.
| juujian wrote:
| Another good resource: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-
| how-to-learn
|
| Maybe a bit overkill to work through the whole thing, but there
| is a lot of wisdom in there -- particularly on spaced repetition.
| ksd482 wrote:
| I took this course a few years ago. While I appreciated the
| theory behind it, they left the implementation up to the
| listeners and I couldn't bridge the gap. So it wasn't very
| helpful to me.
|
| Edit: by implementation I mean, translating the abstract theory
| to actual practice. I couldn't figure out what I was supposed
| to do with what I just learned.
| retskrad wrote:
| Speaking of school and academia, my daughter is taking the SAT
| test and me and her are both bamboozled by the passages. The
| texts are very dense and you don't know what detail to take note
| of of or discard so your short term memory is immediately
| overloaded with information. Are there any tips on how she can
| get better at seeing "through" the details so she can get the
| essence of the text to answer the questions? She is reading
| literature and reading The guardian, science articles etc. but
| none seem to help her.
| charliebwrites wrote:
| Read the question first, then read the passage
| jjackson5324 wrote:
| Yep, I got a 2380 on my SATs and the trick was literally to
| just study for the test (overfit on the style of the test)
|
| Look through the questions and many of them mention specific
| passages. Mark those sections in the reading first and then
| read the passage.
|
| Tons of little tricks like that.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| To GP, this is the correct strategy.
|
| Further, to improve thinking, she needs to do a post-mortem
| after every practice session. Go over every question, and
| irrespective of whether she got it right or wrong, she needs
| to figure out how she could have thought better and faster.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Do you have an example on hand? I don't recall SAT questions
| being more than a few sentences but it's been years since I
| took it and I know at least one major section has changed.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| There's a reading comprehension portion where you have short
| readings (about 4-5 paragraphs in length as I recall, but
| it's been a long time) and several questions based on the
| reading. The questions themselves are still short, 1-2
| sentences, but the context for answering those questions is
| not.
|
| The "trick" for me on tests like that was to skim the reading
| and note key items (dates, names, topic terms) and then
| review the questions. Most of the time I could answer them
| directly, but if not I could go back to the reading and find
| the answer. Having skimmed it, I could jump straight to the
| relevant sentence(s).
| wirelesspotat wrote:
| Have you tried studying using the SAT Prep Black Book? It
| explains really well how to study for the test and why the test
| is designed the way it is
| sh4rks wrote:
| Two words: spaced repetition
| ipaddr wrote:
| spaced repetition
| lwhalen wrote:
| s p a c e d r e p e t i t i o n
| spacebuffer wrote:
| s p a c e d repetition repetition
| yoyopa wrote:
| it's better to just learn it the first time and remember it.
| that way you don't have to repeat. that way you don't have to
| repeat.
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| This is a great guide and something I wish I had in my undergrad.
|
| I found that I sort of breezed through elementary and high school
| because I was smart enough to do well enough without any real
| studying. When I got to university, I had a pretty rough first
| year as I discovered quickly that 1) that didn't work anymore,
| and 2) I didn't actually know how to study. I eventually
| developed most of what's in this guide, but it would've been
| great to just have someone tell me this instead.
| dehrmann wrote:
| A lot of what makes college different is most of the professors
| aren't good teachers aren't aren't all that interested in
| teaching.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| Well, that and the material growing far more complicated and
| demanding. I always had peers and online access to excellent
| teachers for any subject, if the professor wasn't cutting it!
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| this really depends on where you go to college. I went to a
| small liberal arts college (not one of the "good" ones), and
| my profs loved teaching. It was their whole job, they did
| almost no research (the cs depts research was all "how to
| teach cs" type research). Seeing how other people experienced
| undergrad, I couldn't be happier.
| lannisterstark wrote:
| This will be fairly unpopular, but we idolize _all_ teachers
| too much. Wait - Let me qualify that. Teaching, like all
| professions, has people who are not good at their jobs or
| just want to coast through. Hell there are doctors who do
| just that, despite medicine education taking a huge part of
| their life - but there are less of them for that reason.
| Teaching doesn't require as significant year sink as medicine
| tends to.
|
| Not all teachers are good. Some are just atrocious ones with
| ego, and a lot are there just for the tenure.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _How to Study: A Brief Guide_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16202123 - Jan 2018 (58
| comments)
|
| _How to Study (2016)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14088786 - April 2017 (71
| comments)
| rr808 wrote:
| I read a book decades ago that had a section on the biological
| parts of learning how the brain forms memories and skills. Eg
| what types of food to eat, how and why to take breaks,
| combination with light exercise, what happens when you sleep. I
| haven't seen anything like this recently - any suggestions?
| dysoco wrote:
| You might be interested in Huberman Lab's podcast, he must have
| some episodes on memory or learning.
| james-revisoai wrote:
| This makes some great points, and Martin Lombell has covered
| something very similar in a rather timeless one hour engaging
| lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlU-zDU6aQ0
|
| Some other diamonds I've uncovered or found while working on
| learning psychology are:
|
| - that students who organise fun and exercise on their schedule
| before studying, get better grades than the students who start by
| deciding when to study;
|
| - that most of us can learn much better with confusing,
| misconception-revealing content, over simple content - we all
| assume too much, as Veritasium covered:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8&list=PL772556F1E...
|
| - in principle, a desirable difficulty of varied content given in
| a medium that isn't lazy (read: you need to be able to get
| feedback, like a quiz, or rewriting, or tutoring) is the key way
| to establish viable long term learning; several other effects
| like Spaced Repetition only have benefits if you can stick to
| your motivation for learning, so you do need to prioritise
| motivation first. The article mentioned learning styles not being
| proven; in fact, one can argue the opposite is true; people who
| learn with mixed, varied content perform the best. But we also
| like the learning type which is comfortable for us; this boosts
| motivation. The problem is that studying students across a whole
| semester and multiple courses rarely happens, and studies
| focusing on how varying the learning content within a 10 minute
| window changed how much students learned, does not replicate the
| value of being familiar with a learning content style, nor the
| cost that things within it might blur. There are pros and cons to
| sticking to one style; variation certainly helps in the short
| term.
|
| - enjoyment(or motivation) matters. Because almost every student
| reports procrastinating early in the Semester (95% in one study,
| and I guess the other 5% didn't fill in the form). A real issue
| with learning research is that it tends to replicate exam period,
| exam conditions, and not the 60-80% of students lives where many
| put off studying, gently attend lectures, socialise and work
| between semester exam seasons. It is in that time that results
| are predetermined, not in the final weeks. That's what my
| learning app for students focuses on, and achievable regular
| cadence of studying in that period; motivating and fun enough to
| engage before your peers are. It splits content like your
| lectures up into memorable emoji-represented exercises, and then
| sends you notifications using the emoji for one exercise each
| day, to get you to just study a little each day. This has big
| downstream effects.
|
| - the quality of learning content is as variable as the quality
| of laptops; some is poor. Key concepts like the "Minimum
| Information Principle" - that questions based on building
| definitions, linking concepts and memorizing should have only one
| short clear answer - are almost necessary if you want to learn a
| serious amount without forgetting what matters and blurring
| answers. Long answers, although they seem better because of
| detail, will drop your grades as you accidentally confuse or
| forget part of them, as compared to separating them into
| different or say follow up cards.
| ford wrote:
| My pet peeve in college was people who "studied" for "12 hours
| yesterday" but never had more than 12 minutes of continuous
| focus.
|
| Personally I have the most success with a couple of hours of
| focus followed by 30-120 minutes of doing anything else (walking,
| billiards, lunch, netflix, whatever)
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| This is my study strategy. You need time to digest what you've
| studied, especially for the topics that are particularly dense
| or just go over your head easily.
| girafffe_i wrote:
| A lot of this is covered and contributes by Adam Grant's "Hidden
| Potential"
|
| Learned that different learning styles was bunk (visual vs
| auditory). Also, experts are the worst teachers, they are far
| removed from being in your shoes and do not provide the empathy
| or the correct scaffolding to start newcomers down the path of
| understanding a topic.
|
| The biggest success for pedagogy impact is study groups, and
| tutoring while or immediately after learning something (the
| accountability of needing to teach someone bumps.your motivation
| to understand the nuances, plus the act of teaching helps you
| remember)
| Ntrails wrote:
| > Should you concentrate on taking notes or should you
| concentrate on understanding what you are learning?
|
| I always always erred on the latter. I was definitely in the
| minority. It took me ages to work out why nobody else ever asked
| questions (or challenged errors).
|
| They were just writing stuff down to process later. I have never
| understood it, it seems so obviously like a wasted opportunity.
| At that point why go to class at all, you could just get sent
| notes!
| troupe wrote:
| The most effective use of taking notes is to actively engage
| with the content by figuring out how to organize it and what to
| include and what to leave out. Even though the author says to
| just capture everything, if you are doing it by hand, you are
| making decisions on what to write and what to skip simply
| because you can't write as fast as someone talks. One of the
| reasons taking notes on a computer isn't as good for retaining
| information is because you CAN probably keep up with how fast a
| professor talks and capture everything--so you don't end up
| actively thinking about what is being said.
| danking00 wrote:
| Most effective learning experience I ever had was reading the
| relevant book chapter before class, taking some broad notes to
| structure my understanding, and then asking questions during
| class when either the lecture didn't make sense or we reached a
| confusion I had from reading.
|
| I only managed one class like that and only near the end of my
| undergraduate career. Both earlier in ugrad and in grad school
| I was way too busy barely staying afloat to be so meticulous
| about my education.
| baby wrote:
| Took me a while to understand that taking notes is a waste of
| time, but in France you are taught to go to class and
| mindlessly just write down EVERYTHING the professor writes on
| the board. And the professor will just spend 1-2h just writing
| with 0 interaction. It's really sad and it's surprising that we
| are good at stuff as a nation.
|
| Btw this is university for you in France. Maybe we are good as
| a nation because everything before uni is actually good, and
| people who are good actually don't go to uni but to grandes
| ecoles ? (Equivalent of ivy leagues)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-02-10 23:00 UTC)