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Learning new things can be one of the great pleasures of life, in addition to helping to ensure that you’re always in a good position to keep advancing and growing, in a variety of different areas.
In an academic context, learning means being able to develop applicable skills in addition to gaining highly valuable qualifications that can advance you in your career. It also, of course, means expanding your horizons and helping you to perceive the world in a more dynamic and sophisticated manner. If you’re teaching children, this is why incremental resources graded by key stage, such as ABCmouse, can be so helpful as a learning tool.
In your personal life, learning can take many different forms — ranging from things like learning a language, to learning a creative skill such as how to paint — many of which can dramatically enhance your quality of life in various ways.
Here are just a few great tips that you can apply in order to learn more effectively.
Harness the power of restful sleep
One of the most significant tips that you are likely to come across when taking credible courses on topics like “revision strategy” and “how to learn effectively,” is to ensure that you are getting the most restful sleep you possibly can — and as much of it as you need.
Sleep is essential for overall health and wellbeing, and also for your ability to perform various tasks to the best of your ability. But one of the key roles of sleep appears to be the consolidation of memory.
Individuals who are even just fairly moderately sleep deprived have significantly worse memory recall, are less likely to retain information they’ve just learned, and are more likely to be confused and to make mistakes, as well.
According to researchers, there seem to be particular benefits to getting a good night’s sleep after spending time trying to learn a particular topic. So if you’ve got a test, in particular, it’s better to study before getting a restful night, instead of skipping sleep to study more in the morning.
Utilise repetition and visual cues
People inevitably learn in somewhat different ways, but repetition appears to be one of the most fundamental components of learning, as a whole.
Additionally, utilising visual cues can potentially help to make information stand out to you more, so that you can more easily integrate it into your memory.
Utilising props and study aids such as flash cards from a site like www.stressfreeprint.co.uk can potentially be very helpful when it comes to improving the quality of your learning.
Write things out by hand instead of typing
While typing is much faster, and generally significantly more convenient than writing things out by hand, research seems to show pretty clearly that individuals who write notes out by hand remember a lot more information than people who type those notes out instead.
This might be because writing by hand requires you to naturally consider and abbreviate information as you go. Or it may be because of the physical act of writing in and of itself.
Whatever the reason, writing things out by hand instead of just typing may help you to learn significantly better.
Laura x