Comments on: The Single Most Important Study Strategy You Will Ever Hear

By: Jesper

Jesper — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:42:54 +0000

Nice article.

Will definitely try this method out when the next exams are on.

By: James

James — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:36:37 +0000

I could not more enthusiastically agree with this article. Due to devastating family tragedy, my siblings and I were left with virtually no academic guidance from very early ages. All of us tested as intellectually well above average, yet our academic performance was poor to average, based on our grades. “Works well below potential,” and “Seems frustrated and distracted.” were the typical types of comments on report cards. Of course you become frustrated, distracted, and work below potential when you have no idea how to study and are even taught by your teachers to silently read endlessly to yourself complex and abstract thoughts and ideas. *If you don’t already have a predisposition to inactivity and introversion, this lack of an approach is catastrophically destructive*. The vast amount of hours required to retain information by such an inefficient and unrefined method is mind-numbing. Mind-paralyzing.

I became an actor fifteen years ago. It was something that I decided I would devote the rest of my life to mastering. As I attained more and more training, it was clear that I was running into this same old problem again and again, yet this time the amount of information that must be retained, word-for-word, dwarfed by comparison the amount of information on the average college exam. One average day of shooting for a typical feature film may require up to twenty-five pages of verbatim text. The remarkable thing is, even most actors have no idea how to retain, and accomplish this by sheer volume and frantic effort.

One day I made the casual comment to an actress that I was working with that script learning was tdeious to me and a source of stress to the point of completely distracting me from actually working on the life of the characters. Just knowing the lines took up all of my time and there was simply none left to give them life. What she showed me in ten minutes changed my professional and even personal life, by its effect.

Starting at the first line, she asked me to literally guess what my character might say. After I arrogantly dismissed this as childish, I did as she asked and we then consulted the script. Of course I had been wrong, so I adjusted/corrected what I had said, read the next line from the other character, my cue (Or the next ‘question’ as you would find on any test), and again formulated a response. Wrong again, but I corrected and moved on. Within ten minutes, I was at the end of the page. She read back to me the other character’s lines and I responded with more certainly that I had ever had before. I am not ashamed at all to say that I wept. I had just done what would have before taken me hours to accomplish in the time it took to finish a Diet Coke.

My personal goal is to finish my graduate studies and teach college in my retirement. This simple tool which essentially breaks down similarly to the Quiz and Recall observation described here has made this not only possible but literally enjoyable. I am forever in her debt. I encourage any young, or older, student of any type to give this article VERY serious consideration.

James

By: Charlie

Charlie — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:49:54 +0000

It isn’t the talking out loud, its that they reorganize the data from written notes to spoken words. In order to translate any data from one medium to another you have to a) understand it and b) *consciously* review it.

I used a similar technique, but would instead re-organize my notes into a different, but still logical sequence. (e.g. events by person instead of chronological)

By: Shadus

Shadus — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 22:37:37 +0000

I’ve always done adequately in school be it high school or college course work, but I rote review… typically only just before class (enough to get two readings of the material in however long that takes) and still get straight A’s on all the tests I take. My problem with school work has always been homework, unless its a massive part of my grade I just refuse to do it. It’s usually just busy work that is a waste of my time. Our entire current schooling system needs an overhaul.

By: Personal Trainer

Personal Trainer — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:53:37 +0000

Hey, this is great. Thanks for posting something actually useful!

By: Wes

Wes — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:55:19 +0000

My problem with rote review was always one of context; namely, rote review has no context. It’s like trying to study a dictionary–it quickly becomes a jumble of disconnected facts. I learned to quiz and recall early on, and I set up my notes to facilitate it by taking notes in an outline style (”collapsing notes into consistent clusters” I believe was how it was phrased earlier). Often, just the note-taking itself was enough for my recall, because it forced me to make comparisons and associations as I took notes, rather than just mindless stenography. I always had high marks in school (high school valedictorian), and I didn’t have to spend time freaking out about not remembering lots of little facts.

By: Study Hacks » Blog Archive » The Art of Stealth Studying: How To Earn a 4.0 With Only 1.0 Hours of Work

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 14:06:34 +0000

[...] is based on the tested techniques behind the Straight-A method. (That is, it relies heavily on the quiz-and-recall review structure). Note, this system tackles non-technical courses. It should be easy, however, to [...]