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4 Powerful Ways To Remember Everything Your Teacher Says

By: Dr Marc R. Dussault

If you're like most students, you often have the experience of having taken extensive notes yet still failing to remember everything your teacher says. Well, there's some good news in store for you - I've developed some techniques which will help you to remember everything your teacher says so you can be well prepared for the tests ahead of you. Ready? Lets go!

Use Coloured Pens and Pencils

Have a look at some notes you've taken in class. What is the common element in all of your notes? It's the color of your notes - no doubt all taken down in pencil or standard black / blue pen. When you've got this page after page , it's hard to scan your notes for the important points. Rather than always taking you notes like this, try colored pencils and different colored inks. If you make a habit of this, you'll find your notes MUCH easier to refer back to.

The more visual cues you can create, the easier it will be to recall information later. The use of colours is the simplest way to improve memory recall. As you begin experimenting with different colours, you may notice that some colours work better than others. You may even prefer some colours for specific uses.

As for myself, I write most of my text down in black with highlights in other colors. When corrections are necessary, I like to use RED since it stands out the best.

Underline and ACCENTUATE Key Points

When you take notes it is vital to underline or otherwise draw attention to important items. Underlining, circling, drawing boxes or arrows all work to draw the eye toward especially important facts in your notes. Just don't overuse these or it will be hard to tell what's important and what's not.

Include Charts, Figures and Graphs

Sometimes things just can't be communicated clearly using only words. Relationships, timelines, causality and exchanges are difficult to explain in writing. However, they are easy to illustrate even for the artistically challenged like me! These diagrams should include colours and other graphical representations such as bullets, arrows, shading and text of different colours.

Summarize Notes On Large Paper

For some reason, large sized paper works really well for note taking. You can get continuous computer paper in boxes of 5,000 sheets for as little as $25, making this a great investment - I've been using the same box for two years now! You can even do large diagrams and charts and simply fold them up for easy portability.

With these large sheets, you can get all the important topics from a day's lectures onto a single sheet, or divide each page by subject or concept. Depending on the course, one or the other may work better for you.

To illustrate, I had a course last year where I was able to place my notes from lectures on a single page (one page per lecture). I could fit notes for 17 textbook chapters and thirty articles on these pages as well. This let me study from 12 pages instead of a thousand - quite a time saver, and MUCH more effective.

Seriously though, creating these pages is "fun" for me. I know that when I am doing an exercise, it is all being filled up in my memory banks. When you try it you'll feel the level of confidence go up tremendously and literally feel like you're in control. In the end it's important to see the "big picture" as a visual. Taking these methods and integrating them into your note taking will definitely do the same for you.

Article Source: http://www.particlearticles.com

About the author: Dr Marc R. Dussault can show you how to easily improve your school grades using simple, effective speed learning techniques that anyone can learn. Visit the "Get Better Grades" web site for more great tips on speed learning.

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