learning techniques for students

Learning Techniques – This makes it easier for students to learn

Learning is the ability of people to adapt to new environmental or social conditions and is therefore much more than just storing information. Anyone who learns must perceive and evaluate their environment. In addition, learning is a process that is controlled by previous experiences and current actions. Philosophers were already concerned with the learning process in ancient times. Today it is the subject of various sciences, especially pedagogy, philosophy and psychology. Among other things, these deal with the process of learning, but also with learning methods and learning techniques that support learning processes and thus make learning easier.
Also read: Encouraging children to learn

What is the point of learning techniques?

For many learners, whether children or adults, at some point the question arises as to how they can learn most effectively and then retain and apply what they have learned for a longer period of time. Since people are different and there are different types of learners , a single learning technique is therefore not enough.

In earlier times, the school system often relied on the technique of learning by heart, which required frequent repetition of learning content. This may make sense in some cases, such as with vocabulary and the simple multiplication table, but limits the student’s questioning and evaluation. Today’s pedagogy therefore also relies on learning through insight, learning through discovery and multidimensional learning.

The mnemonics

Roughly translated, the word mnemonics means the art of memory and primarily stands for concrete memory exercises with which learned information is to be retained and stored in the long term. For this purpose, memory aids such as graphics, schemes, mnemonic sentences or rhymes are used. Memory aids, also known as mnemonic devices, are also helpful for defining passwords, without which one can hardly get along in today’s digital world. A secure password can, for example, be formed by the first letters of a certain sentence to which the user has a relation. The proverbial knot in the handkerchief can also be counted as a mnemonics. The knot is meant to remind the handkerchief user of something.

The loci method

The loci method is not dissimilar to mnemonics, but primarily uses images of places as a mnemonic aid. For this method, the learning content is divided into individual parts, which are mentally stored in places and called up again when they are ideally looked up. Places can be, for example, your own living room, the way to work or well-known public places.

The SQ3R method

This method is not only concerned with how what has been learned is retained, but how faster and more effectively it can be read and thus learned. The method was developed in the 1940s by the American school psychologist Francis P. Robinson. This defines effective reading in five steps, the first letters of which form the somewhat cumbersome title of the method. The steps are:

• Survey: gain an overview of the text through headings and structure of a text
• Question: the reader’s formulation of questions about the text
• Read: Reading the text section by section
• Recite: Reproducing the section that has been read, including through written notes
• Review: the sections read are linked to the overall text and to practical application

The visualization

For many people, visualization, i.e. the pictorial or graphic illustration of learning content, is a helpful method for better learning. For example, tables, diagrams, images or even videos can be used here. The visualization is helpful, for example, when learning languages ​​or mathematical relationships.