How To Retain Knowledge (Part 2) By Okechukwu Impact Roberts

Read Retaining Knowledge Part 1 here.

• Creating Connections: Link your knowledge to larger concepts. It's much easier to remember facts if you understand why those facts are true. Ask yourself, or your teacher: why do things work the way they do? If you understand the larger conceptual framework, you will be able to retrieve knowledge more easily and even guess more accurately. For example, if you have to memorize geographical borders, think about how those borders were formed. Notice that in many places, borders follow natural features such as rivers and mountain ranges. By observing a general rule like this you save yourself from having to memorize each individual border; instead, you can remember which borders follow this rule. 

• Connect Facts To Ideas: You are more likely to remember something if you can associate it with other, related things. Tell a story to yourself about a particular fact: even if your story is light-hearted, it will cement the fact in your mind. This is sometimes call the Baker/baker paradox. Shown a picture of a woman, people are much more likely to remember that she is a baker than that her name is Baker. This is because the idea of being a baker has more associations. It conjures up thoughts of bread and might suggest links with the image: perhaps her face looks doughy, for example.

• Evaluate Your Own Learning Process: Assess yourself by asking whether you are absorbing new material and whether you understand the big concepts that underlie that material. Reflect on what aspects of the learning process have worked for you and what aspects were less helpful. This kind of self-evaluation is known as metacognition, and it has been shown to improve your ability to transfer what you’ve learned to new settings and situations.

• Opt For The Final Project: Sometimes you are allowed to choose between taking a final exam or completing a final project. In other cases, you might have the choice to take a class that assigns a project. Where possible, choose the final project. Completing a complex project related to the knowledge area is associated with greater retention of knowledge than taking a test alone.

• Don't focus on just one thing for too long. Instead, turn from one task to another, and intersperse studying one subject with studying something else. Look for connections between the different topics. Seeing how knowledge fits together into a larger picture will help you to understand its significance and remember it better.