Instruction: Answer questions 31 to 40 based on the following text.
Memory hacks to make you smarter
- No matter how smart you think you are, the chances are that you sometimes fail to make
- the most of your memory. A series of surveys have shown most students fail to use proven
- methods of learning _________, instead wasting their time on ineffective methods. One of the
- problems is that we often receive a lot of conflicting information from parents, teachers, and
- scientists, so that we are unsure what works and what doesn’t. Fortunately, a new paper,
- published in one of the top psychology journals, has examined the biggest misconceptions, with
- a list of the most popular study strategies, the potential pitfalls, and the ways that they can use
- them more effectively.
- Strategy 1: Rereading: Learning new vocabulary? The most common strategy is to read
- the words and their meanings until they stick. Unfortunately, psychologists believe that it is too
- passive, meaning that most of the information fails to leave an impression.
- Memory hack: Space your reading: Passive rereading is probably the least effective
- study method, but it may sometimes feel inevitable if you feel like you lack a basic understanding
- of the concepts. You can make better use of those sessions, however, by ensuring that you return
- to the material at regular intervals. You might read a chapter, move on to something else, and
- then re-read it after an hour, a day, or a week to help stimulate the memory. You can also benefit
- from questioning your understanding before you return to the material, which helps tune your
- attention on the bits you do and don’t know and increases your mental engagement.
- Strategy 2: Underlining and highlighting: Like rereading, this study technique is nearly
- ubiquitous. The idea makes sense: the process of underlining key words and phrases should help
- you to engage more with the information, and it makes it easier to identify the most important
- passages later on. Although it can be more effective than passive rereading, underlining and
- highlighting often fail to work, with most students __________ marking up almost every
- paragraph without much discernment.
- Memory hack: Pause to think: Instead, the scientists suggest that you read the text
- once through cold, and then mark up the relevant passages on the second pass. By forcing you
- to think more carefully about each point and its relative importance in the overall argument, this
- encourages the more active processing that is essential for the formation of stronger memories.
- Strategy 3: Note-taking. Visit any lecture theatre or library and you will find students
- ________ copying the most important facts into their notebooks. Like underlining and
- highlighting, the problems come when you fail to be judicious about the material you are
- including. Your overenthusiasm – and propensity to include everything that is mentioned – can
- easily become a vice.
- Memory hack: Be concise. Experiments have shown that the fewer words students use
- to express an idea in their notes, the more likely they are to remember it afterwards. This is
- probably because creating summaries and paraphrasing force you to think deeply about the nub
- of the idea you are trying to express – and that additional effort cements it in your memory.
- These findings may also explain why it is better to take notes with a pen and paper, rather than
- using a laptop: writing by hand is slower than typing and forces you to be more concise in what
- you note down.
(Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180904-five-memory-hacks-to-make-you-smarter - Adapted)
