Learning skills

Post here any questions, problems, information regarding general learning skills.

This first post will be updated with any useful material that we come up with.

I think this will be the right place for my question. At the moment I'm studying for my Social Psychology exam. I've never taken a subject like this before. In highschool I took mainly science subjects and languages. My question is, does anyone have tips for studying Psychology?

The material is a 700 page book (LARGE pages), and there are about 300 definitions I need to know. I've read every chapter once or twice but I still have trouble linking the name of the theories to the theories. I've made flash cards but I think I made them a little too small, so I had to explain the word using just a few words... now I don't understand what I meant for some of the cards.

Is there anything other than flash cards I could try?

The flash cards worked pretty well actually! This was the first time I tried using them. They gave us an example exam which I tried yesterday, before making the flash cards (I knew like 3/24 questions) and again today without looking up the answers in between, I got 22/24 answers! I only need 16 to pass the exam but I'm aiming for at least 20. Gonna study some more then go to sleep (its almost midnight here)

Learning skills, or the optimum way to learn was my biggest problem in university. To keep the story short after a lot of thinking, frustration and research I've found a book that changed my learning process. I am just using this new way of learning a few weeks so I haven't yet made it perfect but the impact is definitely there.

The book is called: What smart students know by Adam Robinson. You can get it at amazon. I can write more about his ideas but basically his approach is instead of reading and rereading the textbook endlessly (like I did) is to focus on notes. So you read the book only once. You do that and take notes and any further work is done with those notes.

Anyway the results so far are great.
1. The boredom is way smaller
2. You actually learn something much faster and easier
3. It's easier to force yourself to learn because the work is less frustrating.

Pol wrote:.. but basically his approach is instead of reading and rereading the textbook endlessly (like I did) is to focus on notes. So you read the book only once. You do that and take notes and any further work is done with those notes..

I havent read the book, but I have used the same technique myself. To the list of advantages I will add;

-It will make you better prepared to do bigger tasks and even research on your own. Its like going from being a learning robot to a thinking human being. (I know it sound brutal, but the difference really is that huge)