Why Students Forget and How to Prevent it from Happening

Why Students Forget and How to Prevent it from Happening

Research in this area has pointed to several techniques that can help students remember information. Spacing out the study of a topic and self-testing and other exercises that retrieve information, often in small chunks, are the most effective. Here are the approaches that were used:

• Practice testing - Self-testing or taking practice tests covering material that has been covered.
• Distributed practice - Implementing a schedule of practice on certain topics that spreads out study activities over time.
• Elaborative interrogation - Asking students to provide an explanation for why a fact or concept is true.
• Self-explanation - Explaining how new information is related to known information, or explaining steps taken during problem solving.
• Summarization - Writing summaries of presented information.
• Highlighting/underlining - Marking potentially important portions of materials while reading.
• Keyword mnemonic - Using keywords and mental imagery to associate verbal materials.
• Imagery for text - Attempting to form mental images of text materials while reading or listening.
• Rereading - Restudying text material again after an initial reading.