How To Cram For An Exam: Students of all ages may experience anxiety during the final few weeks of school, whether they are studying for an exam or attempting to compose an essay quickly. When you just have one day to prepare for a significant exam, the situation gets considerably more difficult. The good thing is that you can study for an exam in under 24 hours, but you must approach the subject strategically.
Whether you have a whole day before the test or just the night, the time-saving advice in this article is meant to aid you. Even if you’ve gotten behind in class, you may confidently recognize and recall crucial concepts by working hard and remaining persistent.
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Things you should do before starting
1. Keep your cool: If you put off studying until the day of the exam, you probably feel anxious about how you’ll complete the assignment in the allotted time. It is crucial that you maintain composure regardless of your situation.
Concentration, information memorization, and critical thought about the exam subject will all be significantly more difficult while under stress and worry. Spend 15 minutes relaxing and clearing your head before studying if you’re feeling unduly worried. Try some yoga, put on your favorite music, or give a helpful buddy a brief call. Just limit it to no more than 15 minutes, set a timer, and get ready to start working as soon as it’s finished.
2. Assemble Your Resources: Avoid the error of starting a study session without the necessary materials. Find a blank notebook, some pencils, the course schedule and textbook, as well as all of your class notes.
So that you have the room and flexibility to get these things when you need them, arrange them properly on a clear work area.
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3. Locate a Quiet Area: It might be tempting to study in a big group of friends, especially if the subject at hand is challenging. Additionally, although friends might offer much-needed encouragement, they aren’t always the greatest study partners when you’re short on time.
If you want to do the task on time, choose a peaceful study area where there won’t be any interruptions from friends, the TV, or other activities. If necessary, put your phone on mute or turn it off completely to avoid disturbing anyone around you. When you just have one day to study, it’s essential to have the peaceful environment you need to focus.
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How to Effectively Cram for an Exam/Test
It’s time to get to work after you’ve assembled your resources, taken some time to unwind, and located a fantastic study location. You may prepare for an exam in little more than 24 hours by following these seven steps.
1. Make a List of Key Phrases, Concepts, and Ideas: You must first acknowledge that you cannot possible complete the entire course in a single day of study. That’s just not doable, and it would take a lot more time than you now have.
Consider your study session as a form of “triage” in which you just focus on the most crucial phrases, concepts, and ideas from the course. The rationale behind this tactic is that by concentrating on an idea that is highly vital to the course, you will get background knowledge on other less crucial subjects. Grab a pen, a blank notepad, and your course syllabus to start hunting for these terms. Start reading over the curriculum, noting any key phrases as you go in the unlined notebook. Making flash cards for each important word is another suggestion.
Make sure you have a comprehensive list of these important ideas for evaluation, regardless of the approach you go for. So that you may add new phrases while you work, keep this list close at hand. Make a “cheat list” of sorts that you may refer to when your study session is over.
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2. Search your textbook for summaries: Summaries of each part should appear at the start or conclusion of each chapter in a well-designed textbook. Find these summaries, and then really study them. As handouts for the class, some teachers will also give summaries of significant concepts.
You should concentrate on anything marked Introduction, Conclusion, or Summary since they will summarize the material for you and make it simpler for you to recall.
3. As you proceed, take more notes: Writing down knowledge helps you remember things considerably better, according to research. Make notes of whatever you wish to memorize while you learn.
Contrary to your list of key words, this sort of note-taking is not need to be organized. Simply get some pieces of paper and jot down any important information. Make sure you’re writing rather than typing because typing doesn’t help you remember information as well.
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4. Utilize mind maps, graphs, and charts: If you’re tight for time, you shouldn’t spend a lot of time on this. However, spending only fifteen minutes creating a brief mind map is a fantastic method to combine the knowledge you’ve acquired.
Seeing the links between the many subjects covered in the course is one of the secrets to learning efficiently. Do not assume that the information from Week One has no relation to Week Seven. In fact, it’s probable that Week Seven will expand on ideas you gained in the first several weeks of the course.
Consider making use of a visual tool to make explicit links between the course information, such as a mind map, chart, or graph. You’ll have a lot greater overall comprehension of the ideas as a result.
5. Educate a Friend: Pretending you’re teaching something to someone else is a useful technique for recalling knowledge. Once you’ve gotten a handle on the subject, meet up with a friend for an hour and share your knowledge with them. Encourage them to raise questions about the topic so you’ll be compelled to clarify ideas or approach the information with greater skepticism.
Although it may be challenging, imparting your knowledge to someone who is less knowledgeable than you on a subject is a terrific method to solidify what you already know.
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6. Study Inadequately: This advice is up to interpretation, but when used appropriately, it may be a useful method for picking up new information. We are not different from our brains in that it does not always function perfectly. Go back and read your notes randomly in no particular order after properly going through them in sequence.
By doing this, you will educate your brain to retain knowledge independently rather than sequentially. If the topic, such as history, requires knowledge of chronology, keep it in mind when changing the sequence in which you learn.
7. Review Your List of Important Terms: Recall the word list you compiled at the start of the study session? Review it immediately to make sure you comprehend everything on the list. Try reciting the whole definition for each phrase aloud. Put an asterisk next to any terms you can’t recall, then go on to the next one.
You should feel rather sure with many of the words by the end of this exercise, but less certain about the ones with asterisks. Retest yourself after 30 minutes or so of brushing up on the more difficult terms.
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8. Conduct skimming: Whichever technique you wish to employ while reading, especially in anticipation for an examination, the first recommended step to take is to skim through the text. A Skimming is a cursory reading. Here, the reader tries to read quickly, thereby skipping some detail. Skimming is best to be done at the first or second-hand glance at the text.
It is a very helpful exercise preceding the actual cramming. What Skimming actually does is to give the reader a first-hand overview of the text and to help the reader ascertain the structure and composition the text. This is more like drawing a strategy before the actual cramming exercise commences.
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9. Try to understand the concepts: It is very necessary to reiterate that cramming is done best when the concepts are understood. One may be wondering the essence of cramming when the reader had already understood the concept. Recall that the purpose of cramming is to reproduce. It does not necessarily guarantee a long-term usage.
Recall also as pointed out at the introductory stage that merely understanding the concepts may not be sufficient to give you the best output in the exam. There are certain functional theories that need to be committed to the memory by cramming. In totality, understanding the concepts guarantees an easier cramming and a substantives long-term usage.
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Conclusion
It makes sense to study for an exam in the short run only to pass it. On the other hand, cramming is one of the least productive ways to actually study a new subject. Fundamentally, cramming makes it more difficult for pupils to absorb the subject at a deeper level by raising their stress levels. Engaging with the subject for a long time is the greatest approach for you to form significant connections with it.
The antithesis of cramming is learning that is spread out. Spread out your involvement with the content over a fair span to offer yourself the best chance of success rather than cramming for the exam immediately before it.
Edeh Samuel Chukwuemeka, ACMC, is a lawyer and a certified mediator/conciliator in Nigeria. He is also a developer with knowledge in various programming languages. Samuel is determined to leverage his skills in technology, SEO, and legal practice to revolutionize the legal profession worldwide by creating web and mobile applications that simplify legal research. Sam is also passionate about educating and providing valuable information to people.