Summary

Pete discusses two techniques that are among the most effective for becoming a successful student. The first is teaching the material to someone else, which can help the student to process the information and make it an ingrained part of their brain. The second is to create quizzes and tests to predict the type of questions their teacher will ask and to quiz themselves on it. This will help the student to learn the material and remember it better. 

Transcript

[0:00:03]   This week, step number four in becoming the best student you can be: more efficient, more effective. And that is these two techniques that I’m going to reveal to you that are among the most effective techniques that you can use in your study repertoire to learn the material. And the first one, you probably heard it before actually, teaching the material to someone else else. If you want to learn something, teach it to somebody.

[0:00:29]   Now, as a tutor, I know just how effective this can be because I’ve tutored kids in so many different subjects over the last 30 years of tutoring. And the material that I have taught has just become an ingrained part of my brain because I’ve done it over and over and over again. I could probably recite half of the theorems in a geometry textbook verbatim at this point. So teaching someone else the material means you have to learn how to explain it, and you have to process in your head how to explain that information in a way that’s logical and coherent, that someone can understand. Which means that you have to understand it yourself.

[0:01:06]   So that’s number one, teaching the material to someone else. It can be in a study group. It can be someone else in your class, just one on one. It can be teaching your parents when you get home. It could be teaching it to your dog. Hey Perry [Image of Pete’s dog Perry reading a book.] You can even do this by teaching yourself in the mirror, but we’ll get to that later on. The next tip, and one of the most important things you can do when you’re preparing for quizzes and tests, is to test yourself.

[0:01:32]   Create your own quizzes and tests, create your own questions. And here’s the key: you want to try to predict what your teacher is going to quiz or test you on by trying to figure out how your teachers create quizzes and tests and what they’re likely to ask, and then quizzing yourself on those. It might even be, hey, here are three essay questions I think my teacher might throw at us, and at the very least, outlining your answers to those three essay questions,if not, writing an entire draft essay. It doesn’t have to take that long.

[0:02:03]   So testing yourself is a great way to learn the material and get it into your head.

[0:02:10]   Thank you for watching. And for more information you can go to our website for more videos on our blog or subscribe to our YouTube or Instagram feeds. And don’t forget, Aim Higher!