There are many ways to describe learning, but one of the simplest is that learning = understanding + remembering. Understanding what you are taught is crucial to learning, whether in school or with a tutor. Sadly, many students believe they understand more than they really do.
In this article, you will discover 5 ways to boost your understanding of any topic you are learning about.
- Pay Attention
- Outlining
- Pretesting
- Connect to Existing Understanding
- Organise Connections
Throughout the article, I will use an example from Year 11 psychology, theories of motivation.
#1 Pay Attention
Your mind or working memory cannot think about everything around you. Be it things related to learning, such as:
- Relevant reading
- Listening to your teacher
- Making connections
Unrelated to learning:
- Looking at messages on your phone
- Having 20 browser tabs open
- Even daydreaming
Thinking hard about what you learn is critical to understanding, and focused attention is essential to thinking hard.
When studying on your own:
- Choose a space where you are less likely to be interrupted
- Remove distractions (put your phone in another room and use focus apps, such as FocusMe to limit what you can use on your computer)
#2 Outlining
Outlining alone will not improve your understanding of a topic. But it prepares your mind for information that is to come, enhancing your understanding when you later take in new information.
Outlining involves mapping out topics, subtopics, sub-subtopics etc. in an organised way. You do this by looking at textbook headings, subheadings, bold words and alike. For example, glancing at a Year 11 Psychology textbook allowed me to create the following outline in a few minutes.
#3 Pretesting
Pretesting yourself will help you in several ways. One way, as with outlining, is that it prepares your mind so that you understand more when you later take in new information.
There are different ways to pretest yourself. One is to use review questions that you can find at the end of textbook chapters and questions.
This includes multiple-choice questions like these:
You can also try answering short-answer questions. Again, you can often find these at the end of chapters and sections. Alternatively, you can redo your outline as questions/tasks and then answer them. For example:
- Define Cognitive Evaluation Theory
- Explain and compare intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation.
#4 Connect to Existing Understanding
Some researchers refer to this as making connections to your prior knowledge, but I prefer the term existing understanding. Why? Because some of what you think you know may be:
- Incomplete
- Partially wrong
- Totally wrong
This is something you do in your mind while taking in new information, whether it from a textbook, the teacher talking or any other source.
As you need to do it both on the spot and in your mind, I suggest following a simple three-part process.
Ask yourself: How does this new information:
- Confirm what you already understood?
- Add new things to your existing understanding?
- Change what you thought you understood?
This follows the mental process of learning.
#5 Organise Connections
As you learn different things about a topic, such as theories of motivation, you should connect them visually. You can use visual organisers to show:
- Comparisons (e.g., using a Venn diagram)
- Cause-Effect
- Hierarchies (e.g. the Outline used in point 2)
- Sequences (e.g. process charts or timelines)
Example Comparison
Example Cause-Effect
Boosting Your Understanding in a Nutshell
Understanding is critical to learning. Focus and hard thinking are critical to understanding. Using these 5 strategies will help you do this:
- Pay Attention
- Outlining
- Pretesting
- Connect to Existing Understanding
- Organise Connections
