Quick tips on how to help your child study

MANY parents will agree that helping their children to memorise their schoolwork is a task easier said than done. Many will realise that long study periods and repetitive exercises will only result in a weaker performance.

Thankfully, there are ways to overcome this and make the best out of their study sessions.

Make a small change As much as you think consistency is an effective studying method, sometimes doing things differently can make our memories richer.

Take them to the park to study, implement music into their study sessions, or invite friends over for a group study.

This method, called ‘encoding’, can be used to help our children memorise work more effectively.

Avoid the fluency trap Ever learned someone’s name upon meeting the person for the first time, and forgetting it a week later when you bump into the individual again? ‘The Fluency Trap’ is something we believe we will always know just because we know it now.

Our children might be suffering from the same thing. They’d probably think: “If I know this now, I will remember it during the test”.

Encourage them instead to revise all their classwork a couple of weeks after, and space out the study sessions so that they can identify the gaps in their knowledge.

Testing is studying Do you remember back in school where we used to memorise lists with our friends, and then proceed to test each other’s memory?

You might think that memorisation is the important key, but psychologists tell us that it’s the testing that actually helps us to remember.

The act of recalling a memory in a test situation requires a lot more brain power than sitting and memorising; this makes the memory much stronger.

Try giving your children quick tests on the work they’ve just studied, or give them short tests to complete via learnenglishkids. britishcouncil.org.

Take a break Ever got stuck on a question when solving a puzzle, only to figure out the answer later? It’s called ‘Percolation’, and it can be useful for our children when they’re dealing with difficult subjects.

Allow them to take a break – rest, play sports, or sit down for a meal. The activity doesn’t count, but the break does.

During this period, their subconscious steps in to start working on the problem, and by the time they get back to their work, they will have a clearer picture.

At the British Council, our teachers put these theories into practice to aid your child’s memory of the materials studied in class, as well as give them study skills which are transferable to all of their future studies.

Getting students to move in the classroom, constantly reviewing work to avoid the fluency trap, and encouraging students to work with their classmates – all enriches their memory and understanding of English, and makes the classes more enjoyable as well.

This article was brought to you by the British Council in Malaysia. For more, visit www. britishcouncil.org.my.