One of the biggest difficulties our Maths Tutors face is coaching students to retain the knowledge they have studied. There is no point in studying if the student is not able to retain and apply the information during the exam. Unfortunately, we know that many students simply use rote memorisation to remember details and facts about their subjects. But there are many memorisation techniques students can use to remember what they have learnt – it just takes a little bit of cleverness and ingenuity to use these techniques. Here are some useful methods from our Maths Tutors themselves.
(1) Firstly, students can remember by association. These can occur on several levels – students can associate the things they need to remember with things they are already familiar with. Students can make mnemonics or tie the concepts to things they already know (such as trying to make a song out of the elements in a particular Group in the Periodic Table) to help them remember. Even our Maths teachers use association methods for the vast amounts of content we need to teach.
(2) Secondly, students can remember things better if they choose to handwrite their notes instead of typing them. While it may seem like a time-saver to print your notes, writing them down ensures that you remember what you are writing. When there are diagrams to be drawn, students should draw the diagrams out by hand where possible, especially if potential exam questions require these diagrams to be replicated. By making their own notes, students will be able to recall the information better during the exam so they can apply it to the question. Again, our Maths tutors themselves understand this, and a good portion of our own maths teaching notes are written by hand (although we sometimes type it our nicely for our students).
(3) Another way to remember what students have written is to not refer to their maths notes while doing practice questions. It may be tempting to refer to their maths notes (since the notes are right beside you), but if the student wants to master the information for a closed-book exam, they should not refer to their notes but try hard to recall the information first. If they really cannot recall the information, they can refer to their notes, or come up with a creative association to retain the information. As for us maths teachers, we are forced to recall everything, as we can’t be seen referring to our notes to answer each and every question asked by students!
