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Emile comments on Open thread, August 26 - September 1, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: philh 26 August 2013 09:00PM

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Comment author: Dahlen 27 August 2013 10:02:39PM *  2 points [-]

Is it effective to study by writing down all the information you want to learn? When I'm faced with the task of studying from some source, say a textbook, my first impulse is to write all of it in a notebook. But recently I've been worrying that this makes me shift my focus away from learning and towards doing a scribe's work -- and also I think I'd be a little more motivated to start studying if my mental image of the activity involved less writing and more reading.

How does this method compare, in terms of information retention per time spent, with other study methods?

Comment author: Emile 28 August 2013 11:55:48AM 0 points [-]

When I was a student I spent a lot of time in class writing down what was being said, and reading my notes later on, there's a lot of stuff I don't remember learning. When I look stuff up on Wikipedia because I'm curious, I don't think I remember less than when I was writing everything down.

Now I tend to only write down a very short summary of the most interesting/surprising bits, ideally with a diagram or silly drawing, but then I haven't been reading much textbooks recently. If I was back in "I nead to learn all this new information" mode, I'd probably do a mix of exercises, and Anki.