Effective Studies – 3. Before Lecture

Before Lecture

During the lecture, your teacher will tell you all important things you need to know about a certain topic. But to get the most out of the lecture there are some things that you can do before it starts.

You can think about doing things before the lecture as creating hooks where you later will hang your knowledge. The more hooks you have, the easier it will be to understand and remember what you learn.

Step 1 – Look at the Plan for the Lectures

Step one is to look at the plan for the lectures and try to answer the following questions: What topic will the lecture be about? What chapter in the book does the lecture cover?

Step 2 – Glance at the Material

If you have the presentation for the lecture, scroll through all slides and read the text on them. In that way you can pay more attention to what your teacher says rather than read from the presentation during the lecture. It will also be easier to follow the lecture since you in some sense already know what will come.

You can also look at the book beforehand. You don’t have to read the book, but rather give it a glance. A rule of thumb is to turn page every ten seconds. In that way you force yourself to only look at the figures, headlines, and emphesized words – things that are there to point out the most important content.

A good thing to do at the beginning of the course is to study the table of contents for its book. In that way you will get a feeling for what you will learn during the course.

Step 3 – Make a Guess

This is the most important step of them all, because this is where you will create your hooks. When you find a word or concept that you don’t recognize or understand, make a guess! In this way you will create the hook – you tell your brain that this is something important. Later, when you learn the true meaning, you will more easily understand and remember it since your hook is already there – waiting to have knowledge hung up on it.