The asterisk learning method focuses attention on difficult points which need it
most.
This is the asterisk method of learning which I discovered in 1975. It
worked!
-
Find somewhere quiet. Turn off the radio (and your portable digital music
player).
A library reading room is best if it is a quiet library reading
room.
Preferably have a large table or desk to work on.
-
Open the book or lecture notes which you wish to study.
-
Start copying the relevant part of the book or the lecture notes to a
(paper) note-pad by hand.
If you are studying a book, you should be writing a summary or paraphrasing
what you are reading.
If you are studying lecture notes, you should copy everything and add
explanations where required.
-
Whenever you copy something, ask yourself if you really understand it
completely.
In other words, you must understand every word in every sentence.
As long as you are completely comfortable with what you are copying,
keep going.
-
If you read something which is difficult to understand, stop and think about
it until you understand it clearly.
If a mathematical expression is unclear, determine which set or class
each term in the expression belongs to.
All sub-expressions in a complex expression must belong to some set or
class.
Every operator and function in an expression must act only on variables in the
domain of definition of the operator or function.
Draw diagrams of the relations between concepts.
Draw diagrams of everything!
-
If you find something that you really can't understand after a long time,
copy it to your notebook, but put an asterisk in the margin.
This means that you have copied something that you did not understand.
-
While you continue copying, keep going back to the lines which are
marked with an asterisk to see if you can understand them.
If you find an explanation later, you can erase the asterisk.
-
When you have finished copying enough material for one sitting, look over your
notes to see if you can understand the lines which still have an asterisk.
If you have no asterisks, that means that you have understood everything.
So you can progress to the next section or chapter of the text.
-
If you still have one or more asterisks left in your notes after a day or
more, you should keep trying to understand the lines with the asterisks.
Whenever you get some spare time and energy, just look at the lines with
asterisks on them.
These are the lines that need your attention most.
-
If you discuss your work with other people, especially with teachers or
tutors, show them your notes and the lines with the asterisks.
Try to get them to explain these lines to you.
If you keep working like this, you will find that your study becomes very
efficient.
This is because you do not waste your time studying things which you have
already understood.
I used to notice that I would spend most of my time reading the things which I
did understand.
To learn efficiently, it is necessary to focus on the difficult things which you
do not understand.
That's why it is so important to mark the incomprehensible lines with an
asterisk.
Copying material by hand is important because this forces the ideas to go
through the mind.
The mind is on the path between the eyes and the hands.
So when you copy something, it must go through your mind!
It is also important to develop an awareness of whether you do or do not really
understand something.
It is important to remove the mental blind spots which hide the difficult things
from the conscious mind.
When copying material, it is important to determine which is the first
word where it becomes difficult.
Read a difficult sentence until you find the first incomprehensible word.
Focus on that word.
If a mathematical expression is too difficult to understand, read each symbol
one by one and ask yourself if you really know what each symbol means.
Make sure you know which set or space each symbol belongs to.
Look up the meaning of any symbol which is not clear.
|