Academic success is rooted in a number of factors, of which 'intelligence' is only one. Attitude and beliefs, and knowledgeable strategy use, are critical. This is the core message of this collection of articles and research reports on study skills from the author's websites, arranged and edited for greater cohesiveness. Its aim is to describe and provide evidence for concepts and strategies that may change your approach to teaching or studying.

The book contains articles on:

    * personal factors that affect academic achievement: motivation, persistence, anxiety, intelligence, self-regulation

    * choosing strategies that are effective for the situation

    * what 'transfer' is and why it's important

    * how experts develop expertise

    * the idea of 'desirable difficulties'

    * the limits of memorization and rote learning 

    * some useful strategies in:

            * reading

            * note-taking

            * reaching understanding.

This book is for students who are serious about being successful in study, and teachers who want to know how best to help their students learn.

As always with the Mempowered books, the short book is fully referenced.

Keywords: best study strategies for college students,effective study habits, effective learning, study attitudes, educational research, teacher resources, free, freebie

Perfect Memory Training is essential reading for anyone who wants to strengthen their powers of recall. Written by Dr Fiona McPherson, a psychologist with years of experience in the field, it explains how memories are created and stored, sets out a range of techniques to help you improve these processes, and provides exercises to help you track your progress. Whether you want to get better at remembering names, faces, lists or pieces of general knowledge, Perfect Memory Training has everything you need to boost your mental ability.

The Perfect series is a range of practical guides that give clear and straightforward advice on everything from getting your first job to choosing your baby's name. Written by experienced authors offering tried-and-tested tips, each book contains all you need to get it right first time.

Working ‘hard’ is not enough. To be an effective student, you need to work ‘smart’.

This book is for students who are serious about being successful in study, and teachers who want to know how best to help their students learn. For being a successful student is far more about being a smart user of effective strategies than about being 'smart'.

In Effective Notetaking and Mnemonics for Study, Dr McPherson showed readers many strategies for improving understanding and memory. But these on their own can only take you so far, if you don’t know how to cement that information into your brain for the long term. In this new book, Dr McPherson explains the 10 principles of effective practice and revision.

Few students know how to revise effectively, which is why they waste so much time going over and over material, as they try to hammer it into their heads. But you don’t need to spend all that time, and you don’t need to endure such boredom. What you need to do is understand how to review your learning in the most effective way. Using examples from science, math, history, foreign languages, and skill learning, that is what this book aims to teach you.

This book will tell you 

*  what you should practice or revise 

*  how you should practice

*  how often you should practice

*  how far apart you should schedule your sessions

*  different strategies you can use in your practice

*  how skill learning differs from 'fact' learning

and more.

As always with the Mempowered books, this book uses the latest cognitive and educational research to show you what to do to maximize your learning.

Keywords: how to revise effectively, deliberate practice book, deliberate practice in education, best study strategies for college students, learning a skill

You can predict how well a student will do simply on the basis of their use of effective study strategies. 

This book is for college students who are serious about being successful in study, and teachers who want to know how best to help their students learn.

Being a successful student is far more about being a smart user of effective strategies than about being 'smart'. Research has shown it is possible to predict how well a student will do simply on the basis of their use of study strategies.

This workbook looks at the most important group of study strategies – how to take notes (with advice on how to read a textbook and how to prepare for a lecture). You’ll be shown how to:

* format your notes 

* use headings and highlighting

* how to write different types of text summaries and pictorial ones, including concept maps and mind maps (you'll find out the difference, and the pros and cons of each)

* ask the right questions

* make the right connections 

* review your notes 

* evaluate text to work out which strategy is appropriate.

There's advice on individual differences and learning styles, and on how to choose the strategies that are right for both you and the situation.

Using effective notetaking strategies will help you remember what you read. It will help you understand more, and set you on the road to becoming an expert (or at least getting good grades!).

Successful studying isn’t about hours put in, it’s about spending your time wisely. You want to study smarter not harder.

As always with the Mempowered books, this thorough (and fully referenced) workbook doesn't re-hash the same tired advice that's been peddled for so long. Rather, Effective Notetaking builds on the latest cognitive and educational research to help you study for success.

This revised edition comes in a new (slightly smaller) size, with new images, and an extended chapter on taking notes in lectures.

Keywords: best study strategies for college students, how to improve note taking skills, study skills, college study, taking notes

 Being smart helps. Working hard helps more. But working effectively helps most of all.

There's a great deal that research can now tell us about how to study effectively. For 20 years, I've been reporting on research into memory and learning, and explaining how these findings can be translated into practical advice. In earlier books, I have presented a lot of detail on strategies in specific areas: note-taking, mnemonics, practice and revision. In this guide, I attempt to provide an overview of how to approach your learning, and the strategies you should consider using.

The book covers:

* preparing for learning

* approaching a text

* reading

* taking notes

* building understanding

* navigating non-linear environments

* dealing with lectures

* memorizing

* revising

* building expertise in skills

* how specific subjects differ in their needs & demands.

The book can be used as an adjunct and quick reference for those who have the more in-depth workbooks, or as a simplified guide for those who want the bottom-line without the detail.

This is not a book for students who want a magic bullet, who want a five-minute 'answer' to effortless study! But students who want to know that their time and effort are being used wisely, that their diligence will be rewarded with better marks and more long-lasting learning, this guide may be the answer they've long been looking for. 

Keywords: best study strategies for college students, textbook reading strategies for college, study skills, college study, successful learning

Do you have problems remembering birthdays and anniversaries, appointments and errands?
Do you sometimes find yourself in a room, and wonder why you're there?
Do you end up doing things twice because you've forgotten you've already done them? 

Of all the memory failures that plague us, forgetting our intentions -- birthdays, appointments, errands we mean to do -- is the greatest, closely followed by those moments of absentmindedness when we lose track of what we're doing. 

The special problem of these common memory failures is that they are failures that are often very obvious to others. More than any other memory failure, forgetting the future makes others feel hurt and annoyed, causing us regret and embarrassment. And absentmindedness can not simply be irritating, but dangerous.

Many people think that these sorts of problems are inevitable -- a natural consequence of getting older, or going through menopause, or because of some 'natural' personality flaw. But remembering future events, and remembering what you're doing or have just done, are memory tasks that, like any other memory task, are subject to your skills. Skills can be learned.

To learn or improve a skill, you need to know effective strategies and how to practice them. This book helps you understand these memory and attention failures, and shows you how to overcome them.

As always with the Mempowered books, this fully referenced book, based on the work of cognitive researchers, helps you permanently improve your memory skills by explaining what you need to know to use these strategies effectively and appropriately.

 Keywords: remembering intentions, remembering appointments, how to overcome absent minded, how to overcome forgetfulness, absentmindedness, short-term memory problems, action slips, prospective memory

Maybe you're getting older. Maybe you're stressed, or chronically tired, or just overwhelmed. Whatever the reason, you're finding it harder to remember things that matter to you. The Memory Journal is designed to help you.

I've been writing about memory and learning skills for 25 years. I'm a great believer in practical strategies that don't ʻcostʼ too much — that is, you don't have to spend a lot of time and effort mastering them. This journal is one of those.

Your memory journal gives you a place to reflect on your day, and shape your memories (and thus, your story).

But this is not a diary. This is a memory journal, and it requires a very specific type of note-taking. I'll provide advice and examples to help you with this critical skill for both learning and everyday memory, but most of all, this journal will provide you with the opportunity to get the practice in this that you need, if you're serious in wanting to improve your memory.

Along the way, the journal also provides tips and advice, with a weekly focus, to help you:

  * learn some basic strategies for remembering the things you want to remember

  * set in place some good habits which will help protect your brain

  * learn a little about your memory, how it works, what works for it, how good it is for different tasks, and how much help it needs for some tasks.

This book is a digital version of “My Memory Journal”. Using this, you can turn a blank notebook into your own memory journal. The book has all the text provided in “My Memory Journal”, including instructions on how to use it, examples, specialist pages, and all the tips and focal strategies for each week. The Journal covers 26 weeks.

 Keywords: journal, improve memory, memory strategies, memory problems, absentminded, free, freebie

The ‘black 1880s’ were a hard time for many in New Zealand, and this was felt across society — for young men struggling to establish themselves and ‘patriarchs’ alike.

Such a patriarch was George Sumpter, prominent citizen of Oamaru, sometime Mayor, Provincial Representative, father of eleven, and general wheeler-dealer. And such a young man was Richard Davies, a Welsh immigrant who came to work for George and, in the best tradition of fairy tales, fell in love with George’s first-born child. 

Richard had to prove his ability to support George’s much-loved daughter, and so he was sent to ply his trade in Rakaia. Not quite the same as slaying a dragon! But times were hard, and Richard wasn’t the only young man to find gaining a wife a decided challenge.

From this separation, and Emma’s later separation from her parents and many siblings, we are fortunate to have a great deal of correspondence that has been kept in the family. These letters provide a fascinating window into the social and economic life of New Zealand’s European settlers, and into life in early Oamaru and Rakaia in particular.

Letters to Emma tells one story of how New Zealand was built in the later years of the nineteenth century.

Keywords: colonial life, Victorian, New Zealand settlement, letters

Do you want to stop forgetting appointments, birthdays, and other important dates? Work more efficiently at your job? Study less and get better grades? Remember the names and faces of people you meet? The good news is that it's all possible. Your Memory will help to expand your memory abilities beyond what you thought possible. Dr. Higbee reveals how simple techniques, like the Link, Loci, Peg, and Phonetic systems, can be incorporated into your everyday life and how you can also use these techniques to learn foreign languages faster than you thought possible, remember details you would have otherwise forgotten, and overcome general absentmindedness. Higbee also includes sections on aging and memory and the latest information on the use of mnemonics.

The second edition of this best-selling book is aslively and accessible as the first edition. Advice, support and both active and reflective tasks take the students through the stages of research as well as encouraging them to consider social and cultural issues, such as working with their supervisor and other researchers.

Maybe you're getting older. Maybe you're stressed, or chronically tired, or just overwhelmed. Whatever the reason, you're finding it harder to remember things that matter to you. The Memory Journal is designed to help you.

I've been writing about memory and learning skills for 25 years. I'm a great believer in practical strategies that don't ʻcostʼ too much — that is, you don't have to spend a lot of time and effort mastering them. This journal is one of those.

Your memory journal gives you a place to reflect on your day, and shape your memories (and thus, your story).

But this is not a diary. This is a memory journal, and it requires a very specific type of note-taking. I'll provide advice and examples to help you with this critical skill for both learning and everyday memory, but most of all, this journal will provide you with the opportunity to get the practice in this that you need, if you're serious in wanting to improve your memory.

Along the way, the journal also provides tips and advice, with a weekly focus, to help you:

  * learn some basic strategies for remembering the things you want to remember

  * set in place some good habits which will help protect your brain

  * learn a little about your memory, how it works, what works for it, how good it is for different tasks, and how much help it needs for some tasks.

This book is a digital version of “My Memory Journal”. Using this, you can turn a blank notebook into your own memory journal. The book has all the text provided in “My Memory Journal”, including instructions on how to use it, examples, specialist pages, and all the tips and focal strategies for each week. The Journal covers 26 weeks.

 Keywords: journal, improve memory, memory strategies, memory problems, absentminded, free, freebie

Academic success is rooted in a number of factors, of which 'intelligence' is only one. Attitude and beliefs, and knowledgeable strategy use, are critical. This is the core message of this collection of articles and research reports on study skills from the author's websites, arranged and edited for greater cohesiveness. Its aim is to describe and provide evidence for concepts and strategies that may change your approach to teaching or studying.

The book contains articles on:

    * personal factors that affect academic achievement: motivation, persistence, anxiety, intelligence, self-regulation

    * choosing strategies that are effective for the situation

    * what 'transfer' is and why it's important

    * how experts develop expertise

    * the idea of 'desirable difficulties'

    * the limits of memorization and rote learning 

    * some useful strategies in:

            * reading

            * note-taking

            * reaching understanding.

This book is for students who are serious about being successful in study, and teachers who want to know how best to help their students learn.

As always with the Mempowered books, the short book is fully referenced.

Keywords: best study strategies for college students,effective study habits, effective learning, study attitudes, educational research, teacher resources, free, freebie

Do you have problems remembering birthdays and anniversaries, appointments and errands?
Do you sometimes find yourself in a room, and wonder why you're there?
Do you end up doing things twice because you've forgotten you've already done them? 

Of all the memory failures that plague us, forgetting our intentions -- birthdays, appointments, errands we mean to do -- is the greatest, closely followed by those moments of absentmindedness when we lose track of what we're doing. 

The special problem of these common memory failures is that they are failures that are often very obvious to others. More than any other memory failure, forgetting the future makes others feel hurt and annoyed, causing us regret and embarrassment. And absentmindedness can not simply be irritating, but dangerous.

Many people think that these sorts of problems are inevitable -- a natural consequence of getting older, or going through menopause, or because of some 'natural' personality flaw. But remembering future events, and remembering what you're doing or have just done, are memory tasks that, like any other memory task, are subject to your skills. Skills can be learned.

To learn or improve a skill, you need to know effective strategies and how to practice them. This book helps you understand these memory and attention failures, and shows you how to overcome them.

As always with the Mempowered books, this fully referenced book, based on the work of cognitive researchers, helps you permanently improve your memory skills by explaining what you need to know to use these strategies effectively and appropriately.

 Keywords: remembering intentions, remembering appointments, how to overcome absent minded, how to overcome forgetfulness, absentmindedness, short-term memory problems, action slips, prospective memory

 Being smart helps. Working hard helps more. But working effectively helps most of all.

There's a great deal that research can now tell us about how to study effectively. For 20 years, I've been reporting on research into memory and learning, and explaining how these findings can be translated into practical advice. In earlier books, I have presented a lot of detail on strategies in specific areas: note-taking, mnemonics, practice and revision. In this guide, I attempt to provide an overview of how to approach your learning, and the strategies you should consider using.

The book covers:

* preparing for learning

* approaching a text

* reading

* taking notes

* building understanding

* navigating non-linear environments

* dealing with lectures

* memorizing

* revising

* building expertise in skills

* how specific subjects differ in their needs & demands.

The book can be used as an adjunct and quick reference for those who have the more in-depth workbooks, or as a simplified guide for those who want the bottom-line without the detail.

This is not a book for students who want a magic bullet, who want a five-minute 'answer' to effortless study! But students who want to know that their time and effort are being used wisely, that their diligence will be rewarded with better marks and more long-lasting learning, this guide may be the answer they've long been looking for. 

Keywords: best study strategies for college students, textbook reading strategies for college, study skills, college study, successful learning

This version of Mnemonics for Study has an extensive English-Italian glossary (750 words) to assist Italian readers. The relevant glossary is provided after each section, and these section glossaries are all included in the Table of Contents for easy reference. A complete glossary in alphabetical order is also included at the end of the book.

A successful student uses effective strategies

Being a successful student is far more about being a smart user of effective strategies than about being 'smart'. In fact it is possible to predict how well a student will do simply on the basis of their use of study strategies.

Mnemonics is one class of study strategy that is of proven effectiveness, but (like only too many effective strategies!) is used far too little. Despite many studies showing the effectiveness of mnemonic strategies, they remain the least frequently used formal memory aid used by students.

Perhaps the main reason for this is that their effectiveness is not intuitively obvious — truly, no one really believes that these 'tricks' can so remarkably improve memory until they try them for themselves.

But while mnemonics do not help you understand your material, they do help you remember those many details you need to achieve expertise in a topic — details such as the names of things, technical words, lists of principles.

Moreover, mnemonics can help you remember tags or labels that allow you to access clusters of meaningful information -- for example, headings of a speech or main points for exam essays. For both these reasons, mnemonics are a valuable assistance to building up expertise in a subject, as well as in helping you 'cram' for an exam.

This concise book covers

acronyms & acrosticsrhythm & rhymekeyword strategies (including the face-name association method)the story methodthe loci or journey method the pegword methodthe link methodcoding mnemonics

While you can find basic information on these various mnemonic strategies in many books and websites, Mnemonics for Study goes far beyond the same tired descriptions, using the latest research to explain exactly how these strategies work and are best used.

The hardest part of permanently improving your memory is changing your habits and becoming an effective user of effective strategies. The best way to do this, research has shown, is through understanding how different strategies work, and when and how to use them. Through examples and exercises, that is what this book aims to teach you.

 

The ‘black 1880s’ were a hard time for many in New Zealand, and this was felt across society — for young men struggling to establish themselves and ‘patriarchs’ alike.

Such a patriarch was George Sumpter, prominent citizen of Oamaru, sometime Mayor, Provincial Representative, father of eleven, and general wheeler-dealer. And such a young man was Richard Davies, a Welsh immigrant who came to work for George and, in the best tradition of fairy tales, fell in love with George’s first-born child. 

Richard had to prove his ability to support George’s much-loved daughter, and so he was sent to ply his trade in Rakaia. Not quite the same as slaying a dragon! But times were hard, and Richard wasn’t the only young man to find gaining a wife a decided challenge.

From this separation, and Emma’s later separation from her parents and many siblings, we are fortunate to have a great deal of correspondence that has been kept in the family. These letters provide a fascinating window into the social and economic life of New Zealand’s European settlers, and into life in early Oamaru and Rakaia in particular.

Letters to Emma tells one story of how New Zealand was built in the later years of the nineteenth century.

Keywords: colonial life, Victorian, New Zealand settlement, letters

Perfect Memory Training is essential reading for anyone who wants to strengthen their powers of recall. Written by Dr Fiona McPherson, a psychologist with years of experience in the field, it explains how memories are created and stored, sets out a range of techniques to help you improve these processes, and provides exercises to help you track your progress. Whether you want to get better at remembering names, faces, lists or pieces of general knowledge, Perfect Memory Training has everything you need to boost your mental ability.

The Perfect series is a range of practical guides that give clear and straightforward advice on everything from getting your first job to choosing your baby's name. Written by experienced authors offering tried-and-tested tips, each book contains all you need to get it right first time.

You can predict how well a student will do simply on the basis of their use of effective study strategies. 

This book is for college students who are serious about being successful in study, and teachers who want to know how best to help their students learn.

Being a successful student is far more about being a smart user of effective strategies than about being 'smart'. Research has shown it is possible to predict how well a student will do simply on the basis of their use of study strategies.

This workbook looks at the most important group of study strategies – how to take notes (with advice on how to read a textbook and how to prepare for a lecture). You’ll be shown how to:

* format your notes 

* use headings and highlighting

* how to write different types of text summaries and pictorial ones, including concept maps and mind maps (you'll find out the difference, and the pros and cons of each)

* ask the right questions

* make the right connections 

* review your notes 

* evaluate text to work out which strategy is appropriate.

There's advice on individual differences and learning styles, and on how to choose the strategies that are right for both you and the situation.

Using effective notetaking strategies will help you remember what you read. It will help you understand more, and set you on the road to becoming an expert (or at least getting good grades!).

Successful studying isn’t about hours put in, it’s about spending your time wisely. You want to study smarter not harder.

As always with the Mempowered books, this thorough (and fully referenced) workbook doesn't re-hash the same tired advice that's been peddled for so long. Rather, Effective Notetaking builds on the latest cognitive and educational research to help you study for success.

This revised edition comes in a new (slightly smaller) size, with new images, and an extended chapter on taking notes in lectures.

Keywords: best study strategies for college students, how to improve note taking skills, study skills, college study, taking notes

Working ‘hard’ is not enough. To be an effective student, you need to work ‘smart’.

This book is for students who are serious about being successful in study, and teachers who want to know how best to help their students learn. For being a successful student is far more about being a smart user of effective strategies than about being 'smart'.

In Effective Notetaking and Mnemonics for Study, Dr McPherson showed readers many strategies for improving understanding and memory. But these on their own can only take you so far, if you don’t know how to cement that information into your brain for the long term. In this new book, Dr McPherson explains the 10 principles of effective practice and revision.

Few students know how to revise effectively, which is why they waste so much time going over and over material, as they try to hammer it into their heads. But you don’t need to spend all that time, and you don’t need to endure such boredom. What you need to do is understand how to review your learning in the most effective way. Using examples from science, math, history, foreign languages, and skill learning, that is what this book aims to teach you.

This book will tell you 

*  what you should practice or revise 

*  how you should practice

*  how often you should practice

*  how far apart you should schedule your sessions

*  different strategies you can use in your practice

*  how skill learning differs from 'fact' learning

and more.

As always with the Mempowered books, this book uses the latest cognitive and educational research to show you what to do to maximize your learning.

Keywords: how to revise effectively, deliberate practice book, deliberate practice in education, best study strategies for college students, learning a skill