How to Learn

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.