“underlining and highlighting often fail to work” (l. 22-23)...

Instruction: Answer questions 31 to 40 based on the following text.

Memory hacks to make you smarter

1. No matter how smart you think you are, the chances are that you sometimes fail to make
2. the most of your memory. A series of surveys have shown most students fail to use proven
3. methods of learning _________, instead wasting their time on ineffective methods. One of the
4. problems is that we often receive a lot of conflicting information from parents, teachers, and
5. scientists, so that we are unsure what works and what doesn’t. Fortunately, a new paper,
6. published in one of the top psychology journals, has examined the biggest misconceptions, with
7. a list of the most popular study strategies, the potential pitfalls, and the ways that they can use
8. them more effectively.
9. Strategy 1: Rereading: Learning new vocabulary? The most common strategy is to read
10. the words and their meanings until they stick. Unfortunately, psychologists believe that it is too
11. passive, meaning that most of the information fails to leave an impression.
12. Memory hack: Space your reading: Passive rereading is probably the least effective
13. study method, but it may sometimes feel inevitable if you feel like you lack a basic understanding
14. of the concepts. You can make better use of those sessions, however, by ensuring that you return
15. to the material at regular intervals. You might read a chapter, move on to something else, and
16. then re-read it after an hour, a day, or a week to help stimulate the memory. You can also benefit
17. from questioning your understanding before you return to the material, which helps tune your
18. attention on the bits you do and don’t know and increases your mental engagement.
19. Strategy 2: Underlining and highlighting: Like rereading, this study technique is nearly
20. ubiquitous. The idea makes sense: the process of underlining key words and phrases should help
21. you to engage more with the information, and it makes it easier to identify the most important
22. passages later on. Although it can be more effective than passive rereading, underlining and
23. highlighting often fail to work, with most students __________ marking up almost every
24. paragraph without much discernment.
25. Memory hack: Pause to think: Instead, the scientists suggest that you read the text
26. once through cold, and then mark up the relevant passages on the second pass. By forcing you
27. to think more carefully about each point and its relative importance in the overall argument, this
28. encourages the more active processing that is essential for the formation of stronger memories.
29. Strategy 3: Note-taking. Visit any lecture theatre or library and you will find students
30. ________ copying the most important facts into their notebooks. Like underlining and
31. highlighting, the problems come when you fail to be judicious about the material you are
32. including. Your overenthusiasm – and propensity to include everything that is mentioned – can
33. easily become a vice.
34. Memory hack: Be concise. Experiments have shown that the fewer words students use
35. to express an idea in their notes, the more likely they are to remember it afterwards. This is
36. probably because creating summaries and paraphrasing force you to think deeply about the nub
37. of the idea you are trying to express – and that additional effort cements it in your memory.
38. These findings may also explain why it is better to take notes with a pen and paper, rather than
39. using a laptop: writing by hand is slower than typing and forces you to be more concise in what
40. you note down.

(Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180904-five-memory-hacks-to-make-you-smarter - Adapted)