What is Your Study Style?
Tried and True Methods to Optimize Your Study Time This Year
By Faith Walessa
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
There is a lot more to school than what you learn in class. Each year, as you progress in your education, expectations get higher and your work load is designed to increase. The way that high-achieving students manage this increase well is by focusing not just on what they’re learning, but how they’re learning.
Here are a few of my top study techniques that I’ve seen convert “C” students to “A” students. Most importantly, these techniques are not about cheating the system. They’re about discovering how to play to your strengths, engage with the content most efficiently, and actually enjoy and preserve the learning that you do all year. If you’re looking for a way to boost your study skills this year, try out a couple of these major study types, and see what serves your mind best.
The Teachers
Most of the studiers I know who function in the “Teacher” style are people who dislike formal memorizing, often have a good intuitive understanding of a subject, and freeze up when they see a question on the test. Teaching as studying can break down these barriers. Here’s why:
My high school physics teacher once told us, “If you can’t explain the subject to a 5th grader, you don’t understand it.” This is an obvious over-simplification, but the premise is a good one. To be able to teach a subject requires a deep understanding that will reveal any gaps in your knowledge. All of a sudden, instead of just skimming your notes, you have to answer questions, put vocabulary in your own words, and present your facts in a logical, cohesive order.
It is also typically a very accessible technique. Take turns explaining literary devices in 2-minute segments with a friend in the class. Hold a younger sibling hostage and fill them in on the intricacies of the respiratory system. Tell your dog why Napoleon made such complicated battle maneuvers. The act of speaking the content aloud, organizing it into your own words, and pacing yourself so you keep your audience on track will seat the material firmly in your mind, preparing you to produce your thoughts in an orderly fashion on an exam.
The Public Speakers
These students are similar to the Teachers, with a couple crucial differences. Instead of explaining the content to someone else, their focus is on keeping their mind engaged through movement and auditory memory.
Many people who learn best through listening prefer this method. However, if you’ve ever found yourself losing attention in a lecture or daydreaming through an audio book, you know that simply reading your notes aloud in an endless loop may not be quite as effective as you’d like.
This is where the Public Speaking technique comes in. Reading and explaining your notes to yourself, as though you’re giving a speech, forces you to stand tall, use hand gestures, pace around the room, and watch your speed and intonation. Intentional engagement with the content will keep your mind sharp for far longer, preventing you from entering an autopilot state half an hour into your study session.
The Writers
If you often find yourself quickly overwhelmed by the tasks you need to accomplish, you probably like to-do lists. Expelling tasks into a to-do list takes the ceaseless swirling cycle of thoughts and concerns in your mind and concentrates them on paper, where they suddenly seem far more doable. The Writing technique is like making a to-do list.
If your method of studying is currently just re-reading your notes, the Writing method is the quick switch you need to start seeing a far greater return on your efforts. I have found that simply reading through notes causes the information to blend together in that same dizzying and intimidating fashion. However, when reading is punctuated by thoughtful writing (like a to-do list), it becomes far more calm and productive.
This is the study technique that I personally favor. To prepare for this technique, you need to be taking good notes throughout the class, while leaving the margins completely blank. Before your test, take out your sheet of handwritten or typed notes and re-write key concepts, dates, and ideas in those empty margins. Reading the notes while physically writing reinforces your ability to recall key words in a far more organized way. And making your studying a firm, physical reality on paper concentrates all of those spiraling ideas into a list that you can check off and a progress bar you can see reaching completion.
The Whiteboarders
Whiteboarders are usually visual learners. Instead of teaching other people or speaking aloud to concentrate, this study technique is all about organizing your class content in a visually stimulating and memorable way.
Once you have a whiteboard or large sheet of paper, there are many ways to go about this kind of visual learning. Diagrams of biological systems, acrostic poems to represent character names, images of historical artifacts, flow charts of steps in a math problem – all of these are unique ways of organizing information in your mind that will hopefully make it feel fresh and engaging as you study. As an added bonus, the tactile element of drawing, combined with the visual element, will likely reinforce memorization as well.
Using a whiteboard is often particularly beneficial for STEM classes, because it allows you to group facts together or physically separate formulas according to their uses. However, visual learning has its place in the humanities as well – drawing out a plot summary of a novel, numbering the levels of Dante’s hell, or drawing a historical timeline with a key image to bring each date to mind are examples of Whiteboard studying that have helped many people I know with active recall.
Conclusion
I would recommend all of these study styles as more effective than any “grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it” method of forced note-reading, textbook-skimming, and rote memorization. Moreover, the mere presence of an intentional system in your study sessions should help you feel more productive and purposeful as well.
Best of all, I’ve found that this sense of purpose helps to decrease stress while promoting true learning. If you embark on your studies knowing what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, you can honestly assess your preparation levels, your speed, and your areas of improvement without blindly worrying that you’ve forgotten something or are falling behind in your review.
Since the school year is just starting up, now is the perfect time to get ahead by trying something new. From all of us at CLT, we wish you the best of luck this academic year!
Faith Walessa is from Ontario, Canada, and is a rising junior at Hillsdale College. She loves fanciful poetry, reading by flashlight, and freshly brewed coffee.
If you enjoyed this piece, be sure to check out The Anchored Podcast. For more Journal content, check out this post on how to study for the SAT. From all of us at the Journal, thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week.
Published on 28th September, 2026.