Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy

"Written by a cognitive psychologist who has spent decades studying low we learn, Outsmart Your Brain is the definitive guide to help students master the skills of understanding material and retaining information. In clear, accessible prose, Dan Willingham lays out the techniques necessary for students at any stage to succeed and thrive when learning, studying, and taking exams. When studying, the tendency is to focus on the mental tasks that we control most easily, and which create a sense of familiarity, like rereading and highlighting, But, as explained in Outsmart Your Brain, familiarity is not the same thing as retention or comprehension. Real learning comes from practices we may not be as likely to implement, like self-testing. Each chapter in the book is devoted to one process that contributes to learning, but which such as avoiding procrastination or understanding what you're trying to learn. The book offer an analysis of what makes it difficult and then offers specific strategies which work. Each chapter ends with a 'For Teachers and Trainers' section. Outsmart Your Brain is grounded in scientific findings but devoted to practical advice which make a difference to student test scores and grades. Giving readers peek under the hood at their own brains will help them understand which learning strategies work and why"--