When Preparing for the GMAT Focus, Your Goal is Active Learning

Some forms of learning, if not accompanied by other strategies, are quite passive. These include reading, reviewing PowerPoint slides and notes, and watching videos. How many times have you read a chapter only to realize that you couldn’t remember 80% of what you read? The same could be said for watching videos. How many GMAT Focus videos have you dutifully watched on YouTube only to have little or no memory of the material they covered?

Reading or watching a video is not taxing on the mind or the brain. These activities can provide you with an illusory confidence that you are actually learning. So, because you may feel that you are mastering the material, whether you actually are or not, you may use reading and watching videos as your default forms of learning.

Unfortunately, reading and watching videos, without engaging in other forms of concurrent learning, are weak learning tactics for the vast majority of people. The reason that these are weak learning tactics is that they are passive forms of study. That is, your brain doesn’t have to work very hard to do either. When the brain doesn’t have to work very hard during learning, relatively little knowledge is gained and even less knowledge is retained. So, unfortunately, when we only read or watch a video, we learn far less than we have the potential to learn, and we’ll probably remember very little of what we have read or watched.

So, are reading and watching videos poor methods of study? Not exactly. Reading a chapter and watching videos that relate to the material can be powerful mechanisms for learning if you become an active participant in your learning instead of a passive bystander letting the information wash over you.

In fact, on all learning fronts, the more active you can make your learning, the faster you’ll learn, the more you’ll learn, and the less you’ll forget.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep