By Lexi Liptak
Just found out you have an exam coming up soon? Need a new way to study to keep your focus? There is a simple trick to help you instead of cramming and rereading the information for hours. It is called chunking! Chunking helps you break down course material into more manageable pieces to help you remember. We will be diving into how this works and how to help you study a lot smarter!
What is Chunking?
Chunking is a strategy where you take information and break it up into smaller pieces to help your brain remember the information.1 Chunking can help you remember things in smaller quantities instead of memorizing everything at once. Think about it when you were younger trying to remember your mom or dads phone number. You learned the phone number in chunks not all at once. Everyone uses chunking without even realizing it. Why not use it to get that good grade on your next exam.
Effects of Chunking in Learning
Learning is hard as it is already. We might as well try to find a way to make studying more manageable. Research shows that chunking helps you recall information better. “Furthermore, dividing the information into two or three chunks was found to enhance human memorization more significantly.”2 This is proven to help you memorize things more efficiently. Using chunking as a study tool will help you get those grades up and keep them there. A study done by Suppawittaya showed that students that grouped information together in smaller chunks had better performance on memory tasks than others that tried to memorize all at once.3 This method helps lower cognitive overload and improves recollection of textbook material.
4 Ways to Utilize Chunking
- Organize Information
You have gotten to where you want to use this method and don’t know where to start. First, take a look at those notes. Find those key topics and/or the most important topics. Chunk all of those notes for that topic into one group. How you take your notes will help you be able to be successful while using this technique. Using an outline note taking style helps with higher performance in courses.4 Taking your notes in a structured way helps you stay organized. It is like when you use an outline to write a paper. You have everything you need to cover in one spot, and it will make your life a lot easier.
2. Create Associations
Making associations within the material you are trying to study will help with chucking. Putting all of your information into categories essentially is going to help with recognizing what goes where. For instance, if you are trying to learn the muscles of the body. You are going to group muscles based on where they are in the body. You won’t say “the bicep is located at the front of the middle part of the body.” You will group it with the arm muscles.
3. Repeat
Repeating the information is also a key factor in all of this. Repeating the information, you want to learn is needed no matter how you decide to study. Repeating the information helps with recollection and being able to fully understand the material being presented to you.
4. Use Visuals
Using visuals like diagrams will help you be able to identify where information is supposed to go. These can be self-made diagrams or given to you by a professor.
- Thalmann, M., Souza, A. S., & Oberauer, K. (2019). How does chunking help working memory?. Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition, 45(1), 37–55. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000578
- Pratchayapong Yasri, P. S. (2021). THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CHUNKING METHODS FOR ENHANCING SHORT-TERM MEMORY OF TEXTUAL INFORMATION. Psychology and Education Journal, 57(9), 6313–6327. https://doi.org/10.17762/pae.v57i9.2963
- Suppawittaya, P. (2021). The effectiveness of chunking methods for enhancing short-term memory of textual information. Psychology and Education Journal, 58(2). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350861969
- Bellinger, D. B., & DeCaro, M. S. (2019). Note-taking format and difficulty impact learning from instructor-provided lecture notes. Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006), 72(12), 2807–2819. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021819879434