THE ONE LOCATION TO TAKE YOUR EXAMS

Where we learn affects how well we remember. If you are tested under the same circumstances and in the same surrounding which you learn in, you will remember the information better. Experiments show that recall is better in testing situations where subjects are tested in the same environment in which they learned the material. An experiment was done where subjects were asked to learn a list of words either on land or under water. The subjects who learned the list on land had a higher recall when tested on land as opposed to under water. The subjects who learned the list under water had a higher recall when they were tested under water as opposed to on land. The explanation for this may be that there are certain cues present in the environment when the learning takes place, and being in that same environment during the testing process increases performance because those cues help bring back the memory. A little technical, I know, but stay with me.

The same effect of environmental change was studied with students taking exams. Students showed better performance when they were tested in the same room they were taught in. Thus, to improve your performance on an exam, request having the exam in the same room the class was taught in. For speeches, if you can, study your speech or practice your speech in the room you will give it in.