There’s always more to the story
What is it?
Elaboration is all about you asking questions of and adding details to the concepts you’re learning to make them your own and make it easier to recall them later. You can practiceelaboration throughout the learning process.
Why is it Effective
As you add details and connect learning to other ideas you strengthen pathways to the knowledge and also locate the new knowledge within your existing knowledge. Both of these make it easier to recall later.
Asking and answering questions about the material helps you to make sure that you understand it on your own terms and do so in connection to concepts you know already.
How to use
Ask Questions: If you’re learning in a classroom ask questions of the professor and inyour notes. It’s also important to follow up and find answers to the questions.
Create Connections:You can also elaborate on your learning by describing how it connects to your own experience and things you’ve learned before. You can do this by writing notes, creating flash cards or drawing pictures or diagrams.
Create a Mnemonic: It’s a funny word but a mnemonic device is just when you create something like a rhyme or acronym or other association with what you’re trying to remember. For example, people use the acronym ROY G BIV to remember the colors of the rainbow: Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet.
Write it Yourself: use your own words to summarize the main ideas of a topic. If you can put them together into a short story it will help even more. The story doesn’t have to be great or even make sense to someone else, it just needs to help you remember a set of ideas.