What Is Overlearning?

Overlearning is the continued practice or study of material or a skill long after information or the skill has been mastered. This means mastering something after you've gained a firm grasp of it. Overlearning is helpful especially when it comes to periodical assessments, college entrance exams, or even scholarship tests. If you were, for instance, studying your multiplication tables, or vocabulary for a foreign language, you would at some point master the material. You know that moment when a foreign concept suddenly clicks you can't unlearn it anymore? That's overlearning--every educator, mentor, and online tutor's end goal in every lesson they facilitate. With overlearning you continue to study mastered material so that it hopefully becomes automatic. Overlearning is being developed by various teaching professionals. From online tutors to academic mentors in traditional classroom classes, overlearning makes it possible for students to achieve more through more long-term and permanent retention of concepts.

The practice of overlearning is used by many schools that emphasize continued practice of mastered materials, and also by many students. That means trying to learn over and over again until a concept becomes second nature to you. This is the logic behind enrolling in review centers years before an anticipated college admission or scholarship exam. It is not analogous to cramming, which is studying a lot of material the night before a test. This type of learning improves the chance of a student to get accepted to Ivy league schools or get full scholarships. Yet there are some similarities particularly in the academic setting. But it's so much more than rushing to study for a scholarship exam or finals. It's studying long after mastery to a point where all concepts are clear and permanent. Once material has been learned, overlearned material may not be retained for a school year or a lifetime. When you cram for tests, you may be able to do slightly better on tests, but your retention of the material may not exist for weeks or months after you’ve taken the test. This information gives way to strategies that make it advantageous for students to succeed. For instance, to prepare for scholarship tests or admission exams, a person should aim to overlearn a subject to increase their chances of passing.

To address this pedagogical focus in schools, many schools instead work on not only learning material, but also referring back to it as a class or school year progresses. It's very common for students to laugh about being able to understand something just when they don't have to take the class anymore. Sometimes, students only grasp a concept after taking a test about it, but not during. By referring back to learned material and incorporating old material into new lessons, some new studies, especially one by the University of Southern Florida conducted in 2005, suggest students are more likely to retain material. It's just like those movies you've seen countless times, where you can easily recited most of the lines even without thinking. Now imagine how this would help new students if they start doing this early. This practice that some schools and teachers are now employing is called distributed learning. It's a multimedia teaching approach that includes both traditional and electrical instructions. Although more fitted for older students from juniors to college students, it can also be used to teach younger kids provided that they're supervised to make sure they aren't straying online. Even if you are being taught in a more linear mode, particularly at the college or high school level, reviewing your notes a few times a week can help you retain the information you’ve already been tested on. This makes learning at any grade level more lasting or even permanent in some students. This could be an effective strategy if you will take cumulative tests at the end of semester or at a school year’s end. It doesn't matter if the student is a freshman or a sophomore or senior, the goal is to make sure that these kids are learning and they are retaining the concepts and recalling them efficiently at will.

There is a place for traditional overlearning. It may prove especially useful if you have anxiety while taking tests. This is especially true when taking big tests such as college entrance test or scholarship exams. Having automatic answers at your disposal can help make a student feel more confident when he or she tests. Overlearning is a frequently used tool by people who make speeches, or who must perform in any way to an audience. Some online tutoring services use overlearning to help their students grasp and recall complex concepts better. Once this tool is utilized and the skill is introduced, learning becomes even more easier for both learner and teacher.

A violinist doesn’t stop learning a piece he or she will perform once it’s initially mastered. The violinist instead keeps practicing that piece so that it is automatic and there is little possibility of forgetting it when performing in front of a large crowd. Similarly, actors, dancers, and other musicians may calm the jitters by overlearning their parts, and may actually improve their performance by continuing to practice beyond initial memorization of lines, steps or moves, or musical notes. This also applies to disabled students, which makes it a good method when teaching kids.