- The blurting method is an active recall technique that can help you learn and remember large amounts of information.
- Blurting can help you identify the information you know well and the information you need to review further.
- This is a flexible method of note-taking that can be modified to suit the needs of the learner and can be used on any kind of written material.
You know about the idea of taking notes, right? It is a tried-and-true practice of students to make sure that they remember a lot of what they just learned, especially the most important info. Students do this because humans often struggle with information retention. If you don’t do it, then there’s a huge chance that you’ll forget more than half of what you supposedly remembered at the end of your class or study session, not to speak of what you’ve forgotten in a week’s time for your exam.
In this article, we are going to be talking about a method for taking notes that has gained a lot of recent traction: Blurting. Behind this somewhat silly word is a simple, versatile, and effective method that will help ensure that you remember information for longer periods of time.
The Blurting Method of Note-Taking
What is the Blurting Method?
Unlike passively highlighting text or rereading notes, blurting is truly one of the most efficient ways to understand where you are at in your knowledge and do something about it at the same time.
The blurting method of note-taking is an active recall technique that can be used to help you learn and remember information. Active recall is basically a learning technique that involves testing yourself on the material that you’re trying to learn and has been shown to be a very effective way to make.
The blurting method, at its simplest, is reading a section of text or notes, then closing them and writing down as much of the information as you can remember. This makes your brain work harder to retain the information, making it really hammer the info down into your long-term memory.
This method of note-taking has been around for a long time but may not have been well-known to students. However, blurting has more recently entered the consciousness of students in general. Notably, the successful YouTube content creator Unjaded Jade is a self-professed fan of the method. Her video on it, with close to 400,000 views, helped the method gain traction over the years since it’s been uploaded in 2017. The method eventually became a trend among the studying community in TikTok from 2021 to 2022, where students and teachers alike would share their experiences upon trying the method and recommending it for its efficiency.
Advantages and disadvantages
The blurting method is certainly useful, but like all the things in the world, it is not perfect.
These are the advantages of the blurting method:
- It can help you identify the areas where you need to focus in your study time, thus making sure that the gaps in your knowledge are covered.
- It gives you a better understanding of the material, as you are forced to put the information into your own words.
- Recall ensures information is retained longer.
- It’s a flexible method that can be modified to suit your needs.
- The method can be used on any type of written learning material – but also after listening to lectures and online course videos.
On the flip side, these are the disadvantages of the blurting method:
- This method is time-consuming, and some might find it tedious.
- It does not replace note-taking during on-going lectures.
- It is mentally taxing.
- It is not the most efficient method for memorizing a lot of facts – use flashcards or a similar method in this case
How to use the Blurting Method
Now that you know the benefits and catches when applying this method of taking notes, here are the proper ways to apply the blurting method.
- Choose
- Read
- Cover
- Blurt
- Compare
- Add
Choose
Pick the material that you want to learn from This could be a chapter in a textbook, a part of a lecture, a set of notes, or a video in an online course. In order for you to be able to compare your notes to the original, it is best if the material is of a manageable length.
Read
Review the chosen section of text or notes. Make sure to read (or listen to or watch) everything.
Cover
Close or cover the text or notes. If it’s an online course, then close it in your browser.
Blurt
Get a piece of paper and start writing down as much information as you can remember. Do not worry about getting everything right. Just dump down everything that you can remember but focus more on the main points and keywords.
This is the main thing that you’ll do in this note-taking method. “Blurt” means to say something suddenly without thinking, and it is essentially what the blurting method is all about. You are ‘blurting’ because you are quickly and spontaneously recalling the information from memory and dumping it out by writing.
Compare
After you have finished blurting, compare your notes to the original text. This will help you identify the mistakes that you have written or the information that you may have missed. You should be able to go through the material more quickly than in step 1, skipping over those parts that you can easily tell you covered well.
Add
After comparing, you may write down the information that you either missed or got wrong.
Things to consider
To make sure that the blurting method is effective for you, consider the following:
- To make sure to really carve the information into your brain, repeat all the steps two or three times. But you can just repeat steps 4 to 6 with the same number of repetitions. For added effectiveness, it is a good idea to apply the concept of spaced repetition to your studies.
- It is also important to take a break. Blurting is intense and requires you to focus. Your brain is working hard to make sure you remember the information longer. So, you must take a break occasionally, as the effort is mentally exhausting.
- As it is mentally taxing – blurting forces you to read and write a lot repeatedly, and this can exhaust you – you may feel like giving up on the method. However, repeated writing is an essential part of the method, and the more you repeat blurting, the stronger your knowledge becomes and the longer it’ll stay in your head.
As Zig Ziglar said: “Repetition is the mother of learning, the father of action, which makes it the architect of accomplishment.”
Conclusion
The blurting method should be part of any student’s toolbox – but there are also plenty of other methods for taking notes that work best with particular learning styles and different types of information. After mastering the blurting method, see our overview of note-taking methods to add to your toolbox!
