School is in session. How NOT to study for your next test.

If you need to study for that first test in school - put down the highlighter. 

Dr. John Grohol, founder of Psych Central, says that’s one of the methods that just doesn’t work. Three common study techniques that you should skip are:

* Highlighting and underlining: It may be easy, but it can actually interfere with inference thinking and can hurt your test performance.

* Re-reading: It may help a little, but for most people, it’s a waste of time and effort and does not improve performance.

* Summarizing: Most students don’t know how to do it very well. And when they do learn how to do it, it doesn’t help with actual learning.

So What Study Methods Work? Try one of these:

* Self-explanation: Instead of just memorizing material, try explaining it to yourself.

* Imagery: Forming mental images of text while reading can be very effective.

* Practice testing: Go ahead and test yourself. It’s a much more effective use of your time than highlighting or rereading.