My partner and I wrote a book on study skills that’s just come out, so I was really tickled to see a study method centering on storytelling at Study Hacks. 
Cal Newport writes:
- After each class, tell a “story” about the material covered — a five minute summary of the concepts that drove the lecture.
- Don’t bother writing it down. Instead, just say it to yourself while walking to your next class. Treat it like you’re a literary agent or movie producer pitching the lecture at an important meeting.
- Cover the big picture flow of ideas, not the small details. Answer the question “why was this lecture important?”, not all the information it contained. Play up the flashy or unexpected.
For example, after an Art History lecture, you might tell the story of early renaissance artists clashing in Italy, and how and why Cimabue and Gitto — the superstars of their era — were able to break out. You can do the same for technical material. After a calculus course, for example, you could talk about what problem a derivative solves and how integration extends the idea to do something even cooler. You don’t need to review the chain rule, instead explain why the hell someone would want to know the slope at a point on a curve.
Cal points out that the method is”a small thing that you can easily integrate into your existing schedule.” Awesome! I see that the technique was also well received by Cal’s readers. Wish I’d known about The Story Telling Method in time to talk about it in the book!