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>The primary purpose of attending school ….

You start with a truism (something boringly obvious) which instead of explaining the reason for the essay, only distances the reader. You follow it with three more truisms, all of them expressed in a wordy manner.

A good technique for avoiding wordiness is to go over your early draft and pretend you’ll get a dollar for every word you cut out. For example, in my previous paragraph, I could easily cut “the reason” and “of them.” Also, I could rearrange the first sentence which lets me lose some connective words, and incorporate the only significant word in the second sentence’s dependent clause —

You start with a truism (something boringly obvious) which distances the reader instead of explaining why you wrote this essay. You follow it with three more wordy truisms.

That’s $8! I also added a little impact by making “the reason for” into “why you wrote.” Didn’t make any editing money but it got your attention. Now I will delete “a little” from the first sentence of this paragraph – 99% of the time, conversational softeners like “a little” “a bit” and “some” are unneeded in writing.

>An example of such tool is the Spacing Effect…

Whatever your first paragraph turns out to be, it’s going to make clear that your essay describes various mental phenomena and techniques for compensating for them or exploiting them. You don’t need to specify that each is “An example.” Also, keep your verbs consistent with your nouns. An effect doesn’t “state” – an effect causes. Also, where did these effects come from? They’re clearly terms of art.

You’re getting tied up by your impersonal pronouns. You use “one” and “they” in the same sentence. Part of it has to do with the wordiness – once you hack that away you can feel more comfortable with giving advice to a person or people. I prefer they since there’s no gender assumptions and once you get in the habit, plural verbs can simplify matters, but you can mix them up. Also, remember that your readers are people too – you can drop all pronouns if you’re giving advice. Here’s a new take on your paragraph:

The Spacing Effect was described in the 19th century by Herman Ebbinghaus. He found that people remember more and remember for longer if they study over a greater period of time, even if people spend the same amount of total time studying. For example, a person who studies an hour a night for four nights retains more than a person who studies four hours in one night. Cramming may help with tomorrow’s test, but it won’t help with the final exam two months later.

>Another principle that affects memory is the Serial Positioning Effect….

By now you’re getting my drift. “If one is,” “one is more likely” “one should” — all gone. The third sentence could be “Rather than studying in the same order each night, vary the order from night to night of both the subjects studied and the information studied in each subject.” And you really don’t need the last sentence at all, now that you’ve got an explanation that’s easy for readers to understand and apply to their own lives. (Another example of how plurals simplify – readers can apply to their lives, instead of the reader having to decide if it’s his life or her life.)

>Often one needs to remember a list of items in order or in relation to one another…

Here you can just jump in and explain – it’s a method not an effect. But also make it a meaningful example, something more concrete than numbers, which we all know. “The Peg-Word System helps recall information by assigning items to elements of a simple narrative, such as walking through a house or getting dressed. For example, to remember the signs of the Zodiac in order, assign Aquarius to underclothes, Pisces to socks, Aries to shirt, Taurus to pants, and so on.”

I’ll stop here – hope this helps!