Study skills

^教末郭志強
二零零六年四月十三日

Setting goals (RIPP)

• Goals must be ealistic and reachable. Ambitious ones only lead to frustration.
• Goals must be ndependent. Goals that depend on what others do or do not do are likely to be unattainable. If you intend to borrow your classmate’s notes to revise during the weekend, but he is absent, your goal is dependent. If a particular grammar workbook is not available, switch to another one.
• Goals must be ositive.
  That you will not watch TV or play computer games before exams is not positive. That you will score five more marks in the overall average in the final examination is.
• Goals must be rioritized.
  Some goals are more important than others. Getting into S.6 science, winning the Sports-Boy of the year, putting up an environmental computer model in the annual Joint School Science Exhibition etc. are positive. Some goals contribute to the attainment of others. Avoid the temptation to assign high values to urgent tasks. Always start early so that you will not be hard pressed by a backlog of urgent tasks.

Reward yourself after you’ve completed your task. Buy yourself a small gift, go to movies, spend some time with your friends etc.

Managing task, time and place (PRESS)

• Tasks must be rioritized according to their importance, contribution to the overall goals, not according to their ‘urgency’
• Don’t be a perfectionist. Be easonable. The ‘law of diminishing return’ states that the first hamburger you eat is more satisfying than subsequent ones. The amount of effort to do a job perfectly well instead of reasonably well is not worth the while.
• Start arly, otherwise more tasks will become urgent
• Have everal tasks ‘on the go’ at any time. Do you know that human beings are always on the multi-tasking mode? While we are talking on the cordless phone with our friends, we may be polishing our fingernails, chewing bubble gum, watching TV and sitting on the loo.
• et your own personal deadlines. Some people habitually set their watches 10 minutes ahead. Working ahead of schedule gives confidence and satisfaction.

In managing your tasks, there are 4 traps to avoid (TEDI):

• Doing all sorts of 'idying up' and pretending you need to finish them before starting work.
• Doing asy little tasks, as a way of putting-off starting a big, important task.
• Finding isplacement' activities, keeping yourself busy from doing what you should be doing.
  

  Build up a ‘combat-mood’. Tests and examinations are a ‘mind’ game. CONCENTRATE! FOCUS!

• Collecting together all the ‘bts and pieces’ you think you need before starting the real task at hand.

Some time-management tips: (930)

• As far as time is concerned, you can finish 0% of your task within the first 10% of the available time.
• Don’t study intensely for more than minutes at a time. Give your brain a 5-minute break to consolidate what you have just learnt. Try to recall what you have just read during the last 30 minutes. Try to summarize in your own words. Try to associate, to find a relationship, to figure out an organization of what you have just studied with your past knowledge.
• Dig up ‘little bits’ of time and use them to do short but useful tasks. For example, write down the vocabulary list for today’s Physics dictation on a pocket size notebook or a pack of index cards. Take it out to have a glance when you wait for an LRT, queue outside the toilet etc.

Some place-management tips: (LMNO)

• Don’t be fussy about the environment. earn to concentrate on you study even when you are surrounded by thundering noises of majong, TV or hi-fi.
• atch the study to the place. If there is plenty of room to spread out, or drawing boards or computers available, do some ‘bigger’ tasks. But we can do a lot even with a book perched on our knees. We can study wherever we are.
• Remember, there is o ideal, favourite place to study. No, not even the library or the study room. If you can study only at a certain ‘best’ place, it is an excuse of not doing anything outside that place.

  Of course, a situation similar to the test/exam environment will bring up the right kind of mood/mind. It will increase your chance to recall what you’ve studied.

• Stare at the ceiling, ut of the window, or some imaginary, higher dimensions on the wall to give your brain a 5-minute break.

Going to lessons

• Read the CONTENTS pages.
• Look up the meanings of difficult words. Teachers can help students by assigning them to look up difficult words.
• Figure out what the passage is about.
• Locate which parts of the passage you do not understand. Mark them. They are where you should pay special attention to see how your teacher handles these parts of the passage.
• Write an outline / summary of the passage.
• If you have not enough time to follow all the 5 steps above, at least do the first four.