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Improve reading skills – comprehensionConcentration and MemoryDouble your usable memory via vocabulary and acronyms This section should be read in tandem with ‘Reduce your reading time’. The
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A.CONCENTRATION- SOME BASIC GUIDELINES FOR
THE HOMEB.CONTROL OF THE ENVIRONMENT C.REMEMBERING D.ACRONYMS E.VOCABULARY: an on going process A. CONCENTRATION- SOME BASIC GUIDELINES FOR THE HOME 1. Set aside a place for study and study only! A. Find a specific place (or places) that you can use for studying (for example, the bedroom, the garage, etc.) B. Make the place specific to studying. You are trying to build a habit of studying when you are in this place. So, don't use your study space for social conversations, writing letters, daydreaming, etc. C. Insure that your study area has the following: good lighting
ventilation
a comfortable chair, but not too
comfortable
a desk large enough to spread out
your materials
D. Insure that your study area does
not have the following: a distracting view of other
activities that you want to be involved
in
a telephone
a loud stereo
a 27-inch colour TV
a refrigerator stocked with
scrumptious goodies
2. Divide your work into small,
short-range goals.A. Don't set a goal as vague and large as ... "I am going to spend all day Saturday studying!" You will only set yourself up for failure and discouragement. B. Take the time block that you have scheduled for study and set a reachable study goal. (for example: finish reading 3 sections of chapter seven in my Psych. text, or complete one math problem, or write the rough draft of the introduction to my English paper, etc.) C. Set your goal when you sit down to study but before you begin to work. Set a goal that you can reach. You may, in fact, do more than your goal but set a reasonable goal even if it seems too easy. B. CONTROL OF THE ENVIRONMENT 1. Set aside a fixed place for study and nothing but study. Do you have a place for study you can call your own? As long as you are going to study, you may as well use the best possible environment. Of course, it should be reasonably quiet and relatively free of distractions like radio, TV, and people. But that is not absolutely necessary. Several surveys suggest that 80% of a student's study is done in his or her own room, not in a library or study hall. A place where you are use to studying and to doing nothing else is the best of all possible worlds. After a while, study becomes the appropriate behaviour in that particular environment. Then, whenever you sit down in that particular niche in the world you'll feel like going right to work. Look at it this way; when you went into a classroom, you sat down and got to work by paying attention to the instructor. Your attitude and attention and behaviour are automatic because in the past, the room has been associated with attentive listening and not much else. If you can arrange the same kind of situation for the place where; you study, you will find it easier to sit down and start studying. 2. Before you begin an assignment, write down on a sheet of paper the time you expect to finish. Keep a record of your goal setting. This one step will not take any time at all. However, it can be extremely effective. It may put just the slightest bit of pressure on you, enough so that your study behaviour will become instantly more efficient. Keep the goal sheets as a record of your study efficiency. Try setting slightly higher goals in successive evenings. Don't try to make fantastic increases in rate. Just increase the goal a bit at a time. 3. Strengthen your ability to concentrate by selecting a social symbol that is related to study. Select one particular article of clothing, like a scarf or hat, or a new little figurine or totem. Just before you start to study, put on the cap, or set your little idol on the desk. The ceremony will aid concentration in two ways. First of all, it will be a signal to other people that you are working, and they should kindly not disturb you. Second, going through a short, regular ritual will help you get down to work, but be sure you don't use the cap or your idol when your are writing letters or daydreaming or just horsing around. Keep them just for studying. If your charm gets associated with anything besides books, get a new one. You must be very careful that it doesn't become a symbol for daydreaming. 4. If your mind wanders, stand up and face away from your books. Don't sit at your desk staring into a book and mumbling about your poor will power. If you do, your book soon becomes associated with daydreaming and guilt. If you must daydream, and we all do it occasionally, get up and turn around. Don't leave the room, Just stand by your desk, daydreaming while you face away from your assignment. The physical act of standing up helps bring your thinking back to the job. Try it! You'll find that soon just telling yourself, "I should stand up now," will be enough to get you back on the track. 5. Stop at the end of each page, and count 10 slowly when you are reading. This is an idea that may increase your study time, and it will be quite useful you if you find you can't concentrate and your mind is wandering. If someone were to ask you, "What have you read about?" and the only answer you could give is, "About thirty minutes," then you need to apply this technique. But remember, it is only useful if you can't concentrate -- as a sort of emergency procedure. 6. Set aside a certain time to begin studying. Certain behaviour usually is habitual at certain times of the day. If you examine your day carefully, you'll find that you tend to do certain things at predictable times. There may be changes from day to day, but, generally parts of your behaviour are habitual and time controlled. If you would be honest with yourself, you'd realize that time controlled behaviour is fairly easy to start. The point is that if you can make studying - or at least some of your studying - habitual it will be a lot easier to start. And if the behaviour is started at a habitual time, you will find that it is easier to start. And if the behaviour is started at a habitual time, you will find that it is easier to get going without daydreaming or talking about other things. 7. Don't start any unfinished business just before the time to start studying. Most people tend to think about jobs they haven't finished or obligations they have to fulfil much more than things that they have done and gotten out of the way. Uncompleted activities tend to be remembered much longer than completed ones. If we apply that idea to the habit of daydreaming, you might suspect that uncompleted activities and obligations would be more likely to crop up as a source of daydreaming than completed ones. Therefore, when you know you're about to start studying because it's the time you select to begin, don't get involved in long discussions. Try to be habitual with the time you start, and be careful what you do before you start studying. This can be one way to improve your ability to concentrate. 8. Set small, short-range goals for yourself. Divide your assignment into subsections. Set a time when you will have finished the first page of the assignment, etc. If you are doing math, set a time goal for the solution of each problem. In other words, divide your assignments into small units. Set time goals for each one. You will find that this is a way to increase your ability to study without daydreaming. 9. Keep a reminder pad. Another trick that helps increase your ability to concentrate is to keep pencil and paper by your notebook. If while you're studying you happen to think about something that needs to be done, jot it down. Having written it down you can go back to studying. You'll know that if you look at the pad later, you will be reminded of the things you have to do. It's worrying about forgetting the things you have to do that might be interfering with your studying. 10. Relax completely before you start to study. One approach to concentration is to ask yourself, "Do study and bookwork scare me?" If you have to do something unpleasant, something that you know you may do badly, how do you react? Probably you put it off as long as possible, find yourself daydreaming, and would welcome reasons to stop studying. If you do react this way, you might be said to suffer from learned book-anxiety. The key to breaking this book-anxiety daydream series is learning how to relax. When you are physically, deeply, and completely relaxed, it is almost impossible to feel any anxiety. Associate the book with relaxation, not with tension and anxiety. When you study, study; when you worry, worry. Don't do both at the same time. C. REMEMBERING We are confronted with two main kinds or types of memory work. The first and more common is general remembering or remembering the idea without using the exact words of the book or lecturer. General memory is called for in all subjects; however, the arts, social sciences and literature probably make the greatest use of this particular kind of remembering. The other type of memory work is the verbatim memorizing or remembering the identical words by which something is expressed. This type of memorizing may be called for in all subjects but especially in law, dramatics, science, engineering, mathematics, and foreign language where the exact wording of formulas, rules, norms, law, lines in a play, or vocabulary must be remembered. Other kinds of memory have their place and it is important for the student to know when to stop with the general idea and when to fix in mind the exact words, numbers, and symbols. 1.Understand thoroughly what is to be remembered and memorized. When something is understood, be it a name or a chemical chain it is almost completely learned, for anything thoroughly understood is well on the way toward being memorized. In the very process of trying to understand, to get clearly in mind a complex series of events, or chain of reasoning, the best possible process of trying to fix in mind for later use is being followed. 2.Spot what is to be memorized verbatim. It is a good plan to use a special marking symbol in text and notebook to indicate parts and passages, rules, data, and all other elements which need to be memorized instead of just understood and remembered. 3.If verbatim memory is required, go over the material or try to repeat at odd times, as, for example, while going back and forth to school. 4.Think about what you are trying to learn. Find an interest in the material if you wish to memorize it with ease. 5.Study first the items you want to remember longest. 6.Learn complete units at one time as that is the way it will have to be recalled. 7.Over-learn to make certain. 8.Analyze material and strive to intensify the impressions the material makes. 9.Fix concrete imagery whenever possible. Close your eyes and get a picture of the explanation and summary answer. Try to see it on the page. See the key words underlined. 10.Make you own applications, examples, illustrations. 11.Reduce the material to be remembered to your own self-made system or series of numbered steps. 12.Represent the idea graphically by use of pictorial or diagrammatic forms. 13.Make a list of key words most useful in explaining the idea or content of the lesson. 14.Form a variety of associations among the points you wish to remember. The richer the associations, the better memory. 15.Try making the idea clear to a friend without referring to your book or notes. 16.Actually write out examination questions on the material that you think you might get at the end of the term. Then write answers to your own questions. Since you now have the chance, consult the text or your notes to improve your answers. 17.Follow suggestions for reviewing. This is an important part of remembering. D. ACRONYMS The use of acronyms can be helpful when a list of facts or sequence of items must be remembered. An acronym is a word or phrase made from the initial letter or letters of each of the successive parts or major parts of a compound term. For example, the acronym PERT stands for Program Evaluation and Review Technique. Of course, acronyms can be created by students to remember a specific item, such as the planets in our solar system in sequence (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto). Taking the first letter of each word, you would have m, v e, m, j, s, u, n, and p. Make up a nonsensical phrase to help you remember the exact order, such as, "My very elegant mother just served us nine pies." E. VOCABULARY: an on going process How do I begin to increase my vocabulary? Vocabulary is an on going process. It continues throughout your life. what you have done is to slow your effective method of learning vocabulary down to a snail's pace. When you were younger you learned something day in and day out. You kept squeezing every moment of the day into a new and different learning situation. You continually asked questions and drove yourself to learn more. Look at the following examples: at the age of 4 you probably knew
5,600 words
at the age of 5 you probably knew 9,600 words at the age of 6 you probably knew 14,700 words at the age of 7 you probably knew 21,200 words at the age of 8 you probably knew 26,300 words at the age of 9 you probably knew 29,300 words at the age of 10 you probably knew 34,300 words as a graduate you probably knew 120,000 words What this tells you is the more you learn, the more vocabulary you will know. No matter what your age, you must continue to learn. Words are "symbols" for ideas. These ideas formulate knowledge and knowledge is gained largely through words |
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