It’s exams time!

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In times when you study hard, you may want to know more about things that you can do to be less forgetful. Donald Clark has recently had an excellent post about it. So what does he say?

This is how we forget – by Ebbinghaus

Basicallly, Clark recommends:

spaced practice, little and often, the regular rehearsal and practice of the knowledge/skill over a period of time to elaborate and allow deep processing to fix long-term memories.

Spaced practice actually means learning over a longer period of time. You should do things like

reherse regularly what you’ve learnt – you regularly reflect/think about what you’ve learnt and you should do that every day (perhaps before you go to bed)
take notes while you’re sudying and then reread them a few times, organize them or even rewrite them in a more organized way – this can improve your learning by 20-30%
blog about your learning experience – those who don’t blog may want to discuss what they learnt with their friends – the best effect can be achieved if you do that throughout the course
repeat what you learnt during the previous lesson before the next one – you should do this throughout the course
do your homework regularly, do exercises
study regularly: little but over a longer period of time works best

Reading about the topics that you’re trying to cover from several sources (different books, articles, reports) is also a helpful strategy. You soon discover what professionals agree about, what they don’t and why not. This adds a new, more realistic dimension to the content you’re trying to learn. Of course, you do that over a longer period of time. Actually this is something you should never stop doing: only the topics change. Later on in life you just go on to read about the topics that you’re interested in or that you need to look into so that you can understand work-related problems better.

Learning is hard work and most of the time a lonely kind of work too. Knowledge on the other hand is what you get. It is a pleasing and satisfying experience. It brings pride in oneself and self-confidence. Knowledge is empowering – it helps us do good.

Nov

17

Some interesting articles

Filed Under Exams, News, Reading, Travel | Comments Off

Yeah, I’d like to share a few links to articles that first year students may find especially interesting. CNN has got a special Travel edition, where the following articles have been published:

Notorious Boston jail transformed into luxury hotel
Inn is out: 5 reasons to skip a hotel

Five things to know before taking your first cruise

When do I need to purchase travel insurance?

And there’s also What to Do When There’s a Travel Emergency from Budget Travel

Jul

23

Preposition world

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werti
Getting your prepositions right in a foreign language is not as simple as ABC. If you need more practice, here’s a wonderful website for you.
It’s called WERTi (you need to log in but it’s free – just type in anonymous and hit ENTER). You can then practise your prepositions with the help of Reuters news articles but you have to choose the topic of the articles. Perhaps first year students could choose holiday, travel, tourism, second and third year students may prefer more business related topics (choose the topics we discussed). Enjoy the exercises!

Jun

3

Grammar exercises

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If you would like to learn more about English grammar or you need exercises, here’s a site for you:
Online English Grammar. Try it out. Make sure you also click on English Tests – these exercises are fun.