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autumnalglaze · 3 years

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studying tips

(from somebody with adhd)

HIGHLIGHT!! i know that sometimes highlighting can't be done (i.e. image files or textbooks that you've rented), if this is the case, i suggest writing a note of the thing instead. then, write why it's important, why you need to remember it. i've found that this helps me with memorising things easier.

don't write down complete sentences if you're reading through. it takes too long and means you'll be getting less done in your study sessions. i've found that making sure i know ALL of the context at only 50% is much more effective than knowing 1/7 of the content at 100%. of course, you can go into further depths once you know the basics, but it's better to do step one of all the tasks than completing just one task.

reward yourself for studying! sometimes it can tiring to study, which i understand. i keep a bag of snacks with me, and for each couple of pages, i have a handful. this one relies on your self control and it can be difficult at first, but i promise it works after a while.

flashcards! this doesn't work for everybody, but if it does, quizlet is a good site to use. they have user made flashcards, all you need to do is type in your curriculum/board and topic, e.g. "physics, grade 10, *board*". double check the packs you're using, though i've found most to be very reliable. however, you are able to make your own too!

small tests on yourself! doesn't have to be serious, but pick out a handful of questions, answer, then check! it's a good way to see which topics you're more confident at, therefore allowing you to spend more time on your struggles!

most people would suggest against this, but - passive learning. this works best if you're too tired to continue studying, and something is better than nothing. i use youtube videos a lot (same wording as the quizlet example (: ), and sometimes hearing somebody physically say it to me helps it stick easier. youtube often uses images and demonstrations too!

i already mentioned this but please do not copy word for word from the textbooks. i know it can seem most effective because it's in terms that you understand, but it usually leads to forgetfulness over the longer sentences. instead, read it once, write it down quickly without looking, read again, then update your definition. keep testing yourself on the shortest possible definitions that have all the information. fancy filler words are unnecessary.

make sure that you aren't dreading every moment of studying. it can be boring sometimes, yes, but god, romanticise it! i've found that making some coffee, listening to orchestras and settling down have made me much more excited to study and learn because i feel fancy. whatever works to make you in the mood is great!

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bulletnotestudies · 3 years

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☁️ 10 tips on studying when your motivation’s nowhere to be found

i got an ask about this yesterday and decided to turn my reply into a post because having trouble focusing when you’re super unmotivated is really common, so i thought more people might find this helpful :) buckle up kiddos, this is gonna be a long one!

1. i want you to remember that this is a universal experience.

every student out there struggles like hell sometimes, and that’s completely normal; you’re not a machine and that means you can’t possibly churn out work 24/7 without burning out. so try not to beat yourself up too much okay, you’re doing great!

2. take a deep breath and identify the reason you’re feeling like this

are you burnt out because of stress or overworking yourself? are you overwhelmed by the amount of tasks on your plate? is there a particular assignment or exam scaring you to the point where you don’t want to start studying? these are all normal reasons for lack of motivation and knowing the why will help you figure out the how - you gotta know the problem to solve it.

3. i know you feel like you’re months behind, but start small

small achievements accumulate. repeat this sentence to yourself daily, write it on a sticky note and keep it on the wall above your desk (it’s exactly what i did). break up daunting tasks into smaller ones; got a billion formulae to know by heart? memorise 3 every day (you’ll have memorised more than 20 by the end of the week!). got a long chapter to study? divide it into smaller chunks and just focus on 1-3 pages a day. slow and steady, you can do it

4. the pomodoro technique is a lifesaver!

i always use this technique when i’m feeling unmotivated and cannot focus. sometimes, your mind just won’t stop wandering off and so scheduling regular breaks is a must! try going for 25 minutes of work, followed by a 5 minute break, then repeat the cycle :) you’ll be less tempted to prolong your break if you know there’s another one coming in less than half an hour. if 25min is too long, try just 15 minutes of focus and work your way up form there - there’s no shame in studying in really short bursts! sometimes that’s all you can bring yourself to do and that’s okay! and if you can, i really recommend a 45/15 or 50/10 ratio (those are the ratios me and my friend - 2nd year med students - use the most :))

5. track your productivity

use the forest mobile app or a hand-drawn productivity tracker in your bujo - a visual representation of productivity will activate the reward system part of your brain. it’s the same part that’s involved in addiction formation and you can use it to your advantage - get a mini high from seeing your effort, not only from seeing your results!

6. set up a reward system

continuing on that tangent: sometimes, a short break isn’t enough motivation to stay focused. sometimes, you gotta pull a little sneaky on yourself and bribe your brain. some examples: - ‘if i can manage to reach 3 hours of productivity today, i’ll watch my fave movie in the evening’ - ‘i’ll have a bubble bath once i finish reading this chapter’ - ‘if i complete this assignment by the end of the week, i can do absolutely nothing the whole day come Saturday’

7. consider different sources/modes of studying

switching things up can do wonders; try making flashcards on quizlet, watching youtube videos on the topics you’ll be tested on, you can read wikipedia articles (wikipedia is severely underrated!), browse for podcasts on the topic, there’s a million different ways to learn, not just sitting down and reading from your textbook for hours on end :) on a similar note, if you have the option, try studying elsewhere - go to the kitchen table or study on the floor - beware of the bed and sofa! not a good idea, you’ll most likely end up taking a nap.

8. take care of your body and your mental health

have you drunk enough water today? have you eaten enough vitamin-rich foods? make a healthy snack! or get your fave comfort food, that works too, extra serotonin :) have you been outside in the past 3 days? if not, i highly recommend a short walk outside (if your corona regulations allow it, ofc). i know getting out of your house is hard, i suck at it myself, but getting fresh air and direct sunlight is crucial for your wellbeing! think of yourself as a slightly more complicated house plant:) you gotta nourish to flourish!

9. stop for a second and think how you value your work.

i’m sure you’ve done more than you give yourself credit for. it may seem too little, a drop in the sea of assignments you’ve yet to hand in, but every single minute of effort counts! every little task you do brings you closer to your goal! replied to a school email? good for you, you’ve got your correspondence covered and your professor knows you’re working hard. took 3 minutes to clear your study space? wonderful, a fresh setup = a fresh mindset! got more than 6 hours of sleep? yay, your brain had time to recuperate from a day’s worth of activities!

10. and again, you are not alone in this!

i promise there are at least 50 other people feeling exactly the same as you at any given moment. we all struggle with the same things, in one way or another, and motivating each other always helps. whether it be aggressive pep talks or gentle words of encouragement, studyblrs always have each other’s backs and you can message practically anyone in this community if you’re in need of support :) our job is to hype each other up and watch as we reach our respective goals <3

take care and good luck with your studies!

some additional posts you may find helpful: ◦ a wonderful ‘how to get stuff done’ guide ◦ energy management ◦ focus & productivity tips ◦ a very straight to the point guide to starting a successful study sesh ◦ how to handle having too much to do

my other masterposts: study sounds⎪dealing with failure⎪chrome extensions for students

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mirai227 · 3 years

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How to go from beginner to intermediate in a language!

Hi! I recently reached an intermediate level in French, and I am on my way to reaching an intermediate level in Spanish too, so I thought I would try to offer some tips and ideas about how you could reach an intermediate level in your target language as well.

What does an intermediate level feel like?

So from what I can gather, the beginner level (about A1/A2 on the CEFR scale for languages) is where you can communicate on a very basic level, and can only really understand beginner learners' content. Native material is kind of a no go (except maybe for children’s content). You can understand about 30% of what natives say at natural speed, and can struggle through some basic articles with key vocabulary, as long as you are already familiar with the subject and the key vocabulary. You can express yourself in quite a limited way, and can speak about familiar subjects, while being able to provide some simple explanations why. This self-assessment grid can tell you more about what you can and can’t do at these levels.

At the intermediate level (about B1/B2), native material is slowly but surely becoming more easy for you to understand. For me, it usually means that I can understand enough words and phrases when native speakers speak to piece together what they are discussing, though I can’t really provide specifics. You can understand about 50/60% of what natives are saying about a relatively wide range of everyday subjects (though specialised language for complex adult discussions on things like science and philosophy is usually too difficult at this stage). You can express yourself quite well on a wide range of subjects, though in an often clumsy and simplistic manner. At this level, you should be able to survive in a country where the language is spoken, and operate fairly well in a professional setting (if the language required is not too complex). You will definitely make a lot of mistakes, but not too many, so you should be understood by natives. This self-assessment grid can tell you more about what you can and can’t do at these levels.

What should your goals generally be here?

Greatly expand your vocabulary.

Improve your grammar to a passable conversational level (watch this video clip to understand what I mean).

Get comfortable speaking with native speakers.

Make sure that most of your study time is spent consuming or using your target language. Minimise contact with the languages you already know, except maybe for grammar.

Spend a minimum of around 1-2 hours a day on your target language.

How should you reach intermediate level?

Use a textbook for around that level. For me, I used the higher tier textbooks for GCSEs, which is about the level that I wanted to reach. I went through the whole textbook, learnt all the vocabulary that I came across, and did all the practice questions that I could find. This helped me immensely. Textbooks are usually organised to provide the base of what you need to reach an intermediate level. However, they should not be used alone.

Find a native speaker to talk to! Seriously, this helped me so so much. Before, I was not comfortable speaking to natives in French at all, but I started to speak with a friend of mine twice a week, and I was absolutely stunned by how much more smooth and confident my speaking became. I looked up words that I needed to know while I was speaking with her, and this really helped me fill in the gaps of my knowledge. I also learnt a lot of the nuances in French and and discovered some really cool and useful phrases. Try making a habit of speaking either with someone, or by yourself every day. If you don’t know something, then google translate is your friend! That way you can learn really cool set phrases. You can usually find someone to talk to on discord servers if you join some language learning ones, though be very careful about revealing any personal details or your face. Arrange a fixed time a few times a week and stick to it!

Study every day. Seriously, I really dropped the ball with my Spanish and because of this, my progress has been really slow. I could be at the intermediate level in Spanish already, but because I’ve been so slow, I’m not. Figure out what time of day you are most productive at (for me this is the early morning) and set a fixed time for studying your target language. It’s okay to experiment a little, and for it to take some time to figure out your schedule. With languages, at this stage, it is very easy to forget things, so going a long time without studying (longer than a month) is really going to hinder your progress. Still, you should always be your first priority, so if things are too busy for your studies at the moment, then it is fine to put your studies on hold for a while, or even stop them altogether. Just make peace with the fact that your progress will be a little slower than you might like.

Do lots of practice questions for grammar. It is all well and good to hear about the rules and write notes down, but if you cannot use it in practice, then frankly, you do not know the rule. Find a grammar workbook, like this one, or this one, and work through it. You can use HiNative to find corrections if you do not know the answer. Then, try making sure that you actually use it in your writing or speaking. Experiment, and learn from the corrections that people make.

Keep a journal in the language, and post it on websites like Journaly. Write about subjects that you already know about, and make sure that you use as many grammar rules that you know as you can. Try to elaborate on your reasons and opinions on things. It will be difficult at first, and you will make absolutely loads of mistakes, but as time goes on, you will gradually start to improve. Look up words that you don’t know, and write them down so that you can learn them later.

Try listening to intermediate content. Yes, it will be difficult, and you won’t be able to understand much, but as time goes on, you will slowly become more accustomed to the vocabulary you need to reach that level. Make sure whatever podcast you are listening to has a transcript, and highlight and learn the new vocabulary that you have discovered using Anki, or any flashcard app. Listen whenever you have time to kill, like on the train or when you are doing the dishwasher - it’ll really help!

Text natives on apps like Tandem or HelloTalk. It’ll get you used to forming the written language more quickly, and will let you practice more conversational phrases.

Make sure that you have the basics of grammar down, like all the essential tenses and basic particles, before moving onto harder things. Find a list of grammar, or a textbook that specifically covers intermediate level, and do lots of practice questions on each one.

Watch some native content on YouTube on subjects that you are familiar with and really like. Again, this will be difficult, but helpful! Make sure the videos have subtitles in the target language so that you can follow what it is about. Do NOT use english subtitles. It is vital that you get used to understanding the language without the crutch of the languages you already know. Look up the words that you do not know, and learn them using whatever vocabulary learning method that you like.

Read children’s (like, young children) stories and books to practice reading. It will be surprisingly difficult, because the grammar used in children’s books is usually for around a certain degree of fluency. Learn the vocabulary you don’t know, and try to practice when you can.

Learner’s material and articles are usually quite good for reading as well, as they are frequently quite challenging. You can find some in your textbook, or online if you google “[language] intermediate reading exercises”. You can probably also find reading comprehension books online if you try hard enough.

Learn vocabulary in context instead of memorising lists of vocabulary. Find the vocabulary you don’t know in all the content you are consuming, or look up words that you want to use yourself, and write them down with example sentences. Then, learn them using flashcard apps or websites like memrise, quizlet and anki.

For your pronunciation, shadow native speakers. Listen to how they say words, and imitate them. Personally, I use Easy Languages videos for this, along with random YouTube videos with subtitles in the target language. If a certain sound is difficult for you, then be proactive! Look up YouTube videos and articles on how to pronounce the word, and keep on practicing until you eventually get it.

Engaging with people on social media can be a fun easy way of practicing your TL. You can read or listen to posts and leave comments.

That’s it! That’s all the advice I can possibly think of. I hope you found this post helpful!

Here are some articles that I have found useful in the past:

How You Can Become Fluent in a Language - In Just One Year By Ramsay Lewis

9 points about language learning and how I’m learning 20+ of them By @ravenclawhard

Language learning tips for beginner & intermediate learners 🌍 By Lindie Botes/ @rinkodesu

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medicalmarta · 5 years

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step-by-step medicine notes + pathology resource recommendations

good day friends!

i come with a lil post to explain my note taking process for pathology and clinical medicine, with the hope that it may help give people a few ideas about their own notes, for medicine or any other subject. planning this post gave me a lot of ideas how i can change my note taking method and learning in general, so i hope it might be as useful for you lot as it was for me:)

textbooks i use - kumar and clarks clinical medicine, davidson’s principles and practice of medicine, underwood’s pathology : a clinical approach, rubin’s pathology, sattar’s fundamentals of pathology.

other resources (mainly youtube channels) - osmosis, armando hasudungan (this man lowkey my hero).

1. prep. when i find out the pathology we are learning (at the moment i’m covering hypertension) i open up all of my digital textbooks about patho and clinical med in foxit reader and go through each ones. for our course, we have to cover classification, aetiology, pathophysiology, clinical features, investigation and management (pharmacological and otherwise).

i gather all of the information in one note, organising it under the headings as above. i try to type everything up on an a4 sheet on one notes, to make sure there is enough space to write it out later.

2. plan. now that i have all the information gathered in one place, i get out my journal and summarise everything. it’s just like a little checklist to make sure that everything is covered and i don’t forget anything.

3. notes. my favourite and most-time consuming task, actually writing out the notes. i use a typical ipad and apple pencil setup on goodnotes. i have a notebook for each pathology and change up the colour scheme for each page as i love keeping my notes colourful and it helps me to visualise my notes if they are all different colours. i base these notes from my previous information gathering on onenote.

4.flashcards. this step is vital in my learning, not everyone uses flashcards. i condense the most important information into anki (GODSEND, BY THE WAY), and that way i have a way to review the module whenever i need to, but especially towards exam time. for pathology, i’m hoping to keep the cards below 50 for each module as i already have the basic anatomy and physiology cards from last year.

as you can see, i really like gathering all the information i can and then condensing it down each step. i really hate the idea of missing any information out, but i definitely don’t try to memorise everything! the most important facts will be in the anki cards, while i still have everything else in onenote for my reference:)

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lavendahaze · 5 years

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Already memorised this stack of flashcards for my exam on Friday and I still have about 50 more to go.. Please pray for me oml

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chineselanguageblog · 6 years

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To Learn Chinese

So you wanna know where to start when learning Chinese, or how to gain momentum and push through to fluency? Read on, dear reader…

Despite being only a mere mortal like yourself (in that I am not yet fluent in Chinese, - but it is only a matter of time) I am quite experienced in learning languages and have developed strategies and techniques that have saved me literally hours, days, months, maybe even years. These I will share with you today, so that you may learn from my past mistakes and less time studying and more picking up Chinese chicks!

Mentality

Okay, so, if I could impart only one thing on you it would be that confidence is half the battle.

If you spend too much time worrying about whether you will ever reach fluency, firstly, that is time you will not be spending injecting Chinese into your brain, but secondly, and most importantly, it will become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy – you won’t enjoy the process, will associate Chinese with stress and essentially never become fluent.

This ‘blind faith’, as an atheist, is something that doesn’t come naturally to me. But you really have no choice but to take my word for it that if you:

Put in the time (listening, writing and, eventually, speaking)

Enjoy yourself

Believe you will become fluent

Then fluency is an inevitable result.

“But, Chinese is such a hard language compared to French or Spanish!”

Don’t get sucked into this idea.

Chinese is not harder, Chinese is just far more different to English than most European languages are. Plenty of Westerners have managed to tame the beast. Off the top of my head, take Steve Kaufmann or Luca Lampariello, for example.

In fact, I would argue that Chinese is actually objectively easier and more logical than any other language I’ve come across (with the exception of Chinese characters – logical in theory, but struggle city in practice for anyone trying to learn it who doesn’t use it every day).

Consider these things:

1, Rather than having completely separate words for related concepts, one character in Chinese will represent a ‘concept’ that will manifest itself in a huge number of multi-syllable words, ie: 工 (gōng) – representing the idea of ‘work’, present in other words such as 工作 (to work), 工厂(factory/plant), 工地 (workplace), 工匠 (craftsman), 工力 (craftsmanship), 工业 (industry), the list goes on.

2, No conjugations. No tenses. No cases. No plurals. No gender. Therefore, no memorising ‘je peux, tu peux, il peut, nous pouvons’. ‘Nuff said.

3, No long words – say goodbye to ‘anticonstitutionnellement’, ‘Unkameradschaftlichkeit’ and ‘electroencefalografistas’.

I could go on for ages about how simple and logical Chinese really is. Also, don’t be afraid of tones. They can be learned naturally through extensive listening.

Approach

Although the sometimes vicious debate present amongst the language learning community would have you believe otherwise (I’m looking at you, Steve and Benny), there is no hard-and-fast rule to language learning. What works for some may work for others. What seems to be unanimous is that a lot of input in the form of listening and reading is needed at some stage, with output (speaking) following either once a good level of comprehension has been achieved or from the start, in addition to input.

Here is what I would advise for those beginning their Chinese studies, and for those already on the path.

Beginners

Learning Chinese can be struggle city. But only if you don’t have fun while you’re doing it!

1, Get some materials. Textbooks are okay, as long as they have dialogs with a recorded version. If you’ve got the dough, ChinesePod is great.

2, Do a significant amount of input (reading and listening) with this beginner material. This is the hard bit, where the language gradually becomes less ‘foreign’ – in other words, you get used to the language. To make rapid progress, try to dedicate at least 30 minutes a day (an hour is better).

3, Work the language into your life. I’m not really an advocate of ignoring your friends and family who don’t speak the language, or listening to the language while you’re talking to them and while you sleep (per AJATT), or changing the language on your computer and phone into Chinese - this is too annoying for me. Instead, make use of dead time. Do you daydream on the train/bus? Now you listen to Chinese. Do you wait in lines? Now you listen to Chinese while you wait in lines. Do you walk the dog? Paint your house? Daydream? Listen to Chinese while you do these things. You’ll see how easy it is. I would estimate that the average person has about 1-2 hours a day of dead time, this meaning time they do NOTHING else. If you studied Chinese only in the time you otherwise would be wasting, you will see massive progress. Now imagine if you fit some Chinese into your free time, too?

4, Two words. Mini goals. Learn 30 words a week, and then step it up after a couple of weeks. Listen to 30 minutes of Chinese a day – then step it up to an hour incrementally. I’m soon to write an entire post over on my own blog dedicated to explaining the importance of mini goals.

5, Characters. Forget about them for the first month. After that though, they are important. Spend 15 minutes a day learning them. Although it may seem tedious, it’s worth learning the radicals first, or as you encounter them – this will enable you to quite accurately guess new characters later on.

6, Get an SRS. Do your reps daily, and add sentences whenever you can. Also, I’ve found sentences are better than words, as you learn grammar and new vocabulary simultaneously – it also seems much less boring than just drilling single words. If you have the option/can be bothered, add sentences with audio so you don’t get a botchy pronunciation (or just do a lot of listening). Where to get sentences? Mine them from the dialogs in your textbook, from ChinesePod, wherever. Just make sure they are correct!

Intermediate Learners

1, Enjoy. This is the best part of the language learning journey. The language is starting to become familiar, and you can start doing fun stuff in the language! Like, watching TV shows from YouKu (the Chinese version of YouTube, but with full episodes) and actually understanding them! Or, reading authentic, interesting content and books. Or making friends, or…

2, Get a girlfriend/boyfriend. Now this may be a difficult and in some circumstances unethical task (if you are just using them to practice your 中文). The truth is, that at the intermediate level you need to actually increase the amount of input you’re getting in the language in order to step it up and push through to the advanced level. At the very least, get some friends! If you live in a cultural melting pot (like my own city, Melbourne, or like, NYC, etc) then you should have no problem meeting Chinese people. Or go study overseas (this may not be practical for you – but if you’re at Uni, go on exchange like I am!) Or, hey, why not get some Chinese roomies? Instant friends that have to hang with you!

3, Everyday. Even more important than in the beginner stage, at this level you need to be having contact with the language every day in order to incorporate it into your psychic. This is because the language needs to become part of the fabric of your mind, which is just not possible if you only study on the weekend. There’s a saying that goes ‘learn a language and gain another soul’. This is because you develop a borderline personality disorder when you learn another language – you will find your thinking and personality will be heavily influenced by cultural elements of the target language.

4, Don’t give up. At this point, you have got it in the bag! The hard yards are almost over. Like I said, this is the best part, it is all downhill from here. You don’t have to agonise over mind numbingly boring hospital-grade artificial learning materials, and can get onto some juicy stuff. It’s simply a matter of continuing to consistently expose yourself to the language, and talk as much as possible. Language acquisition is a natural process, and we are inherently good at it by virtue of being human. Just don’t stress, it will come!

Anyway, that’s all from me, for now.

There is an abundance of resources out there to help learn Chinese, yet it can all be very confusing and time-consuming for the new student to find the best way and the right materials to help.s

Wanting to provide some assistance to students, at one of the regular meetings of the Learn Mandarin Now team, we decided to commission a survey to find out the preferred methods savvy, modern, Chinese language students use. After some thought on how to do this, we agreed to ask 50 or so top bloggers what resources they use to get ahead with learning Chinese - after all…, they should know!

Just who did we ask?

Actually, we asked a wide cross-section of people including teachers of Chinese, native speakers, new and experienced students of the language (both Chinese from overseas and foreign students) and, of course, top bloggers.

The aim: to get a wide variety of opinions and suggestions.

The top 10 recommendations

For reasons such as ease of being able to study whenever the student wanted to and the variety of options on offer, the results, perhaps not surprisingly, showed that the preferred methods to learn Chinese are primarily web based. Other students, however, still preferred to learn and practice with other students or people in their day-to-day lives or via hard copy items such as books.

With 42% of votes Pleco, an integrated Chinese-English dictionary/flashcard system, which not only allows students to learn via Smartphones, but also offers a variety of other features such as being able to look up unknown Chinese words ‘live’, came out on top.

22% of respondents went for human interaction, either learning or practicing with Chinese friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, work colleagues or via other social interaction with native Chinese speakers.

Multi-media captured 20% of the votes, and this included watching Chinese TV programs, dramas, documentaries or movies, or even listening to Chinese songs in order to listen to tones, and learn more common words and colloquial phrases.

The MDBG Dictionary, a comprehensive dictionary which offers the ability to look up a huge number of words in Chinese, Pinyin or English was also a popular choice-easy to use and readily available and it garnered 14% of the votes.

Both also polling 14% were:

(i) WeChat (Weixin), “the new way to connect with friends across platforms”, offering voice and group chat, free calls, video calls and the obligatory message stickers, and thereby especially popular with the younger generation looking to instantly chat in and learn Chinese; and

(ii) Anki, a spaced repetition software programme which makes remembering things easy. As it’s considered more efficient than traditional study methods, time spent studying can be decreased or the amount learned greatly increased. The programme is content-agnostic and supports images, audio, videos and scientific mark-ups.

Skritter which is suitable for Smartphones or PC’s and allows the student to learn how to correctly learn to write Chinese characters—even suggesting corrections to any mistakes if they appear, scored 12%, as did Memrise which offers a wide variety of on-line courses and aims to make learning joyful and exciting.

Rounding off the top 10 with 8% was Line Dict, a very useful on-line Chinese dictionary which translates both words and phrases from Chinese to English and vice-versa, using Chinese characters and Pinyin—plus offering handwriting recognition and the ability to view stroke orders for characters, and also Chinese Pod which promotes itself as a site offering “Chinese learning for busy people”, with over 3,000 short, self-contained, award-winning lessons.

It was both exciting and rewarding for us at Learn Mandarin Now to do this survey and we may well repeat it at some future date. If you’d like to know more about the results in detail you can also read: How to learn Chinese: great tips from 50+ top bloggers, one of our other related articles.

Happy learning!

#learn chinese

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mathematicool · 7 years

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Hi there! I've lurked on your blog for a lonnng time (your content and work philosophy and amazing) How do you recommend taking notes/revising/learning maths at uni? There seems to be tonnes of guides for essay and content based subjects at uni, but I haven't found much for maths. What do you do? Thanks :)

Hello there!

For taking notes:

If your lecturer provides them, read printed notes beforehand and/or bring the printed notes with you to lectures. Usually (for my lectures anyway) the lecturer is basing the lectures off of the printed notes, so bringing the printed notes to lectures can save you having to write down everything in the lecture which in turn will allow you to better concentrate on what the lecturer is saying (vs using all your focus to mindlessly copy down everything the lecturer tells you).

To keep your lecture notes organised, I’d highly recommend exercise books over loose-leaf paper and folders/ring binders. This works for maths because you won’t be writing essays worth of notes. Everyone I know that had used loose-leaf paper had a very disorganised and messy system and found it hard to find older notes. I bought 6 exercise books in 6 different colours for each semester (1 for each of my 5 modules, and 1 for rough working) which has worked out great for me, especially since I had been using exercise books in school all my life! Plus, with exercise books, since your notes will be all together in one book, it’s super easy to just flip back to past notes if you need to find anything e.g. when you’re doing homework in the library and need some older notes or if you’re in a lecture and want to remind yourself about something mentioned in a past lecture. This reminds me, at the start of every lecture, write down the date to make it easier to refer back to your previous notes.

Having said that, do have some loose-leaf paper around for problem sheets to hand in to tutors and for other such things, which brings me on to my next point:

Use a book with plain paper for rough working. Working on maths can get so messy especially when you have to figure out some tricky proofs so having some space where you can get as messy as you want and write out all your ideas is super helpful. It’s also just a nice thing to do to have your rough work separate and write your work up neatly to hand in to tutors as they are usually busy students themselves and probably would appreciate work that is easy to mark.

For revising/learning:

Write up condensed notes. This was so helpful for me when I was revising and needed to refer back to anything important as I didn’t have to sleuth through pages and pages of notes. To condense my notes, I went through lecture notes and printed notes, compared both and wrote down what I felt was most important for me and cut out all the waffle. I usually managed to cut down my notes from 50+ pages in my exercise book to maximum 10 pages. You could probably cut it down even more since I’m quite pernickety and liked to include small details.

For memorising, repetition is key. Write out whatever it is you need to memorise multiple times. If there are past paper questions on the topic, write everything you can relating to the topic in your answers even if you don’t need to because this will help you remember it all. Try to write it all out without looking at your notes. Repeat past papers over a period of time and test yourself to see how much you can remember without looking at notes. I’d also recommend writing out things you need to memorise on flashcards. Flashcards are super portable so you can easily carry them and look at them whenever.

When you’re revising for exams, look through your problem sheets and the answers and make sure you understand them. My lecturers have included problem sheet questions (albeit not often) in exam papers and the relief of knowing the answer and knowing that you’re right is amazing and gives you a confidence boost. It’ll save you time during the exam too if a problem sheet question comes up since you’ll know the answer and won’t have to think about it much!! Also look through any example questions given in your lecture notes as the lecturer is probably showing you them for a reason!

When you go through past papers, if there’s anything you don’t understand even after trying your best to understand it and it’s the night before your exams, just write out possible questions that could come up on the topic and memorise the answers. Maths is difficult and exam season is stressful and you don’t have time to mess around, so if you’ve tried to understand the topic without luck, just memorise. I did this for one topic in algebra in semester 1 and boy was I lucky because the questions I thought of actually came up so that was 10 marks for me that I knew I had. 😂

Finally, start revision early!!! There are so many definitions, theorems and proofs you need to memorise that just can’t be done overnight. Just trying to condense the notes takes me at least 3 days because there’s so much of it!! Give yourself at least 3 weeks for each exam season if you can. I spent 3 weeks over Christmas at home going through my lecture notes, writing down condensed notes and doing past papers. Then I spent another week at university redoing all the past papers. I went slow which meant I didn’t stress as much and felt prepared.

Lastly, keep in mind my advice is based on my own experience at my own university and your experience could be much different. A little experimenting to see what works best for you is always good. 😊

Hope that helps and all the best in September!!

#ask #maths-and-other-loves

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qwedfas · 7 years

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apparently this fam girl got a 50 for bio so can she pls tell us hoow she did it? THANKS ILY.

Hey there,

Long post ahead haha

My biggest advice is to stay on top of things! What I did last year was after learning the content in class I would go home and consolidate what was learnt, so I would complete the HW sheets the teacher gave and write my own notes. Make sure you complete every HW sheet!!! Correct them yourself so you become familiar with the marking scheme, get to learn your keywords which are crucial for marks.

For your sacs always include keywords like specific etc. Some advice I have for SACs is to do checkpoints before everyone, as this also prepares you for VCAA exams. You don’t need to go overboard and do too many practice papers/ topic tests as they get repetitive and some companies have irrelevant questions. Just remember if you know your content well you will be more than able to apply your knowledge!! Trust in yourself. Also with SACs I personally spent reading time reading the harder, more mark questions as then I had time to think of the answer. Some people chose to do MCQ first but for me I always re read MCQ anyway so I felt it was useless for me - each to their own and try figure out which you prefer for the exam!

Making flashcards helped me with memorising the content. A+ notes had great summaries I liked to read as well. I absolutely loved biology last year so when it came to studying for it I didn’t think of it as a burden, so put yourself in a mindset where it’s not just a subject to get a score but instead a subject that is genuinely interesting! Which it is, especially when you get to learn about diseases :) Your teacher will also play a massive role this year, don’t be afraid to email them and ask them questions. They’re here to help you and I’m sure most teachers love questions.

I think the key to doing well is being able to answer questions - that is being able to apply what you have learnt. Also making sure you hit all the marks, be conscious of how many marks the question is worth, because if it is worth more, your answer will need to be longer or contain more keywords. When it came to exam prep (which you don’t need to worry about until September or so) it was handy to have a ‘mistakes’ book. So when doing an exam note which questions you did wrong and keep them in a notebook so you can revisit them - you can compile your mistake book now! From the HW sheets, checkpoints, whatever hard question you find log it down to revisit, also try include the questions from your SACs that went wrong. Also don’t be afraid of mistakes - I remember I made the mistake of saying Cytosine was replaced by Uracil in RNA and I never got that wrong ever again, mistakes do help you remember and learn.

Please don’t stress about biology too much! Good luck for your first sac tomorrow and don’t worry about your SAC mark, because honestly Macrob biology SACs do scale quite a bit and despite not getting the highest SAC marks myself and quite a few others got 50s. Some advice I have for after the SAC is don’t dwell over what has been done, move on to other things! Worry about that when you get your marks back because sometimes you think you did bad but really you did well :)

If you want anymore advice or have specific questions feel free to email me ho-0058@macrob or my chat slot is 9-10pm Monday but I imagine you would be doing bio or sleeping tonight!!

P.S: don’t stay up too late, bring a highlighter into the SAC and read every question properly.

All the best,FAM XX

#answered #macrobvce #macrobstudytips

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