Attend all lectures, even if attendance is not mandatory. Using someone else’s notes can help, but it is no substitute for attending the lecture. When you hear the information, process it, and write it in your notes, you are already beginning to learn the information. Reinforcement of the information through revision of your notes completes the learning process.
A student spends about 25 hours per week, in coaching and school, attending classes of Physics, Chemistry and mathematics.
Taking Notes From Lectures
Taking notes during a lecture can be a frustrating, almost overwhelming, job.
What should your notebook look like after a lecture?
In general, it should look a little like an outline with clear main ideas and some sub-points with a moderate amount of details and examples. There should probably be some white space so that you add notes from your text or from the next day’s lecture.
Sit near the front and center of the class. You will have the most direct communication with your professor, and you will less likely be distracted.
Read the chapter from the textbook before the lecture. It makes a tremendous difference to the understanding of the lecture. This way, a student can focus on the difficult parts of the chapter and ask questions.
Learn to identify main points. Professors often give cues to what’s important by repeating information, changing their voices or rate of delivery, listing items in order of importance, and, of course, by writing on the chalkboard. What key point is the professor making?
Maintain eye contact with the instructor. Of course you will need to look at your notebook to write your notes, but eye contact keeps you focused on the job at hand and keeps you involved in the lecture.
Stay active by asking questions. Active listening keeps you on your toes. Whenever you have a doubt, immediately ask for clarification. Get very specific in the question that you ask.
Try to anticipate what the professor is going to say. It keeps the mind involved and active in the learning process. Your mind does have the capacity to listen, think, write and ponder at the same time, but it does take practice. You can think faster than the lecturer can talk.
If the classroom is too hot or too cold, wear appropriate clothes to deal with it.
An essential skill for good note taking is good listening.
Hearing vs. Listening
Is there a difference between hearing and listening?
Yes, there is! Hearing is simply the act of perceiving sound by the ear. If you are not hearing-impaired, hearing simply happens.
Listening, however, is something you consciously choose to do. Listening requires concentration so that your brain processes meaning from words and sentences. Listening leads to learning. Most people tend to be “hard of listening” rather than “hard of hearing.”
Receiving an online education could help you maintain the important material given by professors more organized than when you have to attend to class lectures. This is one of the reasons why students are considering online universities.
In my opinion, coaching has its own uses and disadvantages.
If we talk about the classes I to VIII, there really is not such a big need for a separate trainer to coach the student. We must understand that a coach or a trainer is required to prepare the student for some major examination. So when we talk about our school system, the major examinations begin only from class IX. Coaching institutes definitely do a great job at making the student run. They try to make sure the result shows up. Thats their only job.
The school studies are quite sufficient in terms of their content and number of periods allotted for preparation for the examination at hand. Most of the teachers in schools also have sufficient knowledge to train the student for the exams. So it is not really the lack in value addition from the school system that is to be blamed for growth in the number of coaching setups these days.
It is something else.
The student has been trained to go to school as part of a regular routine. He has to go to school whether he makes use of that time or not. And, as far as preparation for examination is concerned, there is coaching or tuition in the evening. So the student makes this a routine… to go to school unprepared, come back empty headed as if nothing really happened there with some homework to be done, and then tries to get real value from the coaching. Even the student is not to be blamed here.
In fact, there is no place where ‘what is the right way to prepare for your life and examinations?’ is taught. The school and coaching are only aids to prepare the child for the exam, and both do their duties quite satisfactorily, but thats not all. The student in the early years has to be taught HOW to study, WHEN to study, HOW MUCH to study, how to MANAGE TIME and WHY to study at all. What he should expect from the school and what from coaching. This training, everyone thinks is not useful and time wasting. But I surely feel that if I was given this training in my childhood, I would have saved a lot of my own time and would have been more happy and stress free.
As I said, school does bring in its own value. So the student must focus hard on whatever is being taught in school (for school studies), and then put all focus in the evening in coaching (for competitive examinations). Arts, science, commerce, it does not matter. There are competition exams in every stream now-a-days.
For choosing the right institute, one should only look at how near the coaching is to ones house and how much time is he going to spend there (because self study is the most important thing). Cost should never be the criteria. Time is everything, once lost, never comes back. Money lost, comes back.
While going to school, the student must prepare well for the class thats going to be held in school in advance. So much so, that the student must do a thorough reading of the chapter thats going to be taught in school and take his doubts (whatever was not clear) to the school to ask the teacher. If this is done by the student regularly, performance of the student will improve drastically.
For Students of class X going to XI or class XI going to XII
The students going from class X to XI have a lot of fire in them (carry over from class X board exam time), and so do their parents. Board exams have been rated so high (as a performance measure) in the minds of the students, that they put in everything they have in terms of scoring well during these exams. They are told throughout their class X that this is THE year, their ULTIMATE test of intelligence and aptitude.
The sad part is that it in reality is just a simple test of knowledge. It does not, in any way, measure the student in terms of (a). Grasping power (b). Conceptual understanding (c). Thoroughness in all the areas of a ’subject’ and definitely not (d). Intelligence.
I have got so tired of telling parents about this again and again that I really felt the need of just writing this down in a blog and post it on my website for everyone to see. 1.“My daughter has scored 93% in her board examination, then she is definitely a very intelligent girl and therefore has the aptitude for engineering and a chance to make it to IIT”
My take on such statements or thoughts is that your daughter is definitely ‘hard-working’ and ’sincere’, but is she intelligent…? I am not sure. So how can we be sure about her intelligence. Well, class XI might be the best initial measure for it. Class XI brings a whole variety of concepts, new theories, and entirely different set of fundamentals. If she is able to grasp class XI fully and with ease, then I can surely say she has the potential (just like I said, inital measure of intelligence). I know lots of students who secured 90% and above in class X and thought that . They thought the root sign simply cuts the square powers. I hope you get my message here, that concepts are a completely different ball game. 2.“My son had scored 90% in class X and is scoring above 80% in class XI. Therefore he is capable of clearing IIT also”
Once again, class X only shows hardwork and sincerity and class XI only shows potential. Now i shall point out the difference between class XI level of school and the class XI level of what comes in IITJEE.
The following are some of the questions from class XI school level
and the following is a question that came in IITJEE 2006 (based on class XI).
This one single question in IITJEE requires a mixed understanding of the all the three questions (school level) that I listed. So if the student has the capability to solve the 3 school questions, he might not necessarily have the approach or strategy in his head to mix the three things to solve this single problem. I have seen this ability in very few students. But, I am not saying that these few students were born with this ability. Definitely not. If that was the case, it would have been sheer discrimination and an incorrect way to select students (like the movie ‘gattica’, only the perfect people survive).
This skill of approach and strategy, can be BUILT in the students mind. There are strategies for that which will be listed in my other blogs.
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