How to Study Better

by D. Wong

www.QiGongunderGod.com

This study guide provides helpful study tips for students in junior high school, high school, college, technical school, and university.

This information can also be helpful for working-age people doing some study.

Some students who are younger than junior high school may also get some benefit.

This study guide is to help you work effectively and efficiently to benefit the most from your studies.

Class Reading

Getting the most from class reading: For all of your classes, it is very helpful to complete all assigned reading before each class session.
1. Motivational Thought for Students: Doing all of your reading and homework assignments 100% is very good practice for doing good work later in life at a professional level. Each employee in a well-running company or other organization does his/her work correctly, effectively, consistently, and reliably.
2. The assigned reading material will be usually discussed and taught during that class session.
3. For subjects that may take some help to understand such as math or physics, the assigned reading helps you and other students to already learn a portion of the study material, so that the instruction in class will be more successful to help yourself and other students in class to understand more fully.
4. Unannounced quizzes (pop quizzes) are sometimes given in class, and a portion of the quizzes may be to check that students are doing the assigned reading in advance.
5. College and university classes are taught at a faster pace during lectures than junior high school and high school classes, so completing the assigned reading in advance is even more important. It is often difficult to understand and benefit from the class lectures in a normal way without doing the assigned reading in advance.
Learning speed reading techniques is very helpful for classes that have a lot of pages of reading material.
1. A good way to learn and practice speed reading is to use a good software app or Web site. Please search for such speed reading resources on the Web.
More complex material such as technical books and papers with equations and math solutions should be more closely read at slower speed rather than at speed reading speed. This is important for comprehension.
1. In addition, please closely read each topic within a chapter of a technical book. Some re-reading and looking at previous pages should be done as needed to help have better understanding of each topic before moving to the next section or topic.

Homework

Getting the most from class homework sets: For all of your classes, it is very helpful to complete all assigned homework sets before each class session.
1. The benefits are similar to doing the assigned reading on time.
2. In college and university, the pace is fast. Falling behind in homework sets and/or assigned reading considerably reduces the understanding and learning from class time.
3. Additional help for doing homework may often be available from class-provided online resources or from resources available on the Web.
4. Going to discussion sections in college and university is very helpful for getting in-person tutoring, including for classes with homework sets.
5. In addition, going to teaching assistant and/or professor office hours can be helpful when needing individual help or advice.

Class Lectures

Getting the most from class lectures:
1. It is best to learn by closely watching and carefully listening to each class lecture. This becomes more important when the pace is faster in college and university.
2. Taking some written notes is helpful for active learning, but note taking can also compete for your attention instead of closely watching and listening.
3. Your attention should be complete enough that you did not miss understanding any sentences said by the teacher / professor.
4. You are probably being too focused on note taking if you notice that you are not listening well to parts of sentences or whole sentences during class.
5. What is in your written notes is often also covered in detail in class textbook(s) or other class books or notes that are required reading or in lecture handouts. Information on the same topics may also be available from learning resources from the Web.
6. Therefore, please closely watch and carefully listen to the class lecture and write shortened written notes. For example, use the ellipsis “…” or other notation to mean that some info such as some intermediate steps in a math solution are partially not recorded in your written notes.

Exams

Do some additional study and review of selected topics when helpful.
1. Teachers and/or teaching assistants might give you advice to do additional study in one or more topics in order to improve performance. Please do such study as soon as practical in order to improve.
2. Also, you may be able to self-diagnose that you can improve by studying and reviewing some topics. Please do some thinking about whether this method can help while you are going through each study period (quarter or semester).
3. Later sections of this document describe some review and practice topics and methods that are helpful for most students.
Please try to plan your schedule to have adequate sleep before exam days. Missing sleep can result in test result(s) that are below your ability because of lack of full clarity or even some sleepiness during the exam.
About average sleep hours is good. Missing maybe one quarter of sleep in one night might be OK (like 2 hours out of 8 hours), but this might not be sustainable over a period of several nights during a final exam week.

Exams and Homework with Math Solutions

This section helps students to better prepare in STEM classes (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) that have exams and homework with math solutions.
The following study methods help many college and university students to improve their learning and performance in STEM classes by helping students to reduce math errors. Using these methods, many college and university students have improved GPA in such classes from about +0.1 up to +0.25 GPA.
Many students discover that they are making occasional or some arithmetic or algebraic or calculus errors on homework or exams. Math accuracy can definitely be improved by doing specific math practice.
Students making occasional arithmetic errors is a common issue. Arithmetic mistakes can be greatly reduced by doing 2 to 4 hours of arithmetic practice. Most students can benefit from doing this arithmetic practice every two years. Some students may wish to practice more often.
Please practice the following with pencil and paper including making your own example problems for 2 to 4 digits:
1. Do some multi-digit addition.
2. Do some multi-digit subtraction.
3. Write the edges of a blank table for multiplication (integers 0 to 9 horizontally and integers 0 to 9 vertically). Then fill out this multiplication table. Double check results with a calculator. Practice filling out a blank multiplication table several times.
4. About multiplication errors:
  1. In college / university, students are often using remembered results from the multiplication table while doing simpler multiplications in algebra and calculus math problems and also in physics, chemistry, and engineering problems.
  2. Occasional arithmetic errors can happen because of a student’s mind not always correctly recalling all of the multiplication table entries. A student is usually not using every table entry in the multiplication table frequently. Then one or more multiplication table entries may be occasionally or sometimes erroneously recalled from memory while doing a math problem.
  3. This practice helps students to correctly recall reliably from the multiplication table.
5. Do some multi-digit multiplication.
6. Do some multi-digit division.
If occasional to some algebra and/or calculus errors are being made during homework or exams, please refresh your algebra and/or calculus knowledge by reading previous textbooks or by using tutorial material from the Web.
1. After refreshing each math topic, please do some practice problems and check the results.
2. Over time, please do this refresh for each math topic. Please do some practice problems for each type of algebraic manipulation and for each type of calculus transformation.

Exams and Homework with Essay and Paragraph Answers

1. This section helps student to better prepare in classes with exams and homework that have essay and paragraph answers.

2. The following study methods help many college and university students to improve their learning and performance in classes that have exams and homework with essay and paragraph answers. Using these methods, many college and university students have improved GPA in such classes from about +0.2 up to +0.5 GPA.

3. Please take some time to learn academic writing styles as needed. Online resources can help.

https://www.sydney.edu.au/students/writing/types-of-academic-writing.html
https://wordnest.org/academic-writing/
https://grammarist.com/writing/academic-writing-types-examples/
Please search online for “academic writing styles” for more references.

4. For classes with essay and paragraph answers, students often mostly spend their study time studying and memorizing the class materials.

5. Students can also benefit greatly by doing more practice work to make organized written answers. Many students improve their performance when they do more practice making organized answers rather than just mainly studying the class materials

6. For exams, please think of some example exam questions and then do the following suggested practice of organizing your answers to these questions.

Please think of and write down 5 to 15 example exam questions. A small group of students can also work together by each creating a few example exam questions to share.
For each example exam question, please do this organizing method for writing an answer.
1. First, think of and write a tentative list of facts and ideas to include in your answer. To add to this list more quickly and flexibly, this list does not need to be in linear order for your written answer. Also, you can optionally decide to not include one or more list element(s) during the organizing process.
2. Then organize your essay or paragraph answer by making a short outline which organizes from the list of facts and ideas.
3. You can then add a number to each fact and idea that you decide to include to show the linear order to be placed within your essay or paragraph.
4. Doing this preparation work can take 15% to 25% of the time for an essay answer in an exam and 25% to 40% of the time for a paragraph answer in an exam.
5. If you then write the essay or paragraph, please use your outline and your numbered list of facts and ideas carefully. Check off numbered list elements as they are being written down.
6. Blank paper is used for this organizing work when doing written exams on paper. This should also be done for exam practice.
7. When doing homework, this organizing work may be done on computer or on blank paper.

7. Do some practice for an exam by writing one essay answer and one or two paragraph answers on paper.

8. This practice writing and practice organization of answers is good practice of the writing style(s) used in this class.

9. If you were to write the essay or paragraph answer for every practice question, it would take more time by a factor of 3x to 5x. Therefore, the use of study time can vary as follows:

For students who already write reasonably well, you can spend more of your study time to practice this preparation work to organize essay and paragraph answers.
For students who need more practice writing, then you can use your study time to practice both this preparation work and writing essay and paragraph answers.
By also doing this organizing practice with questions while studying each week, students can better organize the knowledge being learned in their minds. This class knowledge will be better remembered and be better organized for flexible use later.

Self-Study

For people who have finished attending school, self-study and training at work are two main pathways to continue learning more.

Self-study is available to everyone and allows self-selection of the study topics and study materials.

Self-study is a very popular method of augmenting class study while attending school.

While attending school, you may like to consider self-study for some topics such as the following:

Topics that are easier for you to self-study. Then you can take school courses for other topics that would be more difficult to self-study and/or which require some resources such as lab facilities that are available through school.
Topics that are more helpful to learn soon such as speed reading or better writing skills or more computer skills.
Topics that are not as well-covered by school courses.

Some resources for doing self-study are as follows:

Books and articles available from bookstores and libraries.
1. Bookstores include retail bookstores and Web sites.
2. Books often provide more deep understanding and good organization of more important topics.
Research papers from journals, conferences, and online archives
Web sites that have some focus about topics of interest
General Web sites such as www.wikipedia.com
Large video Web sites such as www.YouTube.com that include many user-submitted educational videos.
1. To find videos on YouTube, please use the search box function at video Web sites to find educational videos by topic name.
2. Use the login feature each time and then save educational videos that you like to your own video playlists.
3. Also, subscribe to channels that have helpful educational videos.
AI interactive chat
AI-generated reports including reading lists of info gathered using AI search and discovery
Online education providers including the following:

Online education Web sites
Online courses from universities and colleges

Some Online Education Web Sites

Udemy
1. https://www.udemy.com/
2. Udemy has a very large offering of professional-level courses including technical and business topics.
3. Many courses are available in multiple languages.
4. Udemy offers a subscription program for a monthly fee that includes unlimited access to a large number of their more popular courses.
Coursera
1. https://www.coursera.org
Alison
1. https://www.alison.com
2. https://alison.com/about/our-story
EdX
FutureLearn
1. https://www.futurelearn.com

Artificial Intelligence

AI is a very important study topic and rapidly continuing to develop.
1. Studying ways to use AI to accelerate and help do work is highly recommended.
2. Because these AI methods are much newer, some of this material is available outside of school courses. Some self-study of how to use AI is helpful.
3. www.Udemy.com and other online education Web sites provide training about AI topics.
4. AI training is also available online at www.YouTube.com and some other large user-submitted video sites, at the Web sites of companies offering AI products and services, and at some other Web sites.
5. At the same time, it is important to learn from each school course in the way described by the course instructor(s). That helps each student to learn the best as described below.
It is important to follow the guidance of your school(s) regarding using AI for helping with course homework and learning.
1. For learning, it is very important to do some homework exercises in full detail yourself in order to learn many topics such as math or physics or English.
  1. Doing homework exercises in detail for a substantial number of high school and college class topics helps greatly to build up flexible working knowledge and methods in your brain.
2. Later, you can make some use of AI tools to accelerate your work on some topics only when allowed by course instructor(s).
3. Tested educational quality: Universities and other schools continually monitor, improve, and manage quality by studying the effectiveness of teaching courses in detail through quantitative analysis. This includes analysis of how successful students are in later courses and after graduation. Also, student opinion surveys are used for each course. For example, these methods are used when considering making course changes such as whether textbook A or textbook B will be used or changing how computers are used in a course.
4. Therefore, please follow the guidelines for each course for how computers will be used, including about use of AI, in order to get the best learning outcomes.
Here is another example from prior years:
1. Prior to AI being popular, powerful math programs such as MATLAB and Mathematica and other advanced math programs have been available since the 1980s and 1990s.
2. Since then, students studying technical topics have been instructed to do some math work manually. Some courses also make use of these advanced math programs for some homework.

Personal Motivation

School is for students to learn over time. Students get the benefits of school and their studying later in life.
Young students are learning over many years of school. Students should strive to maintain long-term goals and motivation while going through years of school.
You will be more capable and more helpful as an adult if you have been a motivated good student during school years.
If you are having some motivational problems in school, praying daily for guidance from God is very helpful.
If you are having some motivational problems up to high school, you may be able to get some help from school counselors or teachers. In addition, you may be able to get help from parents or other relatives. Sometimes, parents may offer to bring you to helpful counselors / training outside of school. Sometimes, student friends or student-age relatives may be able to help.
During college / university / technical school studies, similar resources are available. In addition, some student friends may be able to significantly help.
Practice of Kundalini and Qi Gong under God daily can help mental sharpness and help to develop a consistent mental focus that is positive and calm and aware of long-term goals and benefits.
For some people, motivation can also be affected by brain tendencies and brain differences.
1. Kundalini and Qi Gong over God can help some with mental mood.
2. In addition, brain differences and tendencies that are not helpful can often be helped over a period of years by practicing Kundalini and Qi Gong under God.
3. For some brain differences and tendencies, this improvement can first start when the person has reached some age between the ages of 15 to 21. This is because some brain differences and tendencies are karmic and are allowed to be improved starting at some age in the range of 15 to 21 depending on the person’s karma.

More Info

Please follow school policy whenever you have an illness.
1. At some point, you might know that you are starting to have an illness. Please get proper medical care if needed and as available.
2. Please know your school policy about illness and act according to that policy.
3. If you need to miss exams, there is usually a defined policy about how to report illness and take your exam(s) at later make-up time(s).
4. Please stay home to avoid potentially infecting more people at school if you have an infectious illness such as cold or flu.
It is true that students vary some in learning aptitudes and thinking aptitudes. School systems are designed to help almost all young people to succeed, and specialized learning programs help some special need students.
1. In elementary, junior high, and high school, some separation of students into different class sections is sometimes done according to learning and thinking aptitudes in order to provide better training for subgroups of students.
2. At the college / university / technical school level, students often need to apply and be accepted to be able to attend some learning institutions. This is partially due to needing specialized expert instructors and higher costs to provide college / university / technical school / specialized school instruction.

How to Study Better​