Planning Your Time : Studying for Exams

Time management is the key to getting difficult or long projects finished. Many students write to me to discuss how they will best manage their time leading up to an examination. I have even had a monthly check-in with students. This helps to keep students on track when they are thinking about all the material they have to cover before the exams. I will do this for any student who asks, but first I ask the all-important question "How much time do you really have available to cover all the materials before the exam?"

Students want short cuts to getting through exams. This is natural; we all want short cuts. However, I always tell students writing exams for University of Leicester that these are comprehensive exams, that is, all the material in the text books is meant to be covered in detail. Making assumptions about what material might or might not be on any exam is not a good idea. This is because any of the material in the text might very well be covered by the exam. Knowing this, how do you plan for your studying and allow enough time to cover everything in the textbook?

First, you need to know exactly how much time you have to study each week. You should also split this time into several chunks. For example, four hours studying time on a Sunday is not as useful as four hours split out over several days. This is called 'distributed practice'. You should allow two hours of studying for every in-class hour as well; this is called the 'two-for-one rule'. Good study practice allows for 15 minute breaks every hour. Moreover, it is important to study thematically - placing similar ideas together.

Other ideas that help in studying are:
Chunking - Placing similar ideas together
Mnemonics - A way to develop acronyms to aid memory
Selecting Main Ideas - Selecting out the main ideas as an aid to memory
Defining Hierarchies - Placing ideas in a hierarchy so that major ideas are broken down into groups and subgroups of ideas
Integrating - Integrating the ideas into the subject as a whole

If you don't have enough time to study, a common problem for students who are working, you will need to find the time to study. You should also choose a time of peak efficiency for you, that is, a time when you are attentive and learn well, not when you are tired and forgetful. Speaking to employers is helpful, especially if they are invested in seeing you complete your degree and use your new skills at your job. Families can also be brought in to support your work. Lastly, you must use positive self talk to help give you that needed boost when you're working.

Looking over a timetable of the week will help you understand when you have study time. You should use this to help plan out your studying over several months. Good luck and good studying until next time.

KB

Still More About the Comma

Some of you have requested more on comma use. First, I'd like to take a minute to review sentence types. Then we'll see how you can use commas to improve clarity in your writing. There are simple sentences such as "I went home for my vacation." This sentence has one independent clause. A clause is any group of words with a subject and a predicate. There are several types of clauses: noun clauses, adverb clauses, adjective clauses. Okay, why is this important?

When sentences become longer and more complex, they may contain "independent clauses." A compound sentence contains one or more independent clause.s These are clauses that are linked to the main subject by a linking words such as "and, or, but, yet, so, for, nor". They are introduced by a comma.

A penny saved is a penny earned, but the earnings don't amount to much.
Reference:
Dodds, Jack & Judi Jewinski. The Ready Reference Handbook. (1998). Canadian ed. Toronto: Prentice Hall, 89.

Notice in the sentence above that all the information in the second half of the sentence could be divided into a separate sentence by removing the word "but" and putting in a full-stop or period.

This is not the case for a dependent clause. The following sentence is a complex sentence that contains an independent clause and a dependent clause. See that the first half of the sentence could not stand on its own as a sentence by small editorial changes.

When the hurricane altered its path, emergency bulletins were posted on the Miami TV channels.

Again, we see that comma use here introduces main clauses such as:
"Emergency bulletins were posted..." .

Dodds and Jewinski (see above) suggest the following way to identify punctuation problems. First, does your writing sound choppy when you read it aloud? Second, does your punctuation cause you to stumble or misread sentences? In these cases, you need to rewrite your sentence by either removing commas to reduce choppiness or adding commas to improve clarity.
Until next time.

KB