THE GREATEST SECRET OF ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE 2

Determine your purpose, I said last week, is the first principle of academic excellence, and I shall pick it from there today. If you are not with a can of juice, or a bottle of coke, you can do that now, so that you can sip it down in between reading my article. Furthermore, it is your actions only that will produce results, and not your intentions.

PRINCIPLE TWO

Develop reading skills

Survival in the school system is hinged upon ones ability to read and understand what one reads. Above the ordinary level, a lot of reading is required, that is why you have to develop reading skills, and skills that will enable you read faster and have better understanding.

It is said that students would have to develop an incredible reading speed of 600 words per minutes, if they are to do well in their studies. It's interesting to know that most students go to the University with a reading speed of about 200 words per minute that’s unfortunate. With this reading speed, it might be difficult to read each text book from the beginning to the end, before examination commences.

Worst still it is to be a slow reader. Some people have told me that they are poor readers, and I agree with them. It's okay to be a slow reader, but hard to survive in the tertiary institutions by reading slow. If you are a slow reader, then you would have to train yourself to read fast. Consciously decide to read faster every time you read your book. Better still; strive to achieve a reading speed of at least 300 words per minute.

In developing reading skills, you have to learn to eliminate some not-too-good reading mannerisms. Some of the reading habits to avoid are:

Moving the head consciously or unconsciously while reading
Reading a passage word by word, instead of reading it sentence by sentence
Re-reading words, phrases, or sentences
Pointing to words with the finger while reading
Saying the words to oneself.

If any of these bad reading habit rings a bell, eliminate them, starting from this article, which you are reading now. Eliminating bad reading habits helps in increasing reading speed. One of the problems I had in my 100 level, though I tried my best then, was that I read slowly. As far as reading is concerned, speed, accuracy, and understanding go hand in hand.

PRINCIPLE THREE

Develop a retentive memory

It is very good to read, but more meaningful to commit to memory what has been read. In doing this, you would have to train your brain to assimilate fast and recall fast.

Psychologically speaking, we all have the same brain in our skull, and can run our brain anyhow we wish to. So in that light, no one is born dull. The people we believe to be brilliant are those who have trained their brain, thereby developing a retentive memory.

Now, let's explore how one can develop a retentive memory

Repetition

Psychologists tell us that one would have to read a book six times, to understand it completely. For me, I believe in the awesome power of repetition. How do you learn ABC and 123, by repetition of course?

I my 100level, I had 'A' in my GST (or GNS) which was a four-unit course by following the principle of repetition. I read my textbook three times form the first to the last page, and that made me got me 82%.

Association

You can easily remember something you don't know by associating it with something you already know. Can you remember A for Apple, B for baby, C for Cat, Z for zebra, which you were thought in Primacy School. That's association. A, which is not seen is the first letter in Apple and hence, associated with Apple which is seen. Even Jesus use the principle of association by talking to his disciples in parables, associating what they can see in this physical world, with things they cannot see in heaven.

Acronym

when you are faced with the challenge of memorizing something in a list, how do you go about that? Form an acronym. For instance, in Computer Science, we were taught this law of precedence for logical operators in Fortran Programming-Less than, less than or equal to, equal to, not equal to, greater than, greater than or equal to, in that order. To remember this list, I formed an acronym-LLENG, which I remembered by using the keyword-LEG.

Visualization

I discovered recently that I could remember something fast by visualizing it. One morning, before having my bath and hurrying down to school, so as not to miss a Mathematics test, I visualized one Mean Value Theorem and Rolle's Theorem by visualizing it, as if it is written on a chalkboard which I was picturing in my mind. During the examination, I defined Rolle's Theorem with ease. It works!


Agbolade Omowole, runs Interpersonal Skills Training for corporate organizations. He is also a financial adviser with Aims Asset Management Limited.

Contact: 08020777803/agboolaa_coach@yahoo.com
Blog: www.101youngentrepreneurs.blogspot.com



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