Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0345: Maintaining focus while taking a certification exam

Episode Date: July 3, 2015

Lisa asks about passage-based testing on a certification exam. How can she maintain focus while reading in order to answer the exam questions effectively within the time constraints? What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 345. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Lisa submitted a written question at masterofmemory.com slash question. Lisa says, I'm studying for the NYS teacher's certification exam. This test requires that you read large passages and then respond to questions with written short answers and some multiple choice. My mind tends to wander off when reading.

What techniques can I use to remain focused on reading so that I can properly write the correct answers for the essay? Well, Lisa, I like this question. This is actually something that I teach private students directly when I tutor for the SAT and the PSAT. That's something that I just privately do with students online. It's not a part of Master of Memory, but it's something else that I do. And so I train students particularly for the top percent of the SAT and the PSAT for students who are wanting to get national merit. And this is one of the skills, this is one of the things that they have to do. So I actually have a couple of tips that will apply very directly to what you're talking about. First of all, there's a very important thing that will apply to all types of learning, but particularly

to this I'll show you how it applies. You want to be able to do things slowly but correctly. So on the real test, you'll probably have a pretty tight time limit, but you want to practice doing this untimed. I actually don't time my own students very much when we're practicing, and then we're training for being able to do it timed just because at that point it's so natural that they can do it under more pressure. But if you overpressure yourself or your students, in my case, then you're going to be conditioning fatigue, basically.

You're going to be training students to be weary of the test, whereas in my mind, the prep for the test may be fairly tedious or whatever, but the test itself should be exciting. So that's one thing. I would start by prepping untimed and then time just once in a while and make it a sort of exciting thing and do as well as possible with that in mind my second tip is to make it a habit to write down what the author is saying in any given paragraph so you really want to be able to to think actively and try to put yourself in

the author's shoes of these passages. That's one of the things that gets the best results of anything for reading comprehension, is actually to understand why an author is doing what an author is doing. So you read the first paragraph and you summarize that, maybe writing it down or just saying it to yourself in your head, saying, so here the author is trying to lay out the background of something, or saying, here the author is presenting what most people think about a particular subject. And then the beginning of the second paragraph, you might say, here the author is stating the opposite of what most people think, or presenting a contrary opinion that the author may or may not agree with later on. Something like that, so you know exactly what the author is doing.

So at first I would practice writing that down to see if what you're writing down corresponds fairly well to what the author is really getting at. And in effect, you will have written down actually the answers to some of the questions that they're going to be asking you about those passages. The third tip comes to the questions themselves. And the number one thing that I always tell my students, the number one thing that gets the best results is simply to come up with your own answer before looking at the options in a multiple choice question. That won't apply to the written

questions, but you've already partly solved that by just having come up with what the author is thinking. You want to be thinking the way the author is thinking. But this is huge for multiple choice questions where the answers will distract you from what you would naturally think yourself. So instead of looking at the answer options, never do that unless it's absolutely necessary because there's no other option.

But in general, if there's a question about why the author does something, you should have your own answer. And I actually have my students write down that answer so that they clearly have what they think the author is thinking, what they think the author is saying before they look at the options. Then just pick the option that most agrees with what you just thought of. And seriously, this is the number one thing and pretty much the whole test as far as the multiple choice questions go. Because anytime that a student gets a question wrong, I basically just go back to that one question. What were you thinking the author was saying? Okay, you came up with

that. Now which one of these do you think matches that best? Oh, it's D not B? Then why did you select D? See, D was actually the correct answer. This happens all the time, and so it's just a very simple solution to what seems like a complicated or abstract problem. Now, for the ones where you have a written answer, you don't have that issue, the distracting wrong answers that you have to choose from. You're already having to write down your answers, but apply that to the multiple choice questions as well, and you're already having to write down your answers. But apply that to the multiple choice

questions as well, and you're helping yourself a lot. But in general, just zooming out a little bit and going to the big picture, just make sure that you always know what the author is thinking, and while you're reading it, try to pretend that you're the one that's writing that passage, and explain why you used a particular word or particular turn of phrase or chose to take a paragraph in a direction. Like, if I was the author and I wrote this paragraph, why would I have written it this way? Taking that approach to these tests makes a huge difference. Now, like hundreds of other listeners, you may be wondering how you can support Master of Memory and keep it free for the world, particularly if you don't have a lot of

time or any money to spend. So right now, I'm going to tell you that, believe it or not, right now, at this moment, the number one way that you can support the show doesn't require any money of you, is very easy, and will only take a few seconds and it requires nothing but your smartphone in your hand right now. So listen, if you've enjoyed listening to this show and you have a smartphone right now with an internet connection, there's no excuse for you not to do this.

Here's how you can give this show immense support without even having to type more than two words in your phone. So guys, this is really easy. You'll be done before this episode even ends. So here's step one. If your phone's between your fingers, in your podcast app, go to the search function to search the podcast store

and type the word accelerated, A-C-C-E-L-E-R-A-T-E-D. accelerated a c c e l e r a t e d and then the word spanish so have you done that so you've searched for accelerated spanish now step two here's the surprise click on the new show not the old one that has a big ugly red word across the artwork but the fresh new one. And then step three, just hit the subscribe button and you're done. That's it. By subscribing to the all new freshly released Spanish podcast, you're helping support Master of Memory in more enormous ways than you might imagine.

Meanwhile, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. in more enormous ways than you might imagine. Meanwhile, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll talk to you again soon.