• The quick and simple way to learn vocabulary for language classes and standardized tests like the GRE and SAT.
• How to soak up that tricky vocabulary like a sponge! Save time. Slave less.
• How to make those memories uber sticky. Memorize it once and it sticks for days (without more review).

A few short excerpts …

Does rote memorization work?  Yes … eventually, but compared to the other type of learning we’ve been talking about—“car wreck memory” we might call it—it’s like cooking steak with a candle.  Let’s learn how to turn on the gas.

We’ll look at four different keys to making the most of your memory…. If you apply these four keys, you will be a memory master … a black belt in brain fu … a wizard of wiles … a (fill in your own cheesy alliteration here).  Let’s get to it.

___________

We know that “car wreck” memory occurs when something is emotional and unusual.  We also know that it’s multi-sensory.  So how do we take something, like the definition of the word “turbid,” and make it multi-sensory, unusual, and emotional?

You aren’t going to believe me when I tell you.  It’s actually very easy, and it doesn’t seem real, but it absolutely works!  Here it is in a nutshell.  Ready? …

The short ebook will set you back $2.00 US. You can take that two bucks and buy a sugary drink and a bag o’ Funyuns and what do you get? Temporary taste bud titillation and diabetes.

OR you can take the same two bucks and purchase this handy quick guide to maximizing your memory,  and make studying easier for the rest of your life! Oye! Such a deal! Click the link below, pay via Paypal, and you’re off to the races…

Unforgettable .pdf eBook

------------------------------
Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

Holy-frikkin-mooses. I just read three paragraphs in my Whirled History book, and I don’t have clue one on what it was about. How can I fish the beefy info chunks outta the steamy cesspool of facts that is my reading assignment?

If that’s your main pain, then consider this simple drill to make your mind into a magnet for important points in your reading.

First, mark up a (disposable) copy of your reading assignment. Take a red pen or marker and start eliminating non-essential words. Get all guvmint-censor/evil-english-teacher on it. Your goal is to mark out as much of each sentence as possible while still retaining the overall meaning. It should look like you tapped a vein and bled all over the paper.

Next, rephrase what’s left as needed to clarify the meaning and summarize the info. Again, try to minimize the number of words while keeping the meaning.

Finally, abbreviate words and phrases to eliminate excess letters. Imagine you’re sending a text message and you’ll be charged by the letter. How much can you boil out the non-essential and keep your meaning? Feel free to use texting shortcuts, like “gr8″ for “great.”

Here’s a zample using a paragraph from About.com…

------------------------------
Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

I’ve got an easy fix to help keep your wayward brain on track and boost your comprehension.

Don’t be like Saint Ambrose.

Saint Augustine noted that when he went to visit Ambrose–then the bishop of a hoppin’ 4th Century Milan–he often found him reading silently. No lie. The guy read without saying the words out loud! I know. Weird, right? “When he read,” noted Augustine, “his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still. Anyone could approach him freely and guests were not commonly announced, so that often, when we came to visit him, we found him reading like this in silence, for he never read aloud.” Although there is some reason to believe that others had read silently before Ambrose, it was considered very out of the ordinary! Most people in the ancient world read out loud apparently, and in Europe this persisted up until the 10th Century (Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading. New York, Viking, 1996).

Ancient students knew something most of us don’t. It sometimes really helps to read out loud. In fact, reading aloud not only ratchets up your focus, it increases your comprehension. The Summary of the (U.S.) National Reading Panel Report noted the positive effects of guided oral reading on many reading skills including comprehension. My own experience as a teacher has borne this out. It’s amazing how often my students struggle with GRE reading comprehension questions who, two minutes later, are slapping themselves in the forehead when I read the same question to them out loud. What was confusing and tangled when they read it in the silent caverns of their cerebelum suddenly makes perfect sense when they hear it read out loud, slowly, with pauses for punctuation and emphasis on key words.

Pointers:

Take it slow and easy. Read as slowly as you need to in order to think carefully about what you’re reading (but see my notes on speed reading below). I find most students try to read too quickly, especially on knotty GRE and SAT reading passages or dry, academic gristle. They bull their way through only to find themselves having to go back and reread more carefully in order to answer questions. Those of us in the know read slowly and carefully so we only have to read it once.

Imagine you’re reading to a group of fifth-graders and you’re trying to make it exciting. Emphasize key words. Pause for commas. Pause longer for colons. Just deciding how it should be read encourages you to uncover the author’s meaning.

When you read orally, you don’t have to be loud; just loud enough. If you were sitting next to me during a GRE or SAT, you would hear me quietly muttering to myself as I read. I can hear myself, but others can’t.

Reread. Was that last sentence confusing? Read it again. Rephrase it, and translate the less clear words into words you understand well.

Comment and argue. Have a running conversation with the author. Do you agree or disagree? What’s their real agenda? Why did they phrase that last line the way they did?

“But what about speed-reading?” you may ask. In speed reading they teach that verbalizing the words–even silently in your head–actually slows you down. Yes. It does. But I’ve found that speed reading is helpful mainly on very straight-forward clear texts when you are just going for capturing facts rather than trying to tease out nuanced arguments and hidden agendas. I do use speed reading for some things, but if I really want to understand and evaluate a grisly piece of science writing or a bony bit of philosophy, I have to slow down and chew thoroughly. You can eat oatmeal fast, but a lobster takes slow steady effort and special tools.

And now we’re back again to focus. This whole process of reading out loud–slowly, steadily, with pauses and emphasis–is interactive. We lose focus when our reading takes on the numbing cadence of a mindless recitation. Mindlessly reading the words in succession is not reading; it’s just a recipe for boredom. Engage with the text by reading aloud in the way I’ve described and focus is no longer a problem.

------------------------------
Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

------------------------------
Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

The GRE revised General Test:

• is more aligned with the skills needed to succeed in graduate and business school
• provides more simplicity in distinguishing performance differences between candidates
• is more test-taker friendly for an enhanced test experience

Well, garsh! Who wouldn’t want an “enhanced test experience?” These statements are the standardized-test-world equivalent of “nice personality” in a singles ad. I’m betting the real reason behind the makeover is marketing. Since clear research existed showing the old GRE was about as good at picking out potential grad school divas as Lady Gaga is at choosing an elegant yet refined evening ensemble, ETS was seeking to duck the data. This is much akin to my greet Aunt Dawn (and “greet” refers to the misspelled tattoo on the hairy knuckles of her right hand**) trading in her straining, bedazzled purple sports bra for a camo tube-top and claiming it gives her fresher breath while eliminating unsightly back hair. Any first-year teacher can tell you that gumption, moxie, sticktoitiveness, and plain-old-fashioned sweat have more to do with making an excellent student than knowing the meaning of words like brobdingnangian and mephitic or being able to find the smallest prime number between 121 and 130.

Consider, Good Reader, how can grad schools compare the old GRE scores that some of their applicants will be tendering for admission to the revised GRE scores brought in be others? They must be in some manner equivalent, no? In fact, ETS has been sending grad school admissions peoples (God bless ‘em) tables on how to compare the two. If they’re comparable, how can one be that much better than the other at picking out ideal grad school candidates. IMHO, they cannot.

They’ve even changed the scoring scale to help underscore the vas deferens between the two tests. See the helpful video here. Enjoy the collegiate and vaguely pompous soundscape.

* This device is not actually made by ETS. Perhaps because it actually works.

** The left knuckles spell out “KISSR”.

------------------------------
Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

To help you remember to take study breaks, take a look at the free online app, Unforgetit. It’s perfect for setting break reminders to get you up off your duff on a regular schedule.

Want more details about breaks and maximizing your memory? Watch my free study skills video. It will take 45 minutes to watch and save you HOURS this week!

------------------------------
Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

When building a house, smart people get with an architect long before the first thumb is hammered. Fail to get expert advice and you’re asking for train-track-through-your-balcony headaches!

Taking a GRE prep course is like talking to an architect.  They may cost you some bucks, but not nearly as much as it will cost you if you don’t talk to them. In fact, most GRE courses will return your initial moolah invested, with interest!

GRE prep courses can raise a student’s combined score an average of 150 points.  That can mean a spiffier, shinier, way more posh grad school and bigger earnings in the real world. BONUS: getting many fellowships, TA-ships, etc. depends directly on your GRE score. You score low, you lose dough! So skipping the GRE prep is playing russian roulette with your future!

Whether you’re studying with Kaplan, Princeton Review or, the GRE class I teach (consider that full disclosure) you’ll discover the tricks and techniques you must have to ace each of those sections. In my class, we also look at other crucial info such as test layout, memory skills (for that vicious vocab), the testing center, and test anxiety.  Every last bit of it contributes to helping you get a score you can be proud of, so let’s look at how GRE prep courses can help you with each of those sections, the cost in time and money, when to take a course, and the ins and outs of picking one that won’t be a waste of your time and money.

How Can GRE Prep Help You With The Quantitative Section?

In the quantitative (math) section of the GRE there is a lot of very specific (nit-picky) material to cover; prime factoring, quadratic expressions, area of a circle segment, permutations, etc. Most of it you’ve probably seen before. Of course, you may not have seen it since 6th grade, but little review and practice now can bring it all back.

Bad news: you need to go over a load of stuff.  You need to see how it will actually be tested and decide at that point how much time to spend studying and practicing each problem type. This is where a good instructor can save you huge amounts of time and anguish. Example; going through a prep book, you might see a few sentences on prime numbers. You think, “I haven’t messed with primes since I was in junior high. There’s only a few sentences here. Who uses primes in real life anyway? I’ll skip it.” Bad idea, kemosabe. Turns out, prime numbers are the key for all sorts of otherwise hairy and scary GRE problems.

A good GRE prep course can also show you supah-ninja GRE skills, such as how to use the structure of the test questions to help identify the answer that is most probably correct even when you have not the first clue how to complete the problem.  For most students, that’s GRE score gold!

How Can GRE Prep Help You With The Verbal Section?

First, the good news… The verbal section is relatively straightforward and learning all the helpful techniques for each type of verbal problem (sentence completion, antonyms, reading comprehension, and analogies) can easily be accomplished in a few hours.

Now, the bad news… The bulk of your prep takes place outside the class as you pound extravagantly useless new vocabulary into your resisting cranium.  But ya’ gotta do it. Learning new vocabulary is the single most important thing you can do to beef up your GRE verbal score.

In my prep classes, I tell my students to learn AT LEAST 300 new vocabulary words. You’ll need at least that many to have a reasonable chance of seeing enough of those words on your GRE for it to make an actual difference in your scores.  However, 300 new vocabulary words is really the bare stinkin’ minimum.  Many of the more serious students aim at learning 1,000 to 3,000 new words!  So bust out the ibuprofen and clear your calendar, you’ve got some memorizing to do.

Many prep courses tell students, “Here’s the word list.  Go learn it.” Their theory is, the more you sweat, the better you get. WRONG! I do not do that to my students.  There are many slick and–dare I say it? fun!–techniques that can make learning that vocabulary zippier and more user-friendly.  We work on those skills in our class (and I write about them in this blog). I give a step-by-step formula that makes that vocab go down easy and up to 30% faster.  That adds up to a lot of time on 1000 words!  BONUS: the techniques can easily be applied to any subject that requires memorization (biochemistry, anatomy, history, business, and more).

How Can GRE Prep Help You With The Written Analytical (Essay) Section?

The written analytical section of the GRE is often the ugly sister of the other two sections. It may not be a key portion of the test for many test takers, and it’s less important to many grad schools. The scoring is also less fine-grained (the difference between a score of 4 and a score of 4.5 on the writing is like the difference between a 500 and a 550 on the quantitative or verbal sections). Translation; most students are not as concerned about that section.  For those reasons I only spend about 20% of my class time on the written analytical portion of the GRE, and I don’t recommend that students spend too much time practicing outside of class. Smaller class sizes–or even individual tutoring–can really help you out here. If you don’t need much (or any) help with this section, you might be able to skip prepping for it altogether, but that won’t be an option in the larger GRE prep classes.

Writing five to ten of each of the essays before taking the GRE usually gives students a good bang-to-buck ratio.  Of course, if you really need to raise your score in this area you may need further help outside of class and continued practice over months, so make sure you check out their price for extra tutoring after the class.

While I have never seen any research to show exactly what sorts of improvements prep classes make in the written analytical scores, I don’t see how they could fail to make a big difference.  For the students I’ve worked with, the difference in their before and after essays is obvious.

Test Structure and Tactics

Finally, in my prep class we usually spend 20% of our time discussing the actual test itself; structure, background, timing, general study techniques, actual test-day do’s and don’ts, and stress management.  Many students think that those topics are a waste of their time and they are dead wrong. This can be one of the most valuable sections of a GRE prep course!

Case in point; I’ve seen many of my math and engineering majors–who should be rocking the math section–totally tank on the quantitative portion of the GRE in their first attempt. The problem? Timing. Math and engineering people tend to be perfectionists. They want the exact right answer down to the fifth decimal place and they’ll take the time to get it. That’s test day suicide! Students have to learn to quickly estimate the right answer, usually in under a minute and a half. That’s a learned skill that even the most diligent self-study student may not practice.

And what about test anxiety? Unfortunately, most test prep courses don’t address test anxiety issues at all, but my personal experience is that for almost 20% of my students it’s the key issue!  Indeed, the twenty or thirty minutes we spend in my classes on learning to control test anxiety, combined with practicing the techniques after the course, can make 140 to 160 points difference in some students scores.  I’ve seen it happen!  Combine that with the huge gains many students see when they learn to manage their time on the test, and the importance of this part of test preparation is undeniable.

When Should You Start Preparing for the GRE?

Many students ask when they should begin preparing for the GRE or how far in advance of test day they should take a prep course.  The answer really depends on you and your grad schools of choice, but in general, start yesterday!  Students who are diligent about studying, even when the test is in the far distant future, would benefit from starting their studying years in advance!  Just think; learning 1,000 new words over three years works out to less than one new word per day.  Learning the same 1,000 words in three months works out to over ten per day!

Most students are not beginning the GRE studies three years ahead of time, though, and will spend only about a month prepping for the GRE.  That’s all most of my students do, and again, I see average gains of around 150 points.  Some of my students come and take the class three days before the test.  Their invariable response is, “Wow.  The class really helped!  But I sure wish I had started studying a month ago.”

The Cost of a Test Prep Course

Beef number one many students have to taking a test prep course is the cost.  With the big companies charging upwards of $1,200 for their courses, who can blame students for flinching?  My course is less expensive ($595), but it’s still a considerable investment for most college students.  However, when students consider the potential return on their investment, even expensive courses make sense.  Just think about how much you spend on college over the course of four (or five, or six) years.  Yet in some cases, this one test can have a greater impact on admissions to grad schools (not to mention scholarships) than your entire undergraduate GPA!

Case in point: I know personally of a fairly prestigious grad school here in Texas that won’t even look at you unless you scored above a 1240 on your GRE. And, sad but true, many TAs and fellowships go to the students with the highest GRE scores regardless of their undergrad GPAs!

Which Test Prep Course Should I Take?

Test prep classes are more than worth the time and money for most students.  The potential payoffs far outweigh the costs for the majority of students, but choose your prep course carefully.

While most courses teach exactly the same techniques (more on that in a minute) there may be some key areas that they don’t address.  If test anxiety is a problem for you, make sure they’ll be covering that area.  If learning a thousand new vocabulary words sounds impossible, make sure they will be doing more than just giving you a big long list of words.  Do you struggle with some key math technique that they only mention in passing?  Make sure you can get (cheap or free) help outside of class, if you need it.

You should also consider the instructors they have teaching the course.  Getting some part-timer who’s teaching the course for the next six months while they finish up their masters at the local college can make for a very boring (and much less helpful) classroom experience.

Finally, neither course length nor expense should be the main criteria by which you judge a course.  Most GRE prep courses teach pretty much the same basic techniques with different names!  That’s because they all publish books with these techniques.  All the other companies read those books and integrate any new and useful techniques from the other companies into their own courses.

I’ve been teaching GRE Prep since 2000, and in that time I’ve been through the majority of the other test prep books several times over.  Rarely do I find ANY new techniques, though some companies definitely do a better job of explaining certain things.  So the difference between a $1200 course and a $600 course is NOT in the key GRE techniques they are teaching.

Time is not really a key distinguishing factor between test prep courses either.  Many companies will tell you their course is 20 or even 40 hours long.  It sounds like you are getting more for your money, but actual class room instruction time may only vary by an hour or two.  The additional time is often spent in having you take practice tests or in doing worksheets that you could easily do on your own for free.  They do this because how else can they justify a $1200 course? They fluff it up with fillers to make you feel like you’re actually getting more.

You should, however, look at how much they will charge for their time if you need extra help outside of class.  Many of the big companies charge over $80 an hour for extra one-on-one attention outside of class.  Others charge nothing!

The Bottom Line:

Test prep courses can be uber-helpful for many, if not most, students.  They can help you know exactly how and where to spend your time in order to see really significant gains in your GRE scores.  Although they can be expensive and time consuming, their potential payoff far outweighs their cost, BUT choose carefully.  Not all test preps are created equal.  You can spend $1200 for a very mediocre test prep and miss out on an excellent prep course that is half the price.

Shameless plug: I teach live classes here in Texas, but I also teach students all over the world online using Skype. Find out more about my GRE prep course.

------------------------------
Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.

Homework can increase student understanding when assignments provide the opportunities needed to practice and apply new learning. - Northwest Regional Educational Consortium

‘Kay. Show of hands. How many of you like homework? … Anyone? … Bueller? … Bueller?

Most of us have an ancient, wired-into-our-DNA hatred for HOMEWORK (just typing the word caused me to gag). So… good news and bad news.

If we aren’t good at something we tend to lose focus quickly, so if you’re zoning out in class, it may be because your skills in the current subject ain’t cuttin’ the mustard. Here’s the bad news; homework–and more specifically, practice–is really the best way to develop certain types of academic skills. Calculus currently kicking your kiester? Much of the research shows that practice is what you’re probably missing. Those who practice math more tend to score higher on the math portions of standardized tests*. Come on; you know it’s true! Skill-based abilities–sports, playing musical instruments, solving math and chemistry problems, etc–respond positively to practice.

*Check out Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent book, Outliers, for more details.

Now the good news. Practice does not have to mean brain pain. Fact is, thanks to something called “the interwebs,” invented by Al Gore, practice can often be fun. Maybe not as fun as a greasy mouse in a room full of declawed cats, but certainly more fun than nude hockey. So get thee to thy search engine and find a game to help you with whatever class you’re currently crying over. You will be amazed at what’s out there, from typing games to folding proteins, calculus to conjugation. Mention your favorite learning games in the comments!

And don’t wait for practice/homework to be assigned. Get all proactive on those studies. First, identify your problem areas. Next, find a game, some practice exercises, or a helpful video online and get cranking. You’ll be blown away by how much easier it is to focus once you’ve worked up some mad skills. Personal example; math ain’t my thang. I did pretty well on the SAT and GRE quantitative, but not as well as I maybe should have; not ideal for a GRE/SAT prep instructor. So I set to work practicing those areas of math which didn’t come so easy to me, and now I actually enjoy GRE math problems! I know! Freaky. But it’s so much easier to maintain focus now that I like what I’m doing and actually feel like I have some skills.

Lemme sum up; struggling in a subject causes you to lose focus; practice can reduce the struggling; so find online resources such as games, videos, and tutorials; and use them to beef up your skills, and–voila–focus!

------------------------------
Cody Blair has spent over a decade helping students and teachers discover the secrets that make learning simple! His ebook, Secrets Smart Students Know, reveals how the best students use powerful study skills, maximize their memory, avoid procrastination, and maximize their focus to achieve fantastic grades with much less work! Click now to find out more about simple methods to maximize your study skills.

© Cody Blair, All Rights Reserved. You may reprint the above article as long as you include the above bio/resource information in full, including the functioning links. Do not make any changes to the article or bio. If you can't include clickable links, please ask permission to reprint.