• 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

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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…

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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!

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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.

Posing kick-ask questions–and thinking carefully through how you might answer them–is a well-researched method of deepening comprehension and increasing recall (not to mention totally amping up your cred with the prof). But what constitutes a good question? And how can one learn how to ask them with all the speed and tenacity of an espresso-filled four-year old?

Good questions are questions that require higher-level thinking, while low-level questions are the kind that a well-trained parrot could spit out. Low-level questions are those that simply require you to repeat facts–the kind of questions your mom’s Apple IIe could answer.

“What is the meaning of the word discombobulate?”

“Who’s the president of Turkmenistan?”

“What will clear up that itchy fungus?”

“Is there really a Jennifer Aniston neuron?”

All these questions can be answered by repeating what you read/heard/saw somewhere. Low-level questions are still useful for focusing our attention and evaluating our basic knowledge base, but use them sparingly.

Higher-level questions ask you to process the information in some way. HINT: more processing is generally better. Such questions will often ask you to analyze, predict, evaluate, or compare and contrast.

“How are iPhones and crack alike? How are they different?”

“What might happen to her career if Lindsay Lohan suddenly were denied access to illegal substances?”

“Is Britney Spears or Geraldo Rivera more likely to embarrass him/herself in the future?”

In order to answer questions such as these, you have to know the facts, just as you do with the lower-level questions. But then you have to get down and dirty with constructing the answer out of many possible alternatives. And notice; even though that Spears vs. Rivera question could conceivably be answered with a single word, answering it honestly requires some careful weighing of their past peccadilloes and future propensities for making astonishingly bad choices. (Loads more info on questioning can be found here.)

Here are a few pointers on making yourself into the Bobby Fischer of questioning.  Please log in or sign up to read the rest of this content. Find out more.

Know what the big difference between morning people and most-definitely-NOT-morning people is? It’s what they think about when they first wake up.

Most-definitely-NOT-morning people start off dreading the long commute to work, mentally moaning about the big project they are supposed to be churning out, indulging in angst over their four-mile run they have to do after class. Grrr.

Little Ms. Morning Glory, on the other hand, starts her day by thinking how great it will be to see her friends at work, dreaming of how good it will feel to get the big project done, imagining how nice it will be to finally fit in that size 4 dress because she’s been so diligent about her exercise. Can’t wait to get started! Rainbows! Unicorns!

NOT-morning people think about what they hate that they have to do that day. Morning people think about how splendiferous it will feel to have those things accomplished. Yes. It’s that easy.

Procrastination people are like the NOT-morning people. We spend our time thinking about how spectacularly miserable the task will be instead of thinking about how spiffy it will be to finally get it done. We need to take a page from Pollyanna’s play book. Here’s how.

Everyone talks to him or her self. We all have a little inner voice that only we can hear. It’s really quite normal and not at all Gollumy. If you’re a procrastinator, start paying attention to what your little inner voice is moaning about and argue with it!

Little Inner Voice: Gah! This project is about as much fun as licking the shag carpet at a truck stop.

You: Shut up! They don’t even have shag carpets at truck stops.

Little Inner Voice: Well it is. Not fun, I mean.

You: Yeah but…

Little Inner Voice: But what?

You: Hang on. I’m thinking … uhhh … Yeah, but think how frakkin’ fantabulous it will feel to finally get it done! All that nastiness behind us. Nothing but blue skies ahead. Freedom. Tangerine trees! Marmalade skies! Bluebirds o’ happiness! A heavenly chorus! Zippity-doo-dah!

Little Inner Voice: I dunno…

You: Join me! Come to the dark side. Don’t heavenly choruses of bluebirds sound nice? Hmmm?

Little Inner Voice: You’re right. Let’s do this thing!*

You’ve found the pot o’ gold at the end of the procrastination … rainbow. Okay. That metaphor needs work, but you know what I mean. Get your mind off the horribilities of your evil task and focus on the fine feelings and righteous rewards of a job well done. Kiss procrastination on the cheek as you gently push him and his cement shoes off the dock.

*I realize we now have two little inner voices and this is often grounds for therapy, but you have my permission in this case. If you get more little inner voices, especially ones with gravelly voices telling you to do unsocial things, then look for a therapist.

And The Biggest, Baddest Procrastination Killer Number of them all - Mr. Please log in or sign up to read the rest of this content. Find out more.