Never Fail Another Exam - Part 2! Still No magic nor "hocus pocus" involved.

"Learn the subject"

Can you explain how it is that when you divide by a fraction you get more than the original amount? I asked a high school student the same question and she looked at me like I had struck her on the head! Although she knew how to calculate the result she had no clue how this is so. Not that I am surprised, most teacher's can't explain it either. By the end of this post you will understand not only why this happens but you will learn a great deal more about how to pass your exams and never fail another one - and all that without wrecking your health or your nerves.

Now, if you are wondering what this could possibly have to do with passing your exams, you may want to pay some serious attention here. Knowledge gaps are at the heart of most academic confidence issues and a great number of failures. Although many persons will have noticed the phenomenon decribed above when dividing by a fraction, few have bothered to look any further.

We have long advocated, and, it is part of our training method that students ought to learn the subject thoroughly. The current practice of training students to answer exam questions at the expense of learning the subject is a worrying thing.

In a certain context it makes perfect sense

Let's look at that for a moment. If you had a life threatening health problem, needed surgery to correct it and found that your surgeon had been good at answering the questions in the medical exams but never really understood the whole business of surgery, had done your particular procedure several times and got it right most times, what would you think about your chances of survival? Would you feel better if your surgeon was thoroughly familiar with not only the procedure you would be doing but with the whole business of surgery? Do you think that this degree of thorougness would be useful in areas other than surgery? Which of the two surgeons would you think was the better student when learning surgery, the one that swatted and practiced to answer the questions and impress the examiners or the one that made the effort to really learn the subject? Yeah, when it comes down to it we know the better way. Its those that take the superior approach that make the real difference. Its the approach that we take and pass on to our students at 2GN Education Centers.

Not much more effort required

One of the practices that cannot be over recommended is to "learn the subject". This sometimes amounts to a very small difference in the amount of effort you make as you study but it will usually make an enormous difference in your results. In fact, any self improvement program will eventually get to telling you that the difference between major success and the disappointing results is usually very small differences in the mix of inputs. One of the most respected names in personal development, Bob Proctor, said, as he worked with insurance sales persons, that "it takes no more effort to sell a $1000 policy than it takes to sell a $10,000 policy". The more successful sales agents are the ones who sell more $10,000 policies.

In the same way, it really does not take any more effort to learn the subject properly than it takes to learn it partially and then try to figure out the answers to every possible question that might turn up in an examination. These same principles apply to every area of life. It may not be necessary to learn everything about a particular matter, but the part that you need to know, make sure to know it well. Otherwise, the knowledge gaps will turn up to haunt you sooner.

The solution

So back to my high school student who did not know why dividing by a fraction produces a larger result than the original value. The standard mathematical procedure is to invert the fraction, so that the part that was at the botton goes to the top (so 1/2 becomes 2/1) then multiply the original amount by the top part and divide the product of that multiplication by the amount at the bottom of the fraction. Many people note that dividing by half (1/2) produces the same result as multiplying by two (2). But are they really the same? To determine this we have to convert this to a social problem. Humans are pretty good at understanding social problems, not so good at acdemic abstractions.

Let's say you got a bill for $10. Multiplying it by 2 has the effect of you getting another bill for $10, so now you owe $20. Dividing by 2 has the effect of splitting the bill between you and someone else. So its the same bill, but now you owe half - in this case $5.

On the other hand, what do you get when you divide by half? This is the same as asking how many bills would you get if each bill valued half of each of the dollars in the original $10, and the answer is, of course, twenty. You see, in a social context the questions that these mathematical issues answer are quite different. Let me share a real life example of this.

As you suspect, a story

When I was barely more than a toddler I had a major altercation with my kid sister who was a bona fide toddler and two years younger than me. Our mother had given me a brand new pencil and I had put it down to attend to something else. My kid sister got hold of it and proceeded to make a meal of it. Now, ignoring the debris, you know, the part she chewed up, she now had two pieces - a veritable division by 2. You can imagine the screaming and excitement when I tried to retrieve my pencil, or rather, two pieces of pencil.

I was horrifed, and not a little annoyed with her. Our mother intervened and saved us from ourselves. But I was still peeved about the broken pencil. In her great wisdom, mom sharpened both pieces, eliminating the teethmarks, and now I had two pencils, each being half the length of one original pencil. The wonder of a different perspective!

Applying the principle in other areas

This same idea of converting an academic situation into its social equivalent can be applied to any subject and it puts you in a better position to understand and resolve it. I was talking with a history student who was certain that there is nothing more boring than history and cursed the creator of such a subject. I was amazed because, like everybody else that I know, she likes stories. So I asked, what is it about history that you hate so much? "The dates", she responded without missing a beat! Well now, there is the issue. Most people with this view of the subject point to the difficulty of remembering the dates. So I suggested that she convert the history she was studying back to a story with a timeline and make the connections like you would in real life.

Take the voyages of Columbus, for example. You could look at it like this. Life in europe was bad so he managed to persuade some rich folks to hook him up with a fleet to go buy stuff that they could make big profits from selling. The normal routes were a problem due to the massive customs duties and extortion rackets going on so, his selling point was that he knew a route that would avoid this problem. Unable to resist the offer anymore they gave him a startup investment and sent him off.

He got lost because of a massive knowledge gap in his geography but he did hit upon the caribbean. He did what he could with what he found and headed back with a very convincing argument - he had found new land that nobody owned! (I never said anything about his arguments being true.) You realize the first one that got him the first outfit turned out not to be true either, but nevertheless there was opportunity. That was 1492. By the time he got back to Europe, sorted things out and was ready again two years had passed. His next trip was 1494 and the other would have taken about the same amount of time.

So we have eliminated the date issue and made the whole thing more meaningful. There is no end to the number of way you can do this and have no problems dealing with an examination. What is bottom line important is "learning the subject". Making that extra effort to bring the subject into what works best for you while at the same time bringing you into the real knowledge of the matter. People who do this, as a rule, do not fail exams.

Other Issues

Now there are some other issues that can affect your passing your exams such as psychological fears of doing exams and we gave you a fix for the most common one in an earlier blog. We will review that in another post but for now, you can put what we have suggested in the last two blogs to work and you may expect to pass your exams and never fail another one.

So we looked at:

• The importance of "learning the subject
• The fact that not much more effort is required to do a lot better
  
• The question of dividing by a fraction
• Applying the principle to other areas
  

In closing, let me share with you something a wise person discovered. He said, "Opportunities are often missed because they come in dirty overalls and look like work!"

Two questions I have for you. What would you say is the social context of multiplying by a fraction? And, are you putting this to work?

Leave your comments in the comment section.

2GNEC

Never Fail Another Exam - Part 1! No magic nor "hocus pocus" involved.

(As with all our blog posts, newsletters and free publications please forward to as many persons as you think could benefit from our publications and training programs. Copyright is only to prevent the content from being changed without our permission.)

For those presently attending classes the next exam is always at least a little worrisome. Will "I pass it?" or "will I fail it?" becomes a recurring thought, becoming all the more frequent the closer the exam. You are probably thinking that yourself right now. These are reasonable questions, and of course the answer is, unfortunately, going to show up very clearly after the exam. Now, herein lies the problem. You would much prefer to get the answer before the exam, but even more important is the answer you want - whether before or after the exam - you want to know you pass.

If you are doing CXC's some interesting information can be found here: http://www.caribexams.org/m_pass_rates

Now lets get something very clear, right now. I am all about learning and using methods and techniques that bring about positive results without harming the user in any way. Built into all of us is the capacity to achieve results such that passing academic exams are no big deal. In fact, you probably know persons who have proven that passing all your exams consistently is very possible, since they do it, apparently, without any great effort.

A quick google search on "free study tips" returns 131 million results in English! With all that out there you would wonder how anyone could still be failing exams.
http://www.google.com.jm/search?gbv=2&hl=en&q=free+study+tips&btnG=Search&meta=lr%3Dlang_en
It appears that there is more to this than meets the eye.

While we are on the subject, subscribe to our free training programs http://2gnec.homeip.net/2gn/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14&Itemid=12 and get access to our free, online homework center where we not only provide links to resources, submit questions for offline help, but you get to talk online with educators and students in our moderated homework chat room. Conditions apply.

In this section we will be discussing:

• What confidence is and what feeling has to do with it
• How to analyse your level of confidence
• How to deal with a subject area that you are having difficulty with

If you have been following this blog you will have seen this point in action, where we show you real, practical things that have been proven to work and which just about any person can do. Bear in mind however, you cannot expect to experience the benefits of any process if you are not prepared, and actually do, what is required. The extent to which you do the correct thing will determine the degree to which you get the results. This installment is no exception although the caption may have you wondering. So come with us on this adventure.

Now, lets say you got the answer before the exam that you will pass. Would you still pass the exam? Stop and think about that for a minute, seriously. I can hear you thinking, but that depends on ...., and you have a long list of conditions. Well, you can go through all the objections you can come up with to qualify the validity of the answer, or you can drop that whole line of thinking right now, so we can get to something more engaging. Ready?

Ok, now lets check on something. Your feelings. How did you feel going into the last exam that you passed. Were you certain that you were going to fail? Or did you feel certain that you had a chance to pass? Did you feel certain that you were going to pass? Lets explore that for a bit and see what comes up.

You have to admit that your feelings are a pretty complex part of your makeup. You will also have experienced times when your feelings were right about something even when everything else was pointing in the other direction. You ever wondered about that? It appears to be part of our natural makeup as humans to want this ability to kind of sense things to work reliably all the time. Imagine how life would be if you were able to rely on these feelings that, more often, are sometimes right and somethimes not? And what does this have to do with "never failing another exam"? Well, as it turns out, it has everything to do with success in anything you undertake, including your exams.


A simple technique I discovered as a kid

I recall sitting in an important exam many years ago using one technique I discovered by chance. Even as a youngster at the time I realized the value of this technique and have used it everytime since. My technique was simply to go through the entire exam paper reading the instructions and marking the questions I felt comfortable with. I would then add up the scores of those questions as indicated on the exam paper. If my total was less than a comfortable pass I would then review the remaining questions and select from those my next best set of questions until I had a comfortable pass total. Notice I said comfortable pass and not 100%. Not that I have any difficulty with the idea of getting 100%, in fact I love those scores and have had many. This technique actually helps you to get those scores. I think you can figure out by yourself how that is possible, but if not, we'll discuss that later.

This exam was CXC. I recall that by the time I had gone through the paper and applied my technique some of my fellow exam sitters had written several sheets of answers already! In fact, when I checked the time remaining I was a little concerned because by the time I began writing my answers down a few persons had already completed the paper!

I went through the paper according to my technique and finished just in time. Not surprisingly, a large number of persons failed the paper but I passed it. What was important in this case was that I was not really ready for this exam. This is a simple and practical techniques that helps you while sitting the paper, but what about preparing for the paper? This is what we are going to focus on next.


Confidence to pass ?
Another name for feeling certain about your ability to do something is your confidence in your ability to do these things. Your degree of certainty about your ability to do anything is determined by the number of times you have successfully done that thing before. And, if you have done something similar and are good at it, you will start with a certain level of confidence in your ability to do a new thing. This is natural part of our human makeup and an indcation of intelligence! Conversely, if you have done a thing a number of times and found you got different results than you should, your confidence goes the other way.

You will notice that your confidence is really a feeling. Before an exam, your questioning yourself is really to get a feel of your level of confidence. How you feel deep down is a very reliable indiator of your level of confidence. The next thing is to compare your level of confidence with your level of skill and bring both to a positive level. This is where most people fail themelves and, not surprisingly, their exams. This requires some effort and honesty with yourself.

The first step

Here is something you can do right now. Make yourself comfortable and take any subject matter that you are having difficulty with apart, breaking it up into its main subsections. Make a list. Review the list and for any sub-section that you have mixed feelings about and break that subsection down further. If you find items that you cannot break down further but still have mixed feelings about make a note of those. The issue may have to do with something outside of those subject areas.

Always the beautiful answer to him who asks the more perfect question.

Beside each item in your list make a note of how you feel - good, bad, uncertain. Next, item by item, note what you need to do about each item in order to feel good about it. Specifically, what skill, knowledge, or both do you need to get to feeling good about the subject matter. Avoid asking "why" questions when doing this. You'll get better results if you ask questions that focus on the outcome that you want. So questions like, "what do I need to do to get this? "or "How do I do this?" are better questions to ask yourself.

In fact, the questions you ask are critical to the results you get. We pointed this out before and will reiterate it often.

OK, so now you have a list that indicates the areas where you are having trouble and what you need to do to correct that. While you have an outline you need two other things: something to drive you to take action and something to keep you focussed and certain about your progress.

There is a large body of information out there on the first one - the something to drive you to take action and somewhat less on the second, how to focus and gauge your progress. Experience will have already taught you that you need both. We'll look at these in the next article.

So we have looked at:

• Feelings and confidence
• Simple exam sitting technique
• The business of asking questions
• Part of a success strategy for exams

If you want more drop us a line at info.2gnec@gmail.com or leave a comment on this blog. Follow this blog or share it on facebook (see the links on the right side of your screen.) We want o help as many person as we can and start a movement that helps people enjoy more success in their lives. Welcome to 2GNEC, that's our belief.

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