Good afternoon fellow students. I’m Chris Wong, the academic leader of the school. It is my pleasure to speak to all of you today. The new school year has commenced for nearly a month. Can you tune yourself in the new school year? Are you worrying about studying ten subjects this year? Do you fear that no matter how hard you try, your academic performance will still be not good enough? Don’t worry. You have our support. The teachers and the academic leaders are always ready to offer you advice and assistance. Today I am here to give you some tips on how to study effectively and share with you strategies on how to use your time efficiently.
Before I start talking about studying strategy and methods, allow me to once again stress the paramount importance of time management. We only have 24 hours a day. Obviously that is not enough even we are willing to work around the clock. Therefore, we have to use our limited time with wisdom. By using it wisely, I don’t mean that we should spend all our time burying our heads under heaps of books, giving up all our activities and only focusing on our study. What I’d like to say is that we should make use good use of our time, being a good manager of it. We should try our best to avoid procrastination and accomplish some tasks every day. In order to achieve these, we need to adopt some strategies. First, we should regularly compile our to-do lists, which help us schedule our work daily. After making certain what we need to do on a certain day, we could know exactly what our short term goal is. It also helps us identify and achieve our aims on that day. A timetable can also help a lot. With a timetable, we can schedule concretely our work for a certain period of time very day. In this way, procrastination can be avoided as we can strike a balance between relaxation and work. Good time management could help us maintain a more disciplined and effective learning life.
Enough for the tips on time management. Now I’d like to tip you off with several study strategies. A mind map is always helpful for organization. You don’t have to include every detail in a mind map. Instead you should jot down the general ideas of the topic. Therefore, you can have a brief summary of the topic and you can always take it out and have a look at it while you are travelling.
It is essential to spare some time for studying every day. It doesn’t have to be a long period of time. Five to ten minutes is enough already. You must pay full attention and jot clear notes during lessons. When you return home, you could try to read the notes again and recall what you have learnt that day. The entire process will take at most 15 minutes. It is as easy as 1, 2, 3 and you can refresh your memory about the topic. You can even tidy up and try to memorize the points if you have more spare time on that day.
Last but not least, do regular revision exercises. You don’t have to drill yourself into oblivion just before the exam. You could finish the exercise bit by bit every week. Exercises are essential practice if you want to get a satisfactory result, especially for mathematics. I do practices for the exam two times a week. I spend around one and a half hour each time, which is already quite adequate. This can consolidate your knowledge and brush up the skills you have learnt during lessons. Most importantly, you will get one less thing to worry about before the exam.
Moving on to motivating yourself. Sometimes, you are already exhausted after school and it is very difficult to be motivated and work hard. You can reward yourself with something nice if you have completed the tasks on that day. The reward can be anything that makes you happy. It can be playing video games for an hour, walking your dog, etc. I personally love to reward myself with junk food. The point is you must finish the task before you treat yourself with something nice. Otherwise, it would not motivate you.
Ultimately, we all pursue to achieve high, but the point is not all of us are determined enough to persist. I am here to remind you that only those who work hard and persevere can be successful. Only those who are determined to improve themselves can accomplish success. Therefore, I’d like to urge all of you to be diligent and persistent. It is never too late to start. It is about whether you are willing to get started. Just remember the golden principles: No. 1 work hard and work smart. No. 2 use you time efficiently. Thank you.