Study tips for candidates as they prepare for national examinations in Kenya

  

Date Posted: 6/27/2019 5:59:17 AM

Posted By: Pvesh  Membership Level: Bronze  Total Points: 62

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IMPORTANT INFORMATION AS YOU PREPARE FOR YOUR NATIONAL EXAMINATION
It is never too late to improve your studying skills and take your mean score to a higher grade in your national examination.
Here are some key things you must engrave and internalize in your mind:
1. You must have the answer to the question, “Who am I”. The answer to this question is as simple as this “I am a child of God”. With that deeply and consciously internalized in your mind, you must believe the next statement regardless of what you are facing or going through;
2. “I can do all things through God who gives me strength”. Believe that your mind is alert and receptive and that you have all it takes to confidently and successfully tackle the examination that is before you.
3. Last but not least you must believe that you are focused on the goal and disciplined enough to achieve it.

With that said, you must follow the guidelines below religiously;
I) Begin each morning with prayer. Seek guidance for the day. Let it be the time to receive power and motivation to face your day with confidence.
II) Set a “To Do” list for the day. It should contain the short-term goals for the day which will eventually lead you to the successful achievement of your ultimate long-term goal. The “To Do” list will enable you to achieve more since you know where you are going. A daily “To Do” list helps to keep you focused on the day’s agenda and on what is truly important. It also enables you to evaluate your day in the evening as try to determine whether you achieved all that you had planned to do.
III) Make sure to focus on a few things. You can’t tackle everything

all at once because you are not a super human. Multi-tasting is not a strength, it is a weakness. Have a timetable showing exactly what should be done during a particular time slot. A timetable must always incorporate the time factor.
IV) Do the difficult subjects first. In the morning hours that is when one is most alert and in his/her best frame of mind. Let this be the appropriate time when you tackle that challenge mathematics problem, or try to understand that difficult chemistry or physics concept. The morning session is the most important part of the day and should be utilized most. Don’t tackle subjects that you find too easy in the morning, take on those that will force you to think in a more critical manner.
V) Be curious and consult where you face any challenges. Life is about learning. Aim at learning something new every day. The current president of the United States of America is said to have been waking up at 3 AM every day to read. Learning is a life long journey, and as they say, knowledge is power and ignorance is expensive.
VI) Share your knowledge with others. Knowledge is the only thing that increases when it is shared. Other things like money will decrease when they are shared, but this is not the case with knowledge. The moment you share what you know with your fellow students and assist those who are facing difficulties in understanding certain concepts, the more you will internalize and retain the knowledge for future use.
VII) Visualize your success. Be optimistic and believe in yourself. Believe that you are well equipped intellectually, physically, spiritually and emotionally to tackle your exam.
VIII) Eat a healthy diet. Avoid junk foods and exercise a lot. These are habits that will go a long way to improve your brain power. Engage yourself in constructive extra curricula activities like games and sports in your school. They not only help in improving your physical health, but they do wonders to your mental health as well.
IX) Avoid watching too much TV and getting too entangled in social media. These are only distractions and obstacles to hinder you from being focused and achieving your goals. Learning psychology teaches that in a situation where we have two students A and B. and students A goes to sleep after a study session while student B heads off to watch TV or engage him/herself in social media after studying. At the end of the day student A will have done more productive work than student B. This is because when one goes to engage in other activities like watching TV after a study session, he/she replaces the content that was in his memory with the new content that he/she is receiving from the TV or social media pages that he/she is browsing. As a result he/she ends up being less productive by losing some of the information he/she had studied earlier.
X) Learn to say “NO” to unproductive activities. Success comes when one is disciplined enough to reject unimportant things in life. Your priorities must be clear and right. Spend time only on those things that will improve you. Say no to gossip, drinking alcohol, drug abuse, negative peer pressure, rebellion towards authority and truancy. These are only sources of distraction and time wastage. Every minute counts at this point in time and it must be utilized well for optimal performance.
XI) The last thing you do while on your bed in the evening as you prepare to go to sleep is very important. You must make it a ritual to go through your day in your mind and confirm whether you achieved any of the short term goals you had laid out in your “To Do” list. Of much importance is to go through the content that you studied that day in a bid to internalize it. This time is usually the best time to ensure that important information is transferred to your long term memory because this is the memory that you will use during the examination period. Spend each evening equipping this memory with relevant at important information.


I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST AS YOU PREPARE FOR YOUR NATIONAL EXAMINATION.
REMEMBER THAT IT CAN BE DONE IF YOU DO YOUR PART.

Prepared by:

Musya P. Kaleso
COMPUTER STUDIES/BUSINESS STUDIES TEACHER.

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