Hello. My name is Emma and in today's video I
am going to teach you my top study tips. So if you are having a
test coming up or an exam, this might be a
high school test or it might be the IELTS, the TOEFL, the CELPIP-there's
so many different tests-maybe it's a university exam, whatever the case - if you have a
test coming up, this video is for you. Okay? So I'm going to teach you a lot of well-researched
tips that can really help you improve your marks and to feel more confident the
day you're actually taking the test. Okay, so let's get started
at some study tips. My first question to you is I
want you to think about it. You have a test coming
up, where do you study? Some people study in their bed, some might
study in the library, maybe a coffee shop, a classroom, or your home. In your opinion, what is
the best way to study? Okay, well, if you said your bed, for
most people this is a very bad idea. The reason why is if you're studying in your
bed with all your books and your notes, your brain, when you're in bed you
start thinking about sleep. So if you're studying in your bed, you might
become very sleepy and it might be harder to study. So, in... I would not recommend this. Okay? I don't think the bed
is a good place to study. What about a library? Some people like studying in libraries,
and sometimes it's a good idea. But if you're doing an English test, like where
you have a speaking component, a library may or may not be a
good place for you. What you really want to do is think
about: Where are you taking this test? If you're going to be in a room with many
people who maybe are talking or are being loud, you want to study
in a similar environment. Okay? So, for some people the library,
you know, might be a good place. For other people, maybe the
library is not the best place. My point is: You want to study in a place
that is just like the environment you'll be taking the test in. So, this is a possibility. Other people might
study in coffee shops. Now, if you're doing the IELTS or the TOEFL,
this is not a bad idea because at least you're surrounded by people, you're surrounded by
distractions, and on your test day you probably will have some sort of distractions around
you, especially if people are doing speaking tests where they're talking
and you can hear them. So, being around people, if you're doing a
test where people will be kind of loud and distracting, a coffee
shop is a good idea. But if, you know, there's no speaking component
to your test, maybe you're just writing an essay or something like that, then maybe a
classroom might actually be a better place. If you're in school and you can go to a place
that looks like where you're taking the test, this is the best
thing you can do. For home, I personally don't think home is the
greatest place to study and I'll tell you why. At home you have your furniture, you have
your bed, you have all these distractions around you, so it's easy to stop paying attention
to what you're studying, and also your house is not like the environment
you'll be taking the test in. You want an environment as similar as possible
to where you're actually taking the test, so I would not recommend
studying at home. One thing, though, is sometimes it's good
to study in multiple locations because the more places you study, the more memories you'll
actually have of what you're studying, you'll remember: "Okay, I remember
studying this at this coffee shop. I remember studying this at this
library, and this at this classroom." So that can actually help... You know, the more places you study,
the more memories you will have. Okay, another important thing to note
is: Think about your personality. Are you an introvert? This means: Are you a quiet person who kind of
prefers to be alone most of the time, where you don't really
like big groups? Or maybe you're an extrovert.
Okay? So this is where you love big groups, you're,
you know, the life of the party, you like being around people. Do you like being
alone or with people? Because depending on your answer to that,
it can really affect your studying. If you like being around people, one of the bad
choices maybe for studying is going somewhere alone and studying alone,
especially maybe in a library. Because if you like action and you like being
around people, and then you have to study in a very quiet environment and you don't
have your friends around or your classmates, that might be very boring for you and you might
not pay attention, you might get distracted because you're so bored. Whereas if you're an introvert, maybe you
like quiet places, maybe a library is a good place to study for you. You know, maybe it's not good
to study with other people. So know your personality. Instead of just doing... You know, going to the library and studying, if
you're an extrovert, this might be a bad idea. And it's the same
with study groups. If you like being with people, a study group is
a great way in order to learn the information and to find out maybe things you don't know so
well, because during a study group everybody's asking each other questions, so you start to
think about things maybe you're unfamiliar with, you don't know as
well as other people. So a study group is a very good idea, but
be careful with who is in your study group. Okay? You don't want to study with people who are
going to distract you by watching Facebook... Or watching YouTube videos
of puppies and cats. Okay? That will not
help you with studying. You want to be with people who are
focused and serious about studying. Okay? So be careful with
who you study with. Okay, another key thing about
studying is about being bored. A lot of people, they don't want to study
and they find it very boring, and so they go, they sit there, and they're so bored,
and yet they just keep reading the material again, and again, and again. Your brain hates being bored. Okay? It's not good for your memory if while
you're trying to learn you're very bored. You are not going
to learn that much. You need to make the
material interesting. Okay? Very important. One way to do this is, you know, thinking
about the material maybe in more fun ways. Maybe the material will help you
in your life later on or maybe... Maybe being in a study group
might be more fun for you. So there's different ways to make what
you're studying more interesting. Very important you think about: How can I
actually study in an interesting way instead of just, you know, readying the textbook, or
reading, you know, the material again and again. That's really boring. How can you make it
more interesting? All right, so now let's look at some
more tips on how to study better. Okay, so one very important thing to think about
when you're studying is if you're studying in an active way
or a passive way. So an active way is where you're actually
doing something with what you're learning, you're taking it
one step farther. So I'll give you some examples
of active in a second. First let's talk about passive. Passive is where you just keep reading
the material again and again and again. You're not actually doing anything, you're not
drawing any pictures, you're not imagining the material, you're just reading again and
again, and this is very passive, which means that you're not really using your brain that
much for this, and so you're not remembering the information that well. The better approach is
to do things actively. So, how can we remember...? How can we do things more
active when we're studying? Well, one active activity you can do to help you
study is to teach somebody the information. Okay? So if you're learning about the present perfect,
teach your friend: What is the present perfect? How do I use it? You can even make a small presentation about
the material you're learning, because that way you're actually really thinking about it,
and the person you're teaching might have questions for you and those
questions might make you realize: "Oh, I don't actually know
this about this subject. This is something
I want to learn." Diagrams. A great thing to do. Draw different images. Okay? So you can do flow charts,
diagrams, putting the information... Instead of just writing it, you know, sentence
by sentence, using different types of visual aids can really help
you in your studies. Similarly with pictures, if you're learning
new vocabulary, draw a picture of it. You know, this really helped
me when I was learning French. Every new word I would learn, I'd draw a funny
picture with it, and those pictures really helped me remember the words. Doing past tests. If you can get a copy of a previous test,
that is, you know, one of the best things that you can do to prepare. So if you're taking the IELTS, doing previous
IELTS tests; if you're doing the TOEFL, past TOEFL tests; or if you're in a university
course, doing a test from the years before can really, really help
you in your studying. Creating your own test. This is a great idea because you really start
to think about: What information is important? And creating your own test will
really help you remember the answers. So it's an active way to study. And this is also a little bit more interesting
than just reading, you know, the same thing again and again. Memory tricks. There are a lot of different memory tricks
you can use to remember information. I'm going to give you an
example of one for math. When I had to learn math, I had to learn about
how to solve an equation, and so they taught us this, BEDMAS. B stands for brackets, equation, division,
multiplication, addition, subtraction. So, each of these letters stands for something
and it's a lot more difficult to remember that when you're just thinking about
all those words on their own. But if you use something where you take the
first letter of different words, it can really help you. Same with if you
think about music. If you've ever learned to play an instrument,
you might learn the different notes. In English what we say is "Every Boy
Deserves Fudge", I think that's what it was. Something similar to that. But using these types of mental tricks
can really help you in your studying. Visualizations. You know, the more you can imagine what you're
studying the better it's going to be for you. And especially if you're learning new vocabulary,
trying to come up with, you know, different images of that
vocabulary can help you. There's the rule of ridiculousness where if
you're trying to remember something, the crazier a mental picture is or the crazier a visualization
is, the easier it is for you to remember. Okay? So I do this all the time. Even, you know, if I need to remember my groceries,
what I need to buy from the supermarket, I don't even have to write down a list because
I can imagine the different food I need to pick up in funny, crazy ways, and
then I really remember what I need. So the rule of ridiculousness is the crazier,
the stranger something is, the more you're going to remember it. It's the same with emotions. If you can... You know, you remember things
that are very emotional. Okay? So if you're angry, if you're sad, if you're
happy, you tend to remember things a lot easier than things that are boring. So think about: How can you add
emotion to what you're studying? Maybe something you're studying makes you
very happy, or maybe, you know, something... You know, makes you scared or whatever emotion,
if you can harness your emotions they can really help you remember better. Time lines, if you're learning different tenses
in English-present perfect, past simple, you know, present continuous-these are
really confusing for students. Drawing a time line can really help you get
your head around this while you're studying. Okay? So if you're learning the present perfect
or the past simple, you know, here is now, here is in the past, you know, making different
images like this can really help you. Mind maps. Okay? We have, you know, a lot
of resources on mind maps. Pretty much you have a word or an idea in the
centre, and around you write connected ideas. These are great ways to
visualize information. Even if you're writing an essay, doing something
like a mind map can help you get out your ideas on what you want to write and organize
what you want to write, so they're a great tool. If you're interested in using mind maps, if
you look in the description of our video, you can actually find a link which gives a
lesson on how to do a really good mind map, so I highly recommend that. All right, so now let's look at some
more tips on how to study better. Okay, so my next tip
is really important. You need to try to find out as
much about the test as possible. Okay? You need to know: Is
it multiple choice? Is it short answers? How long is the test? If you're doing the TOEFL or the IELTS,
you might want to know, you know: When does the listening
section happen? When is the reading section? When is the speaking section? So, you know, what kind of
instructions am I going to see? You really do need to
know what to expect on... On the test and on test day because this
is going to help you with your anxiety. The more you know about the test, the less
nervous you will actually be on the day of your test, so very important to find
out as much information as possible. And this is why doing practice tests
and past tests is a very good idea. Okay, this is something I found really interesting
that I just learned maybe two years ago about the importance of your body and your
physical state on the day of the exam. When you study, what you do in terms of what
you're drinking, what you're eating, you know, what time you're doing it, you really want
to try to match it to the day of the exam. So, what do I mean by this? Well, for example, if you drink coffee while
you're studying, it's good if on the day of the test you drink
coffee before your test. If you are drunk when you're studying, something
I don't recommend, but this is actually strange but true, if you study drunk-and again, it's
better not to, but if you do-you'd actually probably do better on the
test drunk than sober. And this is why what I'm saying about what
your body is doing is very important. If you drink tea while you study,
drink tea the day of the exam. Try to match what you're doing while you're
studying with what is going to happen on the day of the exam. You will actually notice
quite a difference. Same with when you study. If your exam is in the morning at 8am and
every night you study at 9pm, there's a bit of a mismatch because your body is going
to be different on the day of the exam. So I would recommend: Study around
the time your actual exam is. That will actually have a
difference in terms of, you know... It will really help
you on test day. So if you study at 8pm and the
test is at 8pm, that's great. Also, you know, it's a good
thing to time yourself. If on the day of the test you only have 40
minutes to do the test, practice the test with timing. So, do the test in
a 40-minute span. If you have four hours, try the test at
least one time the full length of the test. That's definitely a
good way to prepare. Okay, this is the most important thing I am
going to say in this video, more important than any of the other tips: You
need to sleep before the test. Many students try to study all
night, and then they do the test. This is the worst
thing you can do. Your brain, in order
to remember... In order to remember things,
you really, really need sleep. Your memory and sleep are so closely tied together
that if you don't sleep, you don't remember. So this is why it's very good to actually
plan when you're going to study in advance. Make a study plan, so you have many nights
to study, which means you have many day... Or many nights of sleep. Because each day you study you really want to sleep
well so you will remember the information. Okay? Very important. If you ignore everything else, number one
thing is: Sleep well before your test. And when you're
studying, sleep well. Okay, and this is number eight which
I sort of already touched upon. You need to review
multiple days. Okay? For those people who think: "Oh, you know, two
days is enough. I'm just going to study for two days and,
you know, do my test", it's a terrible idea because maybe if you're lucky, maybe you'll
do okay on your test, but you're just going to forget all that information later on, and
so it's kind of a waste of an opportunity. If you study a little bit every day, you know,
for a couple of weeks before your test, you actually remember the material a lot more and
you're going to remember it for a lot longer. So you might as well study a little bit every
day and have, you know, two or three weeks before the test do this, instead of
just doing everything the night before. Okay, my next trick is
called the KWL method. This is a great way, you know, especially
when you're starting to study. K stands for know, W stands for want
to know, and L stands for learn. So, what you can do when you're,
you know, studying is you can... Before you start studying, you can write about
what you already know about the subject. So imagine I want to study
about the present perfect. I'll write down everything I already know
about the present perfect, and so, you know, I can do it like a column and write
down everything I know here. For W it stands for want to know, so I can think
about any questions I have about the subject. Okay? You know, maybe I want to know:
When do we use the present perfect? Or: Why do we use the
present perfect? Is this an example of
the present perfect? And it can be for anything. Even if you're studying biology, you know,
you're studying the human body, you can use this also. It's good for any
material you're studying. So you write down questions on
what you want to know here. And then after you study, think
about: What did you actually learn? Okay? There's always something you're going to learn,
maybe some interesting fact, maybe you learned the material. You can write down under L
everything you learned. This way, you're actually thinking about everything
you know about a subject, which helps you to kind of put together the pieces and to
see what you already know, what you need to know, and what you
learned at the end. So this is a great
method for learning. Okay, so now let's look at a couple more
tips on how to improve our studying. Okay, so my next tip is about thinking about
your body's health, which is very important when you study. My first tip is actually, you know,
be aware of what you're eating. If you eat, like, you know, healthy, it
will actually help you with studying. So keep eating and
keep hydrated. Drink a lot of water,
that's very important, too. Breathe. A lot of students get very
stressed with exams and tests. If you're writing the
IELTS and TOEFL, maybe... Or a university exam, just those words actually
cause your body to, you know, get really nervous. So one way to deal with this
is just deep breathing. Okay? So when you think about something that
makes you really nervous or maybe you're looking at something while you're studying and you
have no idea what it means, and you start to panic, take a deep breath
because that will help. It tells your body... You know, it sends a message to your
body and it will help you to calm down. You know, this is similar
also with stress management. A lot of things people don't think
about when they're studying is: How do they deal
with the stress? When you're very stressed, you don't actually
learn as much, and this is actually really a problem on a lot of tests. You know, especially if you're doing a language
test, the speaking part, because when you're stressed out your language actually
declines, you're not doing as good a job. So it's important to learn stress management
techniques in order to deal with the stress so you can remember more and be
more successful at your exam. So breathing is one good management tip, you
know, listening to calming music can help. There's different things you can do
in order to help you with stress. Exercise is another good thing
to do when you're studying. You want to get blood up to your
brain, so walking is excellent. You know? Make sure you take breaks while you
study and do some sort of movement. It will really help you with remembering the
material and, you know, not overwhelming your brain. So exercise, especially walking
is a really good idea. Okay, so now we've done
a lot of study tips. What about on the day
of the test itself? So it's important to have a plan
on the actual day of the test. My one very important
thing is arrive early. A lot of students come late, and then they're
just so much more stressed because, you know, now they're looking for their pencil, they're
looking for their pen, they're panicked. No. Arrive early,
it's very important. Like I said before, sleep well before
the test, also very important. And be prepared. Okay? Have your bag ready the night before, have
your pens, pencils, know what you're going to wear the day of the test. Have everything prepared so you don't have
to think about it, because you're going to be thinking about other things and you might
forget something, you might forget your ID or what you need, so have it
all prepared the night before. I already mentioned
walking is very good. On the day of the test itself while you're
waiting, you know, instead of just sitting there, you can walk around. That will help get blood up to your brain
and that will help you, you know, prepare yourself for the test. And also, it will
help you with stress. Power poses. So, I've done a video on power
poses before, which you can check out. But pretty much know what your body is doing
while you're taking the test and before. If you're like, you know, closed up like this,
that actually makes you more nervous, versus if you're, you know, bigger and more
comfortable, you'll feel more confident. So even while you're writing the test, you know,
be aware of what your body's doing because that can actually impact how you
feel and that can impact how you do. If you're doing an English proficiency
test, speak English during the test. Well, not during the test while you're
writing, but I mean during breaks. You know, for example, sometimes you have a
listening part and then you have a 15-minute break, and then you
have a reading part. During the break time it's a good idea
to keep English flowing into your mind. Okay? So if you want to call, you know, your parents
who speak a different language, that's not a good idea. It's better to keep... You know, keep the
material in mind. So, you know, even talking to somebody in
English can really help during break time. Okay? So think about: How do...? How can you use your breaks in
the most effective way possible? All right, so we have
just a couple more tips. I know we have a lot, but just
a couple more tips to go. Okay, so we've talked about, you know,
some really important tips already. The next one is actually really important
also, and that's: Read the instructions. Okay? So whenever you have a test or exam, be very careful
and make sure you actually read everything. A lot of students, they're very nervous and
they're anxious, and so they rush and they don't read everything, and as a result sometimes
they put the wrong answer just because they didn't read the question correctly.
Okay? So I'm going to give you
an example of that. A lot of the times on tests you'll
have a question, for example: "Which is/are not
an example of...?" You know, and it might be something
like the present perfect or the brain. Okay? So it can be anything here, but what a lot
of students don't notice is this part. First they miss the "not", so this means
that you're actually, you know... If this is a multiple choice question and
it says: "Which is not an example of...?" students who don't read the question might
actually put what is an example of something. So be very careful
of the word "not". Okay? Another thing to be very careful of when
you read questions: "is" and "are". Sometimes you'll just have the word "is",
and that just means you just need to find one thing. Sometimes you'll have the word "are", and that
means that you have to find multiple things. So if you're doing multiple choice and you have:
"Which are", there might be two correct answers. Okay? I know for the IELTS a lot of students make
mistakes because they don't read the instructions, and they're actually supposed to put down,
you know, multiple things, but they just put down one. So be very careful and read all instructions,
especially when it has to do with, like, how many answers to put down
or how many, like... If you have letters A, B, C, D, E:
How many of those can you put down? How many choices can you put? Okay, very important. Another thing, I always do this whenever I'm doing
an exam or a test is I underline key words. Okay? So, for example, that
means underline. So, every question I look at I actually will
look for the main idea and underline it. This can also really help because sometimes
you'll see where it's like always or never, even in the answers. There are certain words that might trick you,
and so it's a good idea to actually underline key words because you'll pay more attention then
and maybe be more careful with these tricks. Okay, number 14: Star-and this
is a star-what you don't know. So many students waste time because they don't
know the answer to something, and they just look at it, and they keep thinking and thinking
and thinking, and it takes them forever. And then, you know, maybe they do get the
answer, but then the test is over and they haven't finished. So a good idea is actually to put a
star beside what you don't know... So, for example... And this means you'll
come back to it later. Do what you know first. Sometimes it's even good to do the easiest
questions first, because then you feel more confident and you feel better. You don't panic if you do what you know
first, and you don't run out of time. So do what you know first. Anything you don't know just put a star
beside it, and come back at the end. Oftentimes, too, this is good because sometimes
other questions will actually have clues or will help you with that question you're
having trouble or difficulty with. Okay, my final tip, when you're
doing multiple choice... So, multiple choice is when you have A, B,
C, D, E, and you have to pick which one is the correct answer. There's a lot of different tips
for multiple choice specifically. I'm going to tell you two things you can do
if you have multiple choice on your test now. My first tip is think about each answer,
and why it is true or why it's not true. Too many students, they look at what
A is, B is, or they don't even look. They see A, they think: "Oh, I think A
is correct", and they just circle it. No. You need to read
every single one. You need to read A, B, C, D, and
E, and really think about it. "Okay, I know it's not B. Why? I know it's not C. Why?" So definitely the key question here is:
Why is it this and why is it not that? So always during multiple
choice ask yourself: Why? Another tip for multiple choice, which I always
do on my exams and I find it really helps me, is when I go through them I will put
an X on the ones I know are not correct. So, for example, if this is A and I know
it's wrong, I'll just cross it off. As soon as I ask myself: "Why? Okay, it's wrong", I put an X on it, and
then I go to B. Is B right or is it wrong? I think about it. If I know it's wrong,
I put an X on it. So as soon as I'm sure the answer is wrong, I
cross it out and then I leave what, you know... Maybe I don't know if it's C or D, so then
I'll take some time to think about those. But I always cross off which
answers I know are incorrect. I find that really helps. Okay, so we've covered a
lot which is really good. There's a lot of tips
on how to study. And again, I'm just going to say this one
more time because out of everything, most important thing: Sleep
before your exam. Okay? So, I hope you've
enjoyed this video and I want to invite you to come
visit our website at www.engvid.com. There, you can actually do a quiz in
order to practice some of these tips. And like I said before, doing a quiz is actually a great
way to remember things because it's active. Okay? You're doing something. You're not just sitting and listening, you're
actually doing so you'll actually remember the tips a lot better that way. I also want to invite you
to subscribe to my channel. We have a lot of cool things there on all
sorts of different topics, from how to write an essay, to pronunciation,
to speaking. Okay? So, very good
resources there. And also at our website, www.engvid.com, we
have a lot of great videos on other things, so I highly recommend
you check it out. Until next time, thank
you and take care.
