Five Step Learning Approach - By Dr. IITian
- Dr.IITian
- Apr 28, 2020
- 7 min read
For any student, the biggest nightmare of their life is to be underprepared for an upcoming examination. Students face a bunch of problems when it comes to retaining information and on the basis of that information to be, able to answer questions in the exam.
Memorizing
Concentration
Strengthening
Be consistent
Develop confidence
The catch here is no matter how hard you try you cannot remember everything, all at once because your brain tends to get saturated, with a tonne of information.
Nevertheless, during exams you have to study loads of course material, from tonnes of books, and it is obvious you might get brain-fagged while sitting in for the examination, with that much going inside your brain.
Either preparing for a theoretical paper or a practical paper or both you need to retain as much information your brain can sustain, to get you decent grades.
For instance, IIT-JEE exams are mainly based on problem-solving and logical thinking, therefore a child preparing for IIT-JEE needs to do a tonne of problem-solving and logistic thinking in order to understand concepts, retain them and apply them during the exam.
IIT-JEE preparation is no cakewalk, it requires a lot of hard work and determination and constant practice. Undoubtedly the students who wish to appear for the IIT-JEE entrance paper would be practicing a lot and would indulge in solving problems, but even after practicing so hard sometimes, they might not be getting fine results. Why is it so?
1. They are good at solving problems, but they lack in retaining the memory of how they solve those problems.
2.sometimes they miss ideas and tricks to do a certain problem, which is a total bummer when you are sitting in the exam hall and can't remember how to solve a particular problem.
Practicing hard and being determined and dedicated is one thing when it comes to preparing for an exam but many times if you over-prepare your brain might get exhausted with all the information. However, you can exonerate your preparation without overdoing it, with the right approach.
To retain and recognize information, you should enforce the Five-step learning approach (FLSA) which will help you in problem-solving as well as aid to other abilities such as improving your speed, accuracy, and building confidence, when it comes to solving problems and appearing for the actual exam.
1.Understanding The Concept
Proper understanding of a concept is the key to remembering it, and only when you remember a concept you will be able to attempt related questions during exams.
Therefore to understand a question you first need to attempt it.
While you attempt a question make sure you don’t spend more than 20 minutes on a single question. Once you read the question, you will either recall how to solve it or you won't remember anything at all.
So what should you do?
If you understand the question while still reading it then continue with the question, solve it till you get the right answer, but don't spend more than 20 minutes on that question, because, even though not often mentioned, time management is also an important aspect of preparation.
If you don't understand the question properly, don’t spend more than 5 minutes on the question. Pick another question that you understand and start solving it.
In both situations make sure that you read the question thoroughly before you look out for the solution because here you are testing how much you understand and looking at the solution beforehand might affect the efficiency of your understanding.
You can categorize your question as easy, moderate, difficult, and very difficult, this will help you in distributing your focus among the questions you need to work on.
Easy
If you are able to solve a problem as quickly as five minutes then that problem can be considered easy.
Moderate
A problem can be considered moderate, if you spend an elongated time, say more than 20 min but are still able to solve it. Also when you understand the problem, just by looking at the solution, you can mark it as a moderate level question.
Difficult
A problem should be considered difficult if you have spent enough time on it but are still not able to solve it, and it took you a while to finally understand the solution. However, you could understand the solution only by assessing it numerous times.
Very difficult
A problem is certainly very difficult when you are neither able to solve it nor can understand the solution of the problem. under any circumstances, if you feel a problem is very difficult to leave it for later and continue with the ones you can solve.
Memorizing
Once you are done with the understanding part, now it is time you evaluate yourself.
To see how much you can retain and how well you perform with the amount of information you remember. you can prepare a test for yourself, including questions that according to you are average or difficult. Prepare a test of a maximum of 90 questions, from various chapters and try to perform the test within 3 hours. This test will help you evaluate yourself on the basis of your memory and will also aid you with the following aspects
Speed- you might have already solved the question that you included in the test, so what you need to do is this time try to take less time, then you did when you first solved the question. This will help you to improve your speed if you continue to take tests like these on a regular basis.
Accuracy- try to be accurate with your approach towards a problem. Don't make too many mistakes. This will certainly require practice But it is not impossible, keep formulating tests like these and make it a point that every time you make fewer mistakes than the last time.
Concentration
Taking a test requires a lot of concentration, therefore you are prone to be more attentive while you perform a test. If you keep attempting tests like these on a regular basis it will help you improve your concentration.
When you decide on taking up a test make sure that you perform it away from any kind of distraction or noise that way, you will be more attentive and your concentration won’t deflect, try to keep the aura similar to that of a test center.
Performing a test that you yourself formulate will do you more good than you might have imagined, therefore make sure that taking regular tests like these becomes a part of your study routine.
Strengthening
Memorizing is one important thing, the other one is strengthening the memory, brushing the concepts over and over again until you get perfect at it. In a situation where you are enabled to solve only 25% of the question, or you were unable to solve 60-70 questions out of 90, then it is just right that you practice the above step time and time again, to get a hold of the situation.
To strengthen your preparation try to do the memorizing part every 4 to 5 days by the means of the 90 question test. While you prepare this test multiple times you can alter the questions you selected, you can replace the average question with easy or difficult with average every time you prepare a test for yourself. This way you will be able to evaluate yourself and track your performance.
Develop confidence
To appear for an exam requires you to be confident in order to perform well. This step demands you to revise every question orally to reassure yourself. Take one question at a time and try to revise every trick\concept related to that question Within 30 seconds. If you are to revise all the 90 questions it will barely take you 45 min to revise.
Follow this step about 8 days later from your strengthening sessions. While doing this step if you are unable to recall any question, say 15 seconds mark that question and move to the next one.
There is a chance that you will be able to recall 90% of the questions if you go anywhere less than 90% try this step again within a few days. Once you are able to recall the concepts related to the question, you will certainly build confidence that is mandatory, if you are to sit in for an exam and pass with good grades.
Be consistent
Consistency is the key to success in everything you do, the same applies to this five-step learning approach, you have to be consistent and develop a systematic schedule to get results from this particular approach. Without consistency, you won't be able to remember the concepts to the questions which are essential to solving them.
The five-step learning approach is a magnitude of approach towards your preparation for any examinations. Incorporating it in your study schedule is going to lift a lot of burden from your shoulders and is going to equip you with brand new confidence towards your upcoming exam, which is exactly what every student needs to crack their examinations with a bang on performance.
Dr.IITian as one of the Top IIT-JEE coaching insinuates our students to follow the five-step learning approach as it is an additional strategy to acquire brilliant results, and it is mind-blowing technique to mug up concepts and numerical tricks which can be applied almost in every other field of learning.
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By: Dr.IITian
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