6 min
Know This One Thing When Preparing For Exams - Podcast 82 Speaking of Math Podcast by Door-2-Math
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- Education
I have a tennis story and I hope you can gain some insights on test taking.
I’ve been having a problem with consistency so my tennis coach offered to help. We did a couple of points and she said, why do you think you'll game is not consistent? I said when I do the forehand, sometimes it goes where I want to go and sometimes I shank it!
So she said she wouldn't define consistency the way I define it! I'm thinking, great, what does it have to do with tennis? And what does this have to do with test taking?
When it comes to test taking, many students think you have to know math to get good scores. Yes and no. Test taking has two parts, knowing the material and test taking skills.
Just like test taking, consistency has two parts, a consistent stroke which I have, and the second part I didn't know is focus. My focus was poor. That's why I was shanking it.
Back to test taking. Let's say you have $100 and you’re traveling and you go in through a weird toll house that needs to take 20%. After the toll house you have $80 left. Not too bad, right? Twenty bucks. Then comes another toll house. This time they take 20% of $80 and now you end up with $64 :(
So on a test you want to get a 100, but you got a 64. Which skill do you work on, test taking or knowing the material? Because 80 percent of 80 percent is 64 percent. If you keep on working on the wrong thing, it's not going to increase your score and you're going to get discouraged.
Just like with my tennis game, I was working on my stroke, and didn’t know it was the focus problem. So if you’re getting low test score, you need to sit down and look where you're making the mistakes. Is the mistake made from not knowing the material or silly mistakes? All mistakes cost you points much like a focus problem caused me points. So you really need to analyze.
Back to tennis. Once I figured this out, I started to pay more attention to my focus problem. Every times the ball comes across the net and bounces, I say the word “bounce”. My consistency is better now because I'm working on the right thing!
Much Love, Feenix
I have a tennis story and I hope you can gain some insights on test taking.
I’ve been having a problem with consistency so my tennis coach offered to help. We did a couple of points and she said, why do you think you'll game is not consistent? I said when I do the forehand, sometimes it goes where I want to go and sometimes I shank it!
So she said she wouldn't define consistency the way I define it! I'm thinking, great, what does it have to do with tennis? And what does this have to do with test taking?
When it comes to test taking, many students think you have to know math to get good scores. Yes and no. Test taking has two parts, knowing the material and test taking skills.
Just like test taking, consistency has two parts, a consistent stroke which I have, and the second part I didn't know is focus. My focus was poor. That's why I was shanking it.
Back to test taking. Let's say you have $100 and you’re traveling and you go in through a weird toll house that needs to take 20%. After the toll house you have $80 left. Not too bad, right? Twenty bucks. Then comes another toll house. This time they take 20% of $80 and now you end up with $64 :(
So on a test you want to get a 100, but you got a 64. Which skill do you work on, test taking or knowing the material? Because 80 percent of 80 percent is 64 percent. If you keep on working on the wrong thing, it's not going to increase your score and you're going to get discouraged.
Just like with my tennis game, I was working on my stroke, and didn’t know it was the focus problem. So if you’re getting low test score, you need to sit down and look where you're making the mistakes. Is the mistake made from not knowing the material or silly mistakes? All mistakes cost you points much like a focus problem caused me points. So you really need to analyze.
Back to tennis. Once I figured this out, I started to pay more attention to my focus problem. Every times the ball comes across the net and bounces, I say the word “bounce”. My consistency is better now because I'm working on the right thing!
Much Love, Feenix
6 min