I’m not a parent. I don’t know what it’s like to have a teen who hates school. I can’t imagine how frustrating that must be. But, I’ve tutored enough students to see how stressful and frustrating it is for parents. I get how badly you want your teen to do their best at school. I understand how crucial it is for your teen to get the best start possible to their young adult life. It’s excruciating to see a teen with truckloads of potential who doesn’t give toss about school. If this sounds … [Read more...]
5 Quick-Fire, Must Know Study Tips for Your Teen
Sometimes I can babble on for way too long about just one tiny aspect of studying. Whilst this can be a good thing when I’m trying to explain something really important, I also think it’s sometimes best if I (try to) keep things short and snappy. So here’s me trying to be short and snappy – 5 Quick-fire must know study tips for you to relay to your teen: 1. Studying EVERYTHING is not the answer First and foremost your teen needs to study what is central to their subjects. There’s no … [Read more...]
How To End 2011 With A (Studying-Related) Bang
We’ve noticed that a lot of parents are asking us about the same issues. "My teen doesn’t know how to study, my teen used to get good grades but now she’s lacking motivation, my teen gets really stressed out about tests and exams" – stuff like this. Almost EVERY teen struggles with these sorts of issues at one stage during their time at high school. Even straight-A-getters. So what’s the best thing you can do to wrap up 2011? The very best thing you can do to help your teen wrap up the … [Read more...]
Cheat Sheets: How to Secure More Marks In The Last Week of Exam Study
With exams just around the corner we know how stressful things can get... Especially when you’ve got a number of teens at high school! If this is a position you’re in at the moment – may the force be with you. Hopefully your teen is going OK and isn’t too stressed! If they are panicking, we’ve got a tip for them to help remember much more in the last few days leading up to each exam. Make a Cheat Sheet No, we’re not saying your teen should smuggle in bits of paper into the exam! A Cheat … [Read more...]
How To Check if You’re Ready For Your Exams
There's not just one right way for your teen to go about studying for exams. However, there is something that every teen should do during their exam preparation. Something so effective in helping students prepare for exams in fact (we speak from personal experience), it almost feels like you're cheating! It doesn't matter what your teen's predominant learning style is or how they prefer to go about studying for exams... Every student should use Past Exams to study Past exams are an … [Read more...]
Get Top Marks With Simple Exam Answers
Studying hard for their exams is not the only thing your teen needs to do in order to be well prepared. They also need to dedicate time to planning how they’re going to answer their exam questions. Because there’s actually a right and a wrong way to tackle exam questions. And this is most apparent with short answer questions (those requiring one or two lines maximum), and long answer questions (those requiring possibly a paragraph or two). The best exam answers are the simplest … [Read more...]
Exam Success 101: How To Study For And Sit Exams
Between the two of us we've sat quite a large number of exams since high school. In fact, we estimate we've sat 98 2-3 hour exams between us. This doesn't even include tests or assignments or internal exams. (That's not supposed to impress you by the way... Only to inform you we really have sat a lot of exams!) And on top of our own experiences, we're each currently spending three to four hours a day tutoring high school students about to sit their own round of exams. I think it's fair to … [Read more...]
How to Write Incredibly Bad Study Notes
Studying IS making study notes. At least that’s what students tell us when we ask them what studying involves. We agree that, in most cases, making study notes should be what your teen spends most of their time doing while preparing for exams. It’s our belief that it doesn’t matter what your teen’s predominant Learning Style is, study notes are a must for everyone sitting written exams. Because study notes are such an integral part of studying for exams, we think all teens should know the … [Read more...]
How to Ace Multi-Choice Tests and Exams
Multi-choice tests can be deceptively tough. Despite their seemingly simple format, they should definitely not be your teen’s cue to switch off and forget about studying! Multi-choice tests and exams are actually far from one-dimensional. At times multi-choice questions (MCQs) can be pretty straight forward, but it’s been our experience (particularly at tertiary level) that they can be absolutely horrible! Examiners can make MCQs particularly tricky by either: making at least 2 (out … [Read more...]
5 ways to destroy exam-time stress
Sitting exams isn’t fun. And preparing for them can be even worse. Sometimes a little bit of pressure can spur your child on to study, but once this pressure starts turning into stress bad things happen. Here are 5 of the most common stress-causing complaints from students leading up to exams, and our solution to each one. 1. I’m not going to fit everything in Many students feel like their head will explode when they try and figure out how they’re going to study for everything they need to … [Read more...]