How to approach a new chapter

Students have been asking me how I study. I always point them to this blog but since it's the start of the year, let me summarise some study techniques that I used when I was in school. In this post, I will give a general guideline on how to approach a new chapter. Do note that there are other elements to studying (read my other posts) and this is merely a short summary focusing on understanding a chapter.

Read through the notes beforehand

Right! Read through the notes before you step into the class. Read it on the way to school or read it the night before like a storybook. You may not understand it, but even reading word by word helps. It gives you an idea of how the notes are arranged and allows you to glance through some of the new words (you may not even see some technical terms before).

At times, the new chapter is linked to previous chapters and you may even develop some linkages on your own. This is definitely helpful when the teacher also makes link while teaching (you won't feel lost!).

Make notes during lesson

During the lesson, make notes. Whatever the teacher says, capture the important points and write down. Use short forms. Scribble. There is no right or wrong short forms. Develop your own, as long as you understand what you have written.

Review notes

After the lesson, read the notes again, together with what you have written. Add on notes if needed. From personal experience, I always have things to add on to my notes during review. I would recall something that the teacher said or link to another knowledge that I knew beforehand. Write them down.

Do homework

It is important to do homework. Doing homework makes sure that you are learning the right thing (if you get it correct) and points out any wrong concept (if you get it wrong). Doing homework also prepares you for the test and exam.

Ask questions and discuss

If you have any question, ask. You can ask your friends, parents/siblings/cousins, teachers, tutors, or anyone. Questions can be qualitative or quantitative. It can be a discussion on topics such as “do you think World War II can be avoided?” or simply a question “how to do integration by parts?”.

Do more (timed) practices

This is very important; in fact, this is the phase that prepares you for the exam. Time yourself when doing questions, do not spend more than what is allowed. When you are doing full year paper, make it like exam condition. Ask your family members not to disturb for the next x hours, lock yourself in the room, do it like you are in the exam hall. Always challenge yourself to do faster and more accurate the next time round.

Tuition

For students without tuition, it’s not an issue. You have to be more proactive and seek resources. There are assessment books everywhere and past year papers are sold throughout Singapore. Buy them, do them and get help from friends/teachers etc (see above).

For students with tuition, make full use of the tutor. Bombard the tutors with questions (especially for 1-1 tuition). Ask for more practices. Discuss topics with the tutor. Listen to and apply the tips given by the tutor (students usually feedback that the tips I give are not given in school. I believe there are countless tips out there and believe it or not, I am learning from my students everyday).

Hope this post helps. All the best for the new year! :)

How To Feel Confident During Examination

Just when we are all preparing for the mid-year examination, let's talk about exam confidence.

Students always tell me that they "don't feel confident for tomorrow's exam". The next few questions they ask are:

1) Do you always feel so confident?

2) How do you feel so confident, even for English/GP that you always failed?

Well, the truth is I did not always feel confident, no matter how much effort I put into revision. Ironically, the papers that I felt the most confident in were English and General Paper, the ones that I always failed.

However, I know the importance of confidence. With confidence, one will feel good and will tend to do well, assuming all revisions have been done. The question is, how do I make myself feel confident?

Pray

I am a Buddhist. I pray before going for examination. If you have a religion, pray to your God. Trust that God will look after you, because you have done your due diligence studying for the exam.

I used to believe in myself only, believing that only I can control my own fate. So, if you are a free-thinker, trust yourself more during the period of examination. You know that you have done your best and the last lap is only to write down and/or apply whatever you have learned.

Whatever you never study, won't come out

Do I really know everything before I enter the exam hall? Do I always score full marks during practice? No to both questions. I told myself that whatever I don't know, won't appear in the exam paper. True enough, I was correct 95% of the time. What about the other 5%? The marks lost were insignificant to affect my grade.

Do not compare answers

After every paper, students tend to compare answers. If you find that all your answers are the "generally accepted correct answers", you feel very happy and confident. On the other hand, if you find that most of your answers are different from your friends, you feel down. Why take this risk? Go straight home and prepare for the next paper.

Take exam in peace

In one of my previous posts, I discussed 4 unorthodox ways to tackle examination. Those methods were supposed to make us feel good and enter the exam hall with a peace of mind. As long as we feel good, we feel confident and vice versa. Read that post again!


There are of course many other methods to feel confident, but ultimately it's all in your mind. Learn to control your mind and heart and you would have won half the battle.

Failure Is The Mother Of Success

"Failure Is The Mother Of Success"

We have all heard this many times but how many of us feel really demoralised after a failure? How many of us actually believe this statement immediately after we failed? At least not me. It's not that I am pessimistic, it's just that immediately after a failure, I can't possibly expect myself to succeed on my next try without doing anything right? If I can succeed, I won't fail now right?

We face failures every now and then. It's not how heavy we fall, it's how we climb up and move on. It's not how many times we fail, it's how we take it and proceed from there.

If you have been reading my blog, you would have realised that I fail quite frequently. Some of my major failures in studies include doing badly across all my subjects in secondary 2. I was warned of being retained in secondary 2 for failing 3 subjects, including English, in my common tests and obtaining borderline passes for the rest. Even in university, I also failed many times, especially in programming. For the two programming courses (C and C++) I took, I did not manage to finish the practical examinations and many of the sit-in programming assignments, not because I did not have enough time, but because I just could not understand the whole thing.

Every time I fail, I feel dejected. Every time I fail, I feel like quitting school. In secondary 2, I had the thought of leaving school because I kept doing badly and I did not have the mood to continue studying. Luckily for me, my late grandmother and parents encouraged me. Instead of scolding me for doing badly, they told me to "take it slowly, retain if needed, don't rush". I managed to scrap through and in secondary 3, I consulted my cousins. My results picked up and I gained some confidence. I worked harder and my results went up north further. This cycle continued and studies have never been a problem since (except for English of course).

As much as you may fail now, do not give up. It is easy to give up, never easy to persevere. But I promise you, when you succeed after failing, the level of satisfaction is second to none. Continue to work hard towards your goal and build on your little successes, your little successes will add up to a great achievement that you deservedly own!

Take some time to read this article on Mr Joshua Soh. He took 6 years to pass his O Levels. He did not give up when he failed and he became the managing director of CISCO.
http://www.todayonline.com/failures-just-success-delayed

The Official Website For Samuel Li Tuition

Finally, my tuition website has enough information to be officially announced to the world!

http://www.samuelmath.com

I have been a web developer for many years, building many websites and web applications for others. Now, I finally have the time to build one for myself! Fear not, I will still share useful stuff in this blog. The website is meant purely as an information site for my tuition services.

Before I end this post, please say hello to this nerdy logo that my best friend Jia Li has designed, using my face as her inspiration! :| Not only is she a good designer, she is also a good Economics tutor, do look for her if you need one!

Exam Preparation: "Feelingless"

"I love to go to school. It is fun. But I don't like the exam at the end of the year."

Students always tell me this, and I felt the same too. Most of us love going to school. We meet our buddies. We have fun playing pranks on one another. We gossip. We do cool things in school! Now, who doesn't like school?

Why do we like school but don't like to pay the price of going to school: the examination? No one likes to pay anyway... Right?

To me, it's all in the mind. School is fun because we make it fun. School is interesting because we make it so. When the word "Examination" comes into the picture, things become serious. Score badly and you will be retained. Fail badly and you will be expelled. Think about it, we are afraid of exam because we (or the society) make it sound so scary. Tweak our mindset a little and everything becomes easier!

Easy to fail?
If we have been conscientiously doing our work, just doing the minimum, is it easy to fail? I doubt so. We would have gotten at least 50%, the passing mark. We would have no problem progressing up the levels right?

Set realistic targets
When we are scoring F9, set a target of D7 or C6. If we are scoring C6, set a target of B4. Work towards the target slowly. For O Levels or A Levels students, we have 2 full years. Don't aim for A1 right from the start. More often than not, the stress we put on ourselves will undo whatever preparation we have done. The most important thing is to compare with yourself, not to compare with your peers.

Ability to change things overnight?

"Die! Tomorrow exam already, I still don't know this, this and this."

If we have been consistent in doing our work, will we ever have so many "this" that we don't know? Are we able to grasp all "this" in just one night? We know the answer! Let's calm ourselves down. Everyone has been in this situation. I have been in this situation all the time! Glad to know that you are not alone right?

The differentiating factor between a top student and other A's students is the ability to stay calm.

What to do?

The cliche: do your work conscientiously. Yes! Do a bit every week and you will find it easier when you are doing your revision at the end of the semester.
Even if you think that you have done consistent work, do not set unrealistically high target. I always set realistic target for myself. When I scored F9 for General Paper, I set E8 as my target, no matter how much effort I thought I put in. Why not C6 immediately? Because I knew that E8 was already a mountain for me to climb. There was no need to stress myself up with unnecessary burdens.
One night before the exam, stop reading. The more you read, the more things you find you don't know. I always tell myself this:

"Aiya, I don't know means it won't come out lar."

True enough, out of 5 times, I was right for 4 times.

Conclusion

Having said so much, the most crucial point is to walk into the exam hall "feelingless". Do not feel anything. Do not carry any burden with you. Do not think of A1 or F9. Think of nothing at all. No worries about forgetting the knowledge. It will come to you when the question is staring at you.

Walk in, do the paper, disregard what is happening around you. Can't do a question? Skip. Can't do again? Skip. Can't do the whole paper? Drink water and go to the restroom. Stay calm and it will come to you.

Exam Preparation: Time Factor

In this post, I will talk about the time factor in the exam preparation series.

Daily homework
Usually, we sit down comfortably and solve the questions in front of us. Many times, we are able to solve most, if not all, the questions. YES! We can do it. YES! We will score well! But have we ever look at the time we take to solve those questions? Have we ever look at our piece of work and wonder whether another person is able to decipher what we have written, or is it totally illegible?

Examination hall
We know that there is a fix duration for every paper. We know that we have a choice to leave the hall early, but we have no choice to leave late. Let's ask ourselves: Are we able to finish the paper within the permitted time? If yes, good. If no, think about how much time was spent doing our daily homework.

Experience
Recalling my Secondary School days, initially during Additional Mathematics tests or exams, I always completed the paper just in time. My last written word/number was a few seconds before the announcement "Pens down, time's up". There was once when I could not even finish the paper.
Most of my students, past and present, face the same issue. They know how to solve the questions, but they simply take too long to solve them. One simple question can take them more than 5 minutes. Reasons? Write slowly. Write down every single step. Using the correction tape/fluid.

What did I do?
Once I know that I got the concept, I time myself when solving problems. When I was going to sit for a 2-hour paper (in the case of A Math), I made sure that I was able to finish a paper within 1 hour during practice. Sounds crazy? No. Let's admit that during practice, we feel relax while doing the questions. We ought to do fast, since we don't feel any stress. The same paper in exam took me not less than 1.5 hour. This is due to the "additional weights" on my shoulders. My heart beat faster, my hands shook more and I wrote slower.

Learn to write fast but not compromising the readability of your work. A calligraphic piece of work won't earn you extra marks. As long as the marker can understand your handwriting, it is good enough. Over the years, I have received many praises for my handwriting. However, when they saw the work I hand in during exam, they were stunned.

It's time to time yourself!

Exam Preparation: Train In A Harsh Condition

Nearing the end of the year, staring at the "BIG EXAM", let me share my ways of preparing for examination. Points may be repeated from my previous posts, but nevertheless, they are important enough for us to be reminded again.

Conducive learning
Most students learn in a conducive environment. By conducive, I mean quiet, bright, cooling, zero disturbance, and whatever you can think of. Nothing wrong with this, since it is normal that we learn better in such environment. However, nothing is perfect, including the examination hall.

Real life
In the hall, you will hear the invigilators' footsteps, hundreds of students flipping papers, other students playing basketball below the hall, or even babies from the opposite block crying!
In the hall, you will see people walking around and students scribbling on the paper.
In the hall, you may experience some unpleasant smell, from the shoes if it's a rainy day or even from the garbage truck.
Won't all these add disturbance to you and affect you? Won't it affect more especially when you are only used to a conducive environment?

Experience
Personally, I have seen students perform well in a classroom environment (for class test), in a tuition environment (no much disturbance). However, once they step into the big hall, they fail. Reasons? Too noisy. Too stressful to be seated in the middle of hundreds of students.
Worse still, you may experience a mental block when you see all the other students writing fast and furiously! Looks like everyone else know how to do all the questions right? Feels like you are dead right? I have experienced this myself!

What did I do?
The method which I used is to study in a harsh environment. At this moment, as a student, you should be more or less done with your syllabus. The question now is not whether you have the knowledge. Rather, it is whether you can perform under conditions which are unknown to you, under conditions which you are not used to.

I always leave my room door open, with my family watching TV and talking outside. My windows are always opened, taking in noise from the road and the train track. This is to ensure that I receive the "maximum noise", which I think is reasonable compared to the noise I would receive in the hall.

My table is positioned such that I am either facing the windows or the door. This makes me face moving things, be it my family walking past, the train moving past, or even the swaying tree leaves.

Luckily for me (or not?), I never have air-con in my room. I used to study in a warm environment - the air coming from the fan was warm too. With the exam paper at 1pm, I was never affected by the stuffy hall, which during my time, was only equipped with fans. Some exam halls are still not air-conditioned today, so this may help you too.


The above methods work for me and for my students who faced the problem of fear-in-the-hall. No harm trying it out, especially if knowledge is not your main concern now (for JC2 and Sec 4 students, it shouldn't be at this stage anyway).

GCE A Levels H2 Mathematics Book

For those who wonder why I went off the radar for so long without a blog post, this is the reason. I have been writing the GCE A Levels H2 Mathematics Book and finally I have finished writing Part 1, just in time for my 28th Birthday!

Topics
The topics include everything other than statistics, namely:
Functions
Graphs
Equations
Inequalities
Sequences
Series
Vectors
Complex Numbers
Calculus

Introduction
An excerpt from the introduction:
"""
Mathematics is an art. To master it, we have to master the fundamentals and concepts. Hence, unlike other books, there are few, if any, examples in this book. I try as much as I can not to use examples to bring across a point as it would limit our vision as to how each concept can be used.

This book is written for students taking the A Levels. I strongly believe that if you truly understand this book, you understand A Levels Mathematics and will definitely score well.

One advice which I always give to my students: “Open your heart and clear your mind when you are solving Mathematics questions. Just relax and enjoy them!”

""" 

More Information

• There is a total of 116 pages of content, excluding the cover page and other miscellaneous pages.
• The book is in A4 size.
• The content in the book is what you need to understand H2 Mathematics. Understand the book and you will be able to apply the concepts on any given problem.
• I just wrote the book and there is no publisher, so I will be printing and binding the book on my own.
• I am not sure how much I should sell the book, but I am looking at a minimum of $25, which means that I don't earn much after deducting the cost of printing and delivery.
• Some people may say that I charge too much and there are cheaper alternatives. However, I strongly believe that with my experience and expertise, this book is the one that you, as an A Levels student, really need to score well.
• Some people may say that I charge too little, given the effort I put in and more importantly, the quality of the content. However, I do not want to charge too high as I believe that everyone, regardless of rich or poor, should have access to all resources.
• The beautifully-designed book cover is done by my good friend, Ng Kooi Cia. Other than that, everything inside is done by me, so please pardon me if the aesthetic is a bit off. But I assure you that it's the quality of the content which matters, and you got it.

Please contact me at liminghui86@gmail.com if you are interested or have any question.
Like my Facebook page for updates on A Levels Math.
 -> https://www.facebook.com/alevelsmath

Thank you!

Li Minghui Samuel

http://www.linkedin.com/in/liminghui86

Success Is All In The Mind

In this post, I will share what I have read from articles on how to be successful. There are many methods which people have proposed on this topic, and I realise that most, if not all, actually only revolve around one main method: "It's all in the mind".

Focus on what you want, not what you don't want

For a start, let me introduce one video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXvjsK6gasE
A line which has left a deep impression on me is "Focus on what you want, not what you don't want". Yes that's right. We, as human, fear. This is normal and this is usually what pulls us back. Before we get started, we fear this, we fear that. We fear we will fail. Thus, we won't start. Even if we get past this fear of starting, the next fear sets in. We fear the next step. We ask ourselves, can I do it? Sooner or later, we will give up. All these happen because we focus on our fear and give in to it.

Procrastinate
Procrastinating is something that I believe most of us do. Whenever we want to start doing something, we will think for a while whether we want to start or not, and we will make up some excuses to delay our actions. "Let's start tomorrow!" and "Let's get this started later." are just two examples of excuses we give ourselves. Pushing back doing certain task is fine, but pushing back the task all the time is not. I am guilty of this too. If it is important, do it. Otherwise, don't even bother with it.

Lack of Time Perspective
"I have no time now, I will do it later." How many of us are guilty of this? It is true that we are almost always busy, however, it is also true that many people are busy with the "wrong thing". What is wrong? It depends.

Personal Experience On FYP
I started work on my FYP the moment I received information on the confirmation of my topic, MOS-HEMT [1]. I did not know what is MOS-HEMT, I only knew I wanted to do well. I had fear of these 7 letters. Instead of giving in to my fear, I had to overcome them. So I immediately did some research on the MOS-HEMT, without any delay. My confidence increased after gaining some basic knowledge and met my supervisor with the little knowledge. Imagine me giving in to my fear, my mouth would have been wide opened throughout my first meeting with my supervisor, not knowing what he was talking about and stunned by his words.

One of the many mistakes which I made was that I was busy searching for and reading research papers for the first few months, and even after that. Thinking back, I might have done the wrong thing. I spent too much time reading other people's work, resulting in the no-time perspective. I kept thinking that I did not know enough. When I got to doing the actual simulation, I had a "cultural shock". I tried to replicate the papers' work and I could not. In the end, I almost could not produce any good results. The bulk of my thesis was only written 3 weeks before the deadline and I only got the results less than two weeks before. If I could turn back the time, I would have done some simulations while reading the papers, and not only after reading and trying to understand about 15 papers and some books.


In short, do what you think is necessary to achieve what you want. Do not delay, do not fear. You have nothing much to regret about if you fail after putting in your best, but you have everything to regret about for not even starting.

[1] MOS-HEMT: Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor High Electron Mobility Transistor

Staying Calm To Analyse The Situation

We may have been told that staying calm in the face of adversity is very important, especially so that we can analyse the situation objectively with a clear mind. For students, this is very important, especially for the periods just before and during examination. Without calmness, one, in my opinion, will never perform up to the standard which he is capable of.

Personally, I had my share of anxiety during the crucial periods of a student's life, just before and during examination. The only outcome: mind block. Yes, mind block. I wonder how many students have experienced it, but having experienced it personally, I have only one comment on it. The feeling is unbearable and is a vicious cycle. The more anxious you are, the bigger the "block", the bigger the block, the more anxious you are.

During my Junior College year 1, I was in the examination hall for Physics paper. I read the first question and started doing. Less than 3 minutes later, I crushed my answer sheet as I did not know how to continue. I went on to read the second question and third and soon, I finished reading the whole paper, without knowing how to do a single question. Naturally I got anxious and this was not helped by the fact that I was seated at the back of the hall, overlooking not less than 300-400 students. Everyone was busy writing and no one seemed to face the same problem as me - not knowing how to do any question. This made me more anxious and I actually perspired in the otherwise cool environment (I was seated below the fan). I nearly fainted (not exaggerating here).

I closed the question paper, sat back and drank about half of my 500ml bottle of water. I just spent the next 15 minutes or so closing my eyes, relaxing and not thinking of anything. I then went to the restroom and wash my face (I have forgotten why I had to wait for so long, probably because there was a rule saying that no one can leave the hall within 30 minutes from the start of the paper). After the toilet break, I went back to the hall and start the paper all over again. This time, I felt more calm and managed to finished the whole paper before time was up.

A scary experience of mine brought me two main learning points.
1) Examination is not all about what you have in your brain, it's also about how you handle the situation, the stress.
2) If you cannot stay calm, nothing else matters.

Hence, I urge all students to stay calm, just like how how I have been telling my students.

Before I end this post, here is a nice article on calmness.
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/calmness-is-contagious-even-if-youre-faking-it/