This article is relevant to anybody who wants to further their career in the financial services and insurance industries, whether you are at Certificate Level or Diploma Level.
If you are studying for an exam as part of your own continuing professional development then chances are you are making some extremely fundamental but very common mistakes.
These mistakes will not only make the whole experience unnecessarily difficult, time consuming and perhaps unpleasant, but they may even jeopardise your chances of success.
Mistake #1 – Failing To Make Dedicated Time For Studying
There are only 24 hours in a day and they are already more than full, so if you have taken on the commitment to study for an examination, something has to give to make space for this extra effort.
The trouble is, most people will try and study on top of what they are already doing and invariably, because it can’t fit in to an already full schedule, it generally rarely happens
Mistake #2 – Relying on Last Minute Cramming
Last minute cramming worked when we were in full time education because a) our immersion in the topic(s) during our course meant we had a significant residual memory to stimulate through the cramming and b) we had little else to worry about.
Unfortunately as adults in full time employment, probably with significant family and social commitments we don’t have that residual exposure and so last minute cramming no longer works.
Mistake #3 – Reading the Course Notes Over and Over Again
The biggest challenge with re- reading your notes is apart from being an extremely tedious way of learning it, we end up confusing our familiarity with the material (because we have seen it so many times) with knowing it. So when it comes to sitting the exam, our recall of this familiarity is sketchy to say the least.
Mistake #4 – Note Taking Limited to Copying
At school we were encouraged to take notes in a way that was little more than a copying exercise. Certainly in our early years we had to copy everything as were learnt to structure words from the letters and then sentences from the words. But as we got older, we still ended up using “copying” as our form of note taking perhaps being slightly selective in what we copied.
Unfortunately as a learning device it means we focus on capturing content rather than understanding the meaning of what it is we are studying, and in its extreme (depending on how much you copy) for the learning benefit you get, you might as well just take your notes and run them through a photocopier.
Mistake #5 – Failure to Memorise
Have you ever read a page in a book, magazine or even a section from your course material and got to the bottom and can’t remember a thing?
The trouble is our expectation of the reading process (that we should be able to remember what we read) far exceeds what we actually do when we read.
If you want to remember something then you actually need to memorise it not by rote learning (over and over again repetition), but by applying some very simple memory techniques.
Mistake #6 – Failure to Transfer Learning from Short Term to Long Term Memory
When you encounter some new information for the first time and make some effort to understand and learn it, you will find that your recall of it will draw on its impression on your short term memory.
Depending on what it is you have processed, your recall of it will last from just a few minutes to as long as a couple of days. To remember something longer term, then what you have to do is transfer that to your longer term memory.
Most people when studying fail to do this, which is why either they forget what it is they have learnt, and so try to cram as much as they possibly can in a short space of time as close to the exam as possible.
Mistake #7 – Failure to Practice on Past Exam Papers
Let’s not forget that preparation for an exam is more than just learning what might be covered when you are sat in the examination room with the test paper in front of you.
You will need to be able to establish what is required of you from each question, the ability to rapidly digest lots of information to understand the scenarios you are to be presented with, the ability to draw upon and communicate your knowledge and understanding quickly and clearly – and do all of that under pressure and with limited time.
Unless you develop these skills (some would call them exam technique but in reality they are essential professional skills) and practice under the same constraints i.e. using past papers, you will be kidding yourself that you are prepared for the exam if all you have done is learn some content.
By Michael Tipper
www.exam-secrets-exposed.com
© Michael Tipper All Rights Reserved 2009
STOP PRESS!
You can access the webinar we ran last week with Michael Tipper regarding time management and memory improvement at http://www.exam-secrets-exposed.com/replay/ It will only be available until 11.45am on Wednesday 16th September. See Catriona’s personal message at the top of this newsletter for full details.
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