We found a killer list of concentration strategies for students.
This list is perfect for those who want to know the best way to cram for an exam. Check this out:
Eat Frequent Small Meals
Avoid eating a big meal before a study session. Too much food will send your body into a ‘rest’ mode. On the other hand, don’t starve yourself either. Frequent small meals are best.
Study When You’re Sharpest
Study according to your body-clock. Are you sharpest in the morning or at the evening? Schedule your most difficult materials when you are mentally at your best, and schedule the easier ones when you are mentally less efficient.
Drink Water Often
Drink plenty of water during a study session, especially when you feel sluggish. Caffeine may help you to stay awake, but it can increase your anxiety – use it in moderation.
Don’t Get Too Comfortable in Your Chair
Choose a chair that supports your back. It should be comfortable, but not too comfortable. Just like an athlete during a performance, your body should be relaxed, so that all your energy goes to where it matters – your brain.
Clear Your Desk of Everything You Don’t Need
Have everything you need on the desk. Put away what you do not need for the study session. Seeing reminders of other assessments or domestic bills may increase your anxiety and distract you.
Take Breaks Every Hour
It is important to take a break before you feel tired and lose your concentration completely. Regular breaks at least once an hour helps to sustain your concentration. If the work is not going too well and you have difficulties in concentrating, you may need a long break and go back to it later
Stretch During Your Breaks
Know and respect your concentration span which will vary from hour to hour and from day to day. When you sit for long periods, gravity draws the blood to the lower part of your body. When you take a break, take a few deep breaths and get more oxygen to your brain: try walking around and doing some light stretching for a few minutes. It will help to release tension in your body, and help your circulation.
Study at the Same Time, Same Place
Study at the same time and at the same place, devoted to study only. This helps you to associate the time and place with studying and concentrating. You will find that you get into a habit of studying as soon as you sit down.
Check out the other concentration strategies . . .
Recommended Reading:
Monday 31 October 2011
Wednesday 5 October 2011
INTUITION AND INTELLIGENCE
Teaching Philosophy
The goal is to help students improve their grades and actually learn! These objectives are equally important. A high GPA without learning is pointless. The idea is to get an education! On the other hand, when learning exceeds what is reflected in a student's grades, that's better - but reality is that grades are important to opening doors and creating opportunity. Both real learning and good grades are keys to long term educational success.
My style of teaching is cooperative and adaptable. Every student is different in terms of attitude, energy level, particular strengths and weaknesses, etc. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. I get a feel for how the student is responding to other sources (textbooks, instructors, parents, etc.) and do my best to complement the package in the most effective way.
I favor developing mental intuition over memorization. Memorization is useful and important to a degree. Yet it does not always lead to long term retention, and it can be counter-productive to gaining a meaningful understanding of the material. Once a student truly understands a concept, things tend to click, and studying becomes less arduous and more rewarding.
My goal, in a sense, is ultimately to render myself obsolete. Rather than nurture a continuing dependency on my guidance, I want to equip students with skills and disciplines that will foster the independence that will enable them to succeed as they move deeper into their educational experience and out into the real world.
For other uses, see Intelligence (disambiguation).
| Human intelligence |
|---|
| Abilities and Traits |
| Models and Theories |
| Fields of study |
Intelligence has been defined in different ways, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning, emotional intelligence and problem solving.
Intelligence is most widely studied in humans, but has also been observed in animals and plants. Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines or the simulation of intelligence in machines.
Numerous definitions of and hypotheses about intelligence have been proposed since before the twentieth century, with no consensus reached by scholars. Within the discipline of psychology, various approaches to human intelligence have been adopted. The psychometric approach is especially familiar to the general public, as well as being the most researched and by far the most widely used in practical settings.[1]
Contents |
History of the term
Main article: Nous
Intelligence derives from the Latin verb intelligere which derives from inter-legere meaning to "pick out" or discern. A form of this verb, intellectus, became the medieval technical term for understanding, and a translation for the Greek philosophical term nous. This term was however strongly linked to the metaphysical and cosmological theories of teleological scholasticism, including theories of the immortality of the soul, and the concept of the Active Intellect (also known as the Active Intelligence). This entire approach to the study of nature was strongly rejected by the early modern philosophers such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and David Hume, all of whom preferred the word "understanding" in their English philosophical works.[2][3] Hobbes for example, in his Latin De Corpore, used "intellectus intelligit" (translated in the English version as "the understanding understandeth") as a typical example of a logical absurdity.[4] The term "intelligence" has therefore become less common in English language philosophy, but it has later been taken up (without the scholastic theories which it once implied) in more contemporary psychology.Definitions
How to define intelligence is controversial. Groups of scientists have stated the following:- from "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" (1994), an editorial statement by fifty-two researchers: A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.[5]
- from "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" (1995), a report published by the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association: Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: a given person's intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of "intelligence" are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena. Although considerable clarity has been achieved in some areas, no such conceptualization has yet answered all the important questions, and none commands universal assent. Indeed, when two dozen prominent theorists were recently asked to define intelligence, they gave two dozen, somewhat different, definitions.[6][7]
| Researcher | Quotation |
|---|---|
| Alfred Binet | Judgment, otherwise called "good sense," "practical sense," "initiative," the faculty of adapting one's self to circumstances ... auto-critique.[8] |
| David Wechsler | The aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally, and to deal effectively with his environment.[9] |
| Lloyd Humphreys | "...the resultant of the process of acquiring, storing in memory, retrieving, combining, comparing, and using in new contexts information and conceptual skills."[10] |
| Cyril Burt | Innate general cognitive ability[11] |
| Howard Gardner | To my mind, a human intellectual competence must entail a set of skills of problem solving — enabling the individual to resolve genuine problems or difficulties that he or she encounters and, when appropriate, to create an effective product — and must also entail the potential for finding or creating problems — and thereby laying the groundwork for the acquisition of new knowledge.[12] |
| Linda Gottfredson | The ability to deal with cognitive complexity.[13] |
| Sternberg & Salter | Goal-directed adaptive behavior.[14] |
| Reuven Feuerstein | The theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability describes intelligence as "the unique propensity of human beings to change or modify the structure of their cognitive functioning to adapt to the changing demands of a life situation."[15] |
What is considered intelligent varies with culture. For example, when asked to sort, the Kpelle people take a functional approach. A Kpelle participant stated "the knife goes with the orange because it cuts it." When asked how a fool would sort, they sorted linguistically, putting the knife with other implements and the orange with other foods, which is the style considered intelligent in other cultures.[16]
Human intelligence
Psychometrics
Main articles: Intelligence quotient and Psychometrics
PERSONAL INTUITION
How to Improve your Intuition and Clairvoyance
15 October 2010 8 Comments
Quote of the day: "When due process fails us, we really do live in a world of terror." - JC Denton
‘sixth sense’ or esp. It is correlated to the metaphors that are always present in our minds that bring messages from other frequency and realms.
Sensing clearly is in the end what we refer to as “hunch” or “gut feel.” This is the time when you are overwhelmed with a feeling and you can’t clarify it and all you can say is “I just know.”
On the other hand, feeling through listening or clairaudience is being able to “listen” between the lines. Intuition also happens at times when a particular sound, no matter what it is – be it a car’s honk or a bird’s twitting – ushers in an intense feeling.
They say only a digit of people are able with intuition. Astrologers even persist that people born under the Scorpio or Pisces signs are naturally intuitive it nearly limits on E.S.P. But studies have been emergent left and right that proclaim that anyone can mend intuition.
Why we need to boost our intuition? Why not let you’re emotional and psychological state as it is? First and leading, intuition promotes and very excellent communication. It makes you more sensitive to the people nearly you; it often keeps you from hurting those you like because you are intuitive enough to know them. Intuition also makes you far more creative than ever. Intuition means releasing more creative juices for any means of face. Finally, intuition has a fantastic healing power. This healing skill is not in the particular sense, but in delving abysmal into your body to defeat some abrogating activity active in it.
Here are 7 vital ways to boost your intuition:
1. Get physically hypnotized.
Hypnosis is not limited to surveillance a pendulum go back and forth. Perform self-hypnosis or you can avail of hypnotic programs that can strengthen your intuition.
2. Rumination and finding peace in physically
Meditating means finding peace in physically. If your mind and heart are cluttered with too a lot of baggage and hurt, you wouldn’t be able to silent down that part of you that could eventually initiate intuition. There are so numerous ways to meditate: take a yoga class, or just simply practice some breathing that could bring you honest to Zen.
3. Reckon always positive!
A worry-free, dread-free condition could do very much to mend your intuitive skill. By staying always positive, you be a pull for excellent energy that would be able to easily recognize pending feelings and events.
4. Just let go.
What is that? If you are on the brink of building a huge declaration, let go of all the inhibitions and head to a silent place where you could find out where the letting go has brought you. Now and again you just accept to accept to the articulation aural you, and that articulation wouldn’t appear out unless you let go.
5. Never expect for an resolution right.
After forgiveness go of the inhibitions and all those things that stop you from cerebration and activity clearly, never apprehend for an acknowledgment appropriate away. Never apprehend that the “hunch” would abatement on your lap at once. Give it a modest time again you’d just get frightened that -wham! Now you accept your resolution.
6. Trust in your first impressions.
When you see anyone for the aboriginal time and anticipate that he is a bit too aloof for your taste, contact are that importance in fact holds right. Most of the time, aboriginal impressions are brought by intuition.
7. Stay always pleased!
Do you see? All you charge to be compulsory is to break pleased! Beatitude attracts immense skill and such skill includes intuition. In borer your intuition, your action accept to be beatitude and ease. Given that premise, intuition wills abatement to you easily.
Intuition is helpful, because now and again it leads you to something that cannot be accomplished otherwise. A lot of lives accept been adored by intuition alone. Decisions are simpler done if armed by this gift. Mend intuition now and buy allowances you accept never imagined.
Have you had that practice when all of a sudden you just had this huge hunch that something is about to happen, and to your surprise, that intuition was eventually translated to reality? When you feel powerfully about a thing lacking logical basis to it, that’s named intuition.The intuition comes in 3 impressions: clairvoyance or else “the third eye”, sensing clearly and feeling through listening.Clairvoyance is the skill of ‘considering’ beyond the five senses. Clairvoyance is frequently called the
‘sixth sense’ or esp. It is correlated to the metaphors that are always present in our minds that bring messages from other frequency and realms.Sensing clearly is in the end what we refer to as “hunch” or “gut feel.” This is the time when you are overwhelmed with a feeling and you can’t clarify it and all you can say is “I just know.”
On the other hand, feeling through listening or clairaudience is being able to “listen” between the lines. Intuition also happens at times when a particular sound, no matter what it is – be it a car’s honk or a bird’s twitting – ushers in an intense feeling.
They say only a digit of people are able with intuition. Astrologers even persist that people born under the Scorpio or Pisces signs are naturally intuitive it nearly limits on E.S.P. But studies have been emergent left and right that proclaim that anyone can mend intuition.
Why we need to boost our intuition? Why not let you’re emotional and psychological state as it is? First and leading, intuition promotes and very excellent communication. It makes you more sensitive to the people nearly you; it often keeps you from hurting those you like because you are intuitive enough to know them. Intuition also makes you far more creative than ever. Intuition means releasing more creative juices for any means of face. Finally, intuition has a fantastic healing power. This healing skill is not in the particular sense, but in delving abysmal into your body to defeat some abrogating activity active in it.
Here are 7 vital ways to boost your intuition:
1. Get physically hypnotized.
Hypnosis is not limited to surveillance a pendulum go back and forth. Perform self-hypnosis or you can avail of hypnotic programs that can strengthen your intuition.
2. Rumination and finding peace in physically
Meditating means finding peace in physically. If your mind and heart are cluttered with too a lot of baggage and hurt, you wouldn’t be able to silent down that part of you that could eventually initiate intuition. There are so numerous ways to meditate: take a yoga class, or just simply practice some breathing that could bring you honest to Zen.
3. Reckon always positive!
A worry-free, dread-free condition could do very much to mend your intuitive skill. By staying always positive, you be a pull for excellent energy that would be able to easily recognize pending feelings and events.
4. Just let go.
What is that? If you are on the brink of building a huge declaration, let go of all the inhibitions and head to a silent place where you could find out where the letting go has brought you. Now and again you just accept to accept to the articulation aural you, and that articulation wouldn’t appear out unless you let go.
5. Never expect for an resolution right.
After forgiveness go of the inhibitions and all those things that stop you from cerebration and activity clearly, never apprehend for an acknowledgment appropriate away. Never apprehend that the “hunch” would abatement on your lap at once. Give it a modest time again you’d just get frightened that -wham! Now you accept your resolution.
6. Trust in your first impressions.
When you see anyone for the aboriginal time and anticipate that he is a bit too aloof for your taste, contact are that importance in fact holds right. Most of the time, aboriginal impressions are brought by intuition.
7. Stay always pleased!
Do you see? All you charge to be compulsory is to break pleased! Beatitude attracts immense skill and such skill includes intuition. In borer your intuition, your action accept to be beatitude and ease. Given that premise, intuition wills abatement to you easily.
Intuition is helpful, because now and again it leads you to something that cannot be accomplished otherwise. A lot of lives accept been adored by intuition alone. Decisions are simpler done if armed by this gift. Mend intuition now and buy allowances you accept never imagined.
Friday 29 July 2011
Tuesday 26 July 2011
Healthy criticism can help refine our talents and creative projects in the pursuit of excellence. But when it is based on a excessive perfectionism or an unrealistic self concept, criticism can be destructive and self-limiting, eroding our creative assurance and vitality.
Many creative people, even when they have achieved recognition for their talents, may experience self-critical thoughts and insecurity.
Highly creative and talented people are, according to research on giftedness, often susceptible to perfectionism and unreasonably high standards and expectations that can lead to exaggerated criticism.
Lesley Sword, director of Gifted and Creative Services, in Australia, finds that gifted children are “highly self critical and over reactive to the criticism of others. They express dissatisfaction with themselves; they see what ‘ought to be’ in themselves... They have a vision of perfectionism that they measure themselves against and they can become despondent sometimes even depressed, at their perceived failure.”
Impostor feelings can also accompany or lead to self-criticism. Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the novel Everything Is Illuminated, said, “I can be very hard on myself. I convince myself that I'm fooling people. Or, I convince myself that people like the book for the wrong reasons.”
Ideas about identity can also be limiting. Director Jane Campion, praised for "The Piano" and other films, once commented, "I never have had the confidence to approach film making straight on. I just thought it was something done by geniuses, and I was very clear that I wasn't one of those."
Another example is Nobel Prize winner poet and writer Czeslaw Milosz, who once said, “From early on writing for me has been a way to overcome my real or imagined worthlessness.”
These are not unusual cases, according to researchers. Many people with exceptional abilities experience complex feelings including inadequacy and inferiority, and critical self-evaluation.
In her book The Gifted Adult, Mary-Elaine Jacobsen writes about common judgments people often hear from others - disparaging comments that over time can be taken on as self-criticism: "Why don't you slow down?"; "You worry about everything!"; "Can't you just stick with one thing?": "You're so sensitive and dramatic!"; "You have to do everything the hard way!"
One way to counter such criticism from others, and yourself, may be to use some humor. In the witty tv series “Bones,” cocky FBI Agent Seeley Booth (played by David Boreanaz) often makes snide remarks about forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance 'Bones' Brennan (Emily Deschanel), such as “We call you people ‘squints,’ because they're always squinting at things.”
And she retorts, “You mean people with high IQs and basic reasoning skills?” In another scene, he expresses impatience with her self-assurance: “You are such a smartass,” and she comes right back with, “Yes, I am smart, but it has nothing to do with my ass.”
For example, you may think, “I’m too sensitive.” Well, what does that really mean? Too sensitive for what? Maybe it’s just there are situations that cause you more discomfort than you want to put up with. Amy Brenneman [star of “Judging Amy”] was once said, “I'm too sensitive to watch most of the reality shows. It's so painful for me.”
But that is a much more concrete and specific, and therefore real, statement than simply “I’m too sensitive.” And being sensitive, after all, can be a virtue for anyone.
And some critical thinking can be positive, when it isn’t extreme, compulsive or unreal. As actor Will Smith noted, “I keep going because I doubt myself. It drives me to be better... It makes me excel.”
Geena Davis, playing the lead in the tv series “Commander in Chief” thinks “you could scratch the surface of most actors and find insecurity played a big part in their drive to become successful."
Many creative people, even when they have achieved recognition for their talents, may experience self-critical thoughts and insecurity.
Irish writer John Banville, just before receiving The Booker Prize, considered the world's most prestigious award for new fiction, was sure he would not win; "I tend to think all my books are bad,” he said.
Many talented film actors report they don’t watch their own movies. When you can be seen in close-ups on twenty foot high theater screens, it may be especially hard not to criticize your appearance and performance. Joaquin Phoenix has said he doesn't like how his teeth look, or his lips. Kate Winslet has admitted that before going off to a movie shoot, she sometimes thinks, “I’m a fraud, and they're going to fire me... I'm fat; I'm ugly.”Highly creative and talented people are, according to research on giftedness, often susceptible to perfectionism and unreasonably high standards and expectations that can lead to exaggerated criticism.
Lesley Sword, director of Gifted and Creative Services, in Australia, finds that gifted children are “highly self critical and over reactive to the criticism of others. They express dissatisfaction with themselves; they see what ‘ought to be’ in themselves... They have a vision of perfectionism that they measure themselves against and they can become despondent sometimes even depressed, at their perceived failure.”
Children who have strong abilities may get praised for their creative projects, but miss out on learning that criticism may be helpful, or that perseverance and time are needed to develop talents fully. Then as adults, when their painting or book or movie does not come together quickly or “perfectly” enough, they can be harshly critical of themselves.
And standards for what is “good” creative work have typically been developed by males, based on male values and male artists, rather than recognizing women as having equal, though perhaps different, creative sensibilities.Impostor feelings can also accompany or lead to self-criticism. Jonathan Safran Foer, author of the novel Everything Is Illuminated, said, “I can be very hard on myself. I convince myself that I'm fooling people. Or, I convince myself that people like the book for the wrong reasons.”
Ideas about identity can also be limiting. Director Jane Campion, praised for "The Piano" and other films, once commented, "I never have had the confidence to approach film making straight on. I just thought it was something done by geniuses, and I was very clear that I wasn't one of those."
Another example is Nobel Prize winner poet and writer Czeslaw Milosz, who once said, “From early on writing for me has been a way to overcome my real or imagined worthlessness.”
These are not unusual cases, according to researchers. Many people with exceptional abilities experience complex feelings including inadequacy and inferiority, and critical self-evaluation.
In her book The Gifted Adult, Mary-Elaine Jacobsen writes about common judgments people often hear from others - disparaging comments that over time can be taken on as self-criticism: "Why don't you slow down?"; "You worry about everything!"; "Can't you just stick with one thing?": "You're so sensitive and dramatic!"; "You have to do everything the hard way!"
One way to counter such criticism from others, and yourself, may be to use some humor. In the witty tv series “Bones,” cocky FBI Agent Seeley Booth (played by David Boreanaz) often makes snide remarks about forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance 'Bones' Brennan (Emily Deschanel), such as “We call you people ‘squints,’ because they're always squinting at things.”
And she retorts, “You mean people with high IQs and basic reasoning skills?” In another scene, he expresses impatience with her self-assurance: “You are such a smartass,” and she comes right back with, “Yes, I am smart, but it has nothing to do with my ass.”
This is a form of the approach used in cognitive behavioral therapy to help people overcome depression, anxiety and other challenges: becoming aware of self-critical and negative thoughts, examining them carefully and logically, then editing or rephrasing them.
These thoughts are often irrational beliefs about how life is or how we "should be” and they can become habitual responses to stressful situations, and often too broad to be accurate.For example, you may think, “I’m too sensitive.” Well, what does that really mean? Too sensitive for what? Maybe it’s just there are situations that cause you more discomfort than you want to put up with. Amy Brenneman [star of “Judging Amy”] was once said, “I'm too sensitive to watch most of the reality shows. It's so painful for me.”
But that is a much more concrete and specific, and therefore real, statement than simply “I’m too sensitive.” And being sensitive, after all, can be a virtue for anyone.
Some people find carefully crafted affirmations placed where you can regularly read them can counteract unrealistic and self-limiting criticism and thinking.
One way to modulate self-critical statements is to ask, If you made this kind of comment to your friend or child, would it be helpful to them? Would it encourage and support them?And some critical thinking can be positive, when it isn’t extreme, compulsive or unreal. As actor Will Smith noted, “I keep going because I doubt myself. It drives me to be better... It makes me excel.”
Geena Davis, playing the lead in the tv series “Commander in Chief” thinks “you could scratch the surface of most actors and find insecurity played a big part in their drive to become successful."
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