Some Study Tips for Maths!
Studying mathematics, at any level in high school, could sometimes feel overwhelming. To help you out, we have prepared a few general tips that may help you in the long run.
Practise as soon as you can after you learn something new. Practising while your memory is fresh is going to be more efficient than putting off that work and attempting it sometime after when you may have forgotten half the new stuff learnt already.
If you find a topic or the subject hard, do it earlier. The idea here is to manage your mental energy - a limited and valuable commodity, like time - more efficiently. As the day goes on and you get more tired, your ability to focus and concentrate drops. This is why you would want to focus on learning the hardest things first, when your mental energy is at its peak. As your mental energy drops, you want to transition to subjects/tasks that you find easier and require less mental energy.
Learn from examples. If you’re stuck on a particular problem, try to find a similar example. Have a read through and try to apply the method in that example to the question you’re stuck on. This would help you internalise the method so that you’ll have a better time next time you come across a similar question.
Don’t over-rely on your memory. Relying on your memory isn’t always a bad thing as active recall helps you internalise new content. However, it becomes a problem when your grasp on the new content is vague and your creativity runs wild. This often results in some interesting but incorrect working out. We would recommend that when you’re unsure, pause and look back at worked examples. And please don’t get me wrong, creativity is a great thing - just not in the beginning while we’re in the process of mastering the fundamentals!
It’s okay to forget. Even if you have followed everything we’ve mentioned above and you work on your maths skills regularly, you will still forget things here and there. We just want to let you know that this is perfectly normal and not a you-problem. The content covered in maths is actually just that dense!
Consistency is key. Revise often and build up your long-term memory. So whenever you forget something, just flip back to that section of work and do some lite revision. If you continue this process a few times, you’ll be on top of the subject in no time!
Ultimately, maths is a cumulative subject that often requires content you’ve previously covered. If you don’t like a topic, it’s never a good idea to ignore it as this could make learning subsequent topics that much harder. Give it your best shot and keep up with the work. If you need some extra assistance, don’t hesitate to contact us and we can see what we can do to help!