When people study, they tend to do it with a book and/or a teacher. I guess that sounds pretty silly to point out but I want to say that I don't think this is always the best way to study. I do think that learning new information must start this way. But once you have learned it, in order to retain it and to establish it as a firmly grasped concept in your mind I think there are better approaches. First, if you're always studying with a book in front of you, this is not a situation representative of the one you will be in for the test. So can you really say that it's all that helpful? Probably not.


Second, and this is my main point, if you are always studying with a book or a teacher the information really remains that of the book or the teacher. The information never really becomes a part of your independent knowledge. For example, I actually have a slight photographic memory. While this does tend to help me out it also tends to hinder me. If I learn something from a book and only a book when I want to recall it I must imagine the page that the information was written on and only then can I remember the actual information. But if my recollection of the page has faded I have nothing else to fall back on and won't be able to remember the information. BUT. If I learn information and apply it practically to many areas in my life, I now have many things which can bring up the fact, not only an image of a page.


Take the relative wavelengths of visible light. One way for me to figure out if blue has a larger wavelength than red (they're opposites mind you), because I never remember, is to use Rayleigh scattering. Rayleigh scattering is a rule by which light is scattered in the Earth's atmosphere and it's somehow connected to one over the wavelength of the light,. I remember Rayleigh scattering because it's the reason why the sky is blue during the day and red at sunset. (When I learned this fact I felt like I was learning a secret of the universe.) Now, even as I am typing this I really cannot tell you if blue has a larger wavelength than red, because I'm really not one for blind memorization. But let me walk you through my reasoning and we'll discover it together. So light scatters at some relationship to one over its wavelength. This means that if a certain color has a large wavelength it will not scatter very much. And if a certain color has a small wavelength, it will scatter much more. During the day our sky is blue, that's because the blue is being scattered so we can see it and the red is going past us. I got it. So blue must have the smaller wavelength because it is scattered first. And then red has a larger wavelength because we only see it at sunset and sunrise when we are further away from the sun and blue has already been exhausted. And I got all that without going back to a text book or using the internet or asking a teacher. (The following picture I drew myself using paint. So uhh... please forgive the lack of technicality.)

(This second picture I obviously didn't make myself using paint.)


Ok, now this is all a very roundabout way of remembering a simple fact: blue has a smaller wavelength than red. But the point I want to make is that the relative sizes of specific colors' wavelengths are not at all relevant or practical to me and so I'm therefore very unlikely to remember them. But when I made it part of my daily information (and doing that by knowing Rayleigh scattering which I remembered because I was interested in it, see my last blog) it became a fact that was connected to more than just my textbook. So when I want to think of visible light's wavelengths, the textbook fact would be the best and easiest to think of. And if I only study from a textbook this is the only option I have. But if I can't remember the fact from the textbook I now have this other more practical connection to bring up the fact with.


So I want to say that you really have to make the information your own, part of YOUR knowledge, not part of a book that you've memorized. And to do this you need to venture out away from your book and teacher. Apply the knowledge to your life. If it's English, you have to really submerse yourself in English and only think in English. If it's science, look at the world around you, it's pretty easy to make the information relevant and practical. So whatever it may be, OWN the knowledge.


▼▽▼▼【講師】Amberly先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Strategies for using strategies】2009.03.18 (Wed)

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With the recent economic uncertainty, many people are thinking about ways to improve their attractiveness to prospective employers. Improved scores on tests such as the TOEFL can serve this purpose in several ways.

First of all, employers seeking people with English ability will be attracted to those with proven English skills as shown by TOEFL or TOEIC. Furthermore, the TOEFL makes it possible to study abroad if it becomes necessary to broaden one's professional skills.

Often overlooked, but equally important, is the confidence that our students acquire in the high-pressure environment of the TOEFL. Hesitant, self-conscious English speakers can be transformed into people who feel they can handle most any situation with ease. This confidence is attractive to employers and anybody else with whom the student comes in contact.

If you're up to the challenge, come see us soon. We look forward to helping you meet your potential.


▼▽▼▼【講師】Kurt先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【How much will I improve?】2008.10.08 (Wed)
・【The Importance of Writing】2008.10.29 (Wed)
・【Bias in the News】2008.11.19 (Wed)
・【TOEFL iBT】2009.01.07 (Wed)
・【improving your English Level】2009.01.28 (Wed)
・【Grammar】2009.02.18 (Wed)
・【Success!】2009.03.11 (Wed)

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Although cause and effect, and misunderstandings about cause and effect, are most prevelant on the LSAT, they are a major part of the SAT, GRE, and GMAT as well. Each of these tests is concerned with the candidate's ability to critically analyze information in order to form valid conclusions. That skill, as I have often said in class, is one of the cornerstones of intellectually challenging professions like law, medicine, and business management.


There are at least two other reasons, though, besides it's importance to critical thinking, that cause and effect (let's call it C&E henceforth for convenience's sake) is so frequently tested on higher-level academic stardardized tests: For one thing, C&E is frequently misunderstood, even by otherwise intelligent and well-educated people who have not been trained in critical thinking. For another, the English language is fluid and flexible enough to allow testmakers to create dozens and dozens of different--and intentionally confusing--ways of saying the same things. That last fact, especially, makes C&E a tempting subject ground for testmakers, who have to construct not only challenging questions, but also vague, confusing answer choices to deceive test-takers.


As to the first reason, why and how is C&E frequently misunderstood? The most common error, probably, that is easy to make is to confuse CORRESPONDENCE (the fact that two different things happen, either at the same time or one after the other) with CAUSATION (one thing actually bringing the other about). Correspondence is evidence that C&E might exist, but it's not enough to establish that relationship. What you think is the effect might be the cause, or some other, unknown quantity may be creating your effect.


For instance, if I observe that "Employees who have worked at a company the longest are the ones who report being the happiest with their jobs." Then from that, I conclude "Therefore, staying at a job for a long time will cause you, over time, to grow to love that job and be happy at the company." It seems more likely that, in fact, the fact that I like my job might be the CAUSE, and staying for a long time at my company would be the EFFECT. One would have to do more research to determine whether happiness was causing the long stays, or vice-versa, or whether some other, unrelated factor was causing both.


On the other hand, let's say I observe that twenty people who ate dinner at this restaurant last night got sick. "Therefore," I conclude, "the food at the restaurant must have caused the illnesses." Certainly, it's not likely that, as in the example about job satisfaction, the cause and effect were reversed. That would mean that the fact that the people were ill caused them to go eat at the same restaurant, which doesn't make sense either chronologically or in terms of common sense. However, I might be overlooking important intervening causes. For instance, were more people than usual in this particular city ill last night? Maybe there is a flu or other virus running through the general population, and people are getting sick all over the place. Absent that, maybe there was something about the restaurant other than the food that made those who ate there sick. Perhaps a gas leak or chemicals stored in the basement caused the patrons to fall ill.


Even tougher, though, than learning to screen C&E arguments for flaws like those above, is learning to decipher the vague, intentionally-confusing language used by testmakers to complicate questions and answer choices. For instance, all of these phrases mean the same thing:


"My car will only run if it has gas."
"My car won't run unless it has gas."
"Without gas, my car won't run."
"Unless it has gas, my car will not run."
"When it doesn't have gas, my car can't run."
"I can't run my car unless I put gas in it."
"Absent gas, my car can not run."


Those are just a few examples; given time I could probably come up with 20 or so more. It's difficult enough to use and understand English when the people with whom you're communicating are trying to make themselves understood, but it's really tough when they're trying to trick you. That's what the LSAT and tests like it do.


One trick that I use often to help myself figure out complicated logical statements is to ask myself, "Which thing will cause the other thing NOT to happen?" For some reason, it often helps me get the correct phrase, which I can then translate into the contrapositive. For instance, in my examples above, I would think "Well, if my car doesn't have gas, it won't run. Therefore NO GAS then NO RUN, so if my car RUNs it must have GAS." This is especially helpful, because once you have a phrase that works, and that you intuitively understand, you can apply it to other phrases. We've all been in cars that have gas, but which for some reason or other will not run. Therefore, not all cars that have gas will run, but all cars that run must have gas.

The ability to understand C&E is among the most important of all the skills you need to master for the LSAT, GRE, GMAT, and even the SAT. I'll talk more about it in future blogs, and discuss more ways to make complicated phrases easier to understand.



▼▽▼▼【講師】Douglas先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Smoke and Makuuchi】2008.10.01(Wed)
･【It's Always Something】2008.10.22 (Wed)
・【Working the Corners】2008.11.12 (Wed)
・【Logic Games】2008.12.03 (Wed)
・【A Truth about Application Essays】2008.12.24 (Wed)
・【The Real Score】2009.01.21 (Wed)
・【Think Honestly】2009.02.11 (Wed)
・【Fall Seven, Stand Eight】2009.03.04 (Wed)

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One very big difference between westerners and the Japanese is our response to authority. The Japanese tend to follow it and westerners tend to distrust it and try to find problems with it and rebel against it. This is probably not new information for anyone, but I think there's something to be learned on both sides. As westerners, we should look at Japanese and see that following authority has its advantages. We should identify the kinds of situations when it is advantageous to follow authority and change our attitude and behavior in said situations. Likewise, Japanese people should look at westerners and see that questioning authority has its advantages. And they should also identify the kinds of situations when it is advantageous to question authority and change their attitude and behavior accordingly. I think it's pretty easy to see that there are times when it is in fact bad to question authority and also times when it's bad to follow authority. I think it's probably pretty bad to question the authority of my doctor, which many westerners actually do. I also think it's pretty bad to question the authority of the law. But I think it's pretty good to question the authority of my boss when he's telling me I have to work overtime and not get compensated for it. For example.


Education is one of the many situations in which westerners challenge authority and one in which I believe it's actually good to do so. If I ever heard something from a teacher that I thought was wrong, I'd either ask them about it (politely) or try to prove them wrong through my own research. If they were in fact right all along, which was mostly the case, I only gained more familiarity with the topic through my questioning and thus, in all likelihood, a greater understanding of it. Or, having taken mostly math classes, if my teacher wrote a 2 instead of a 5 somewhere in the middle of a long problem, I actually saved them a lot of time by pointing it out.


But what I really want to get at is the strategies which teachers teach you to use in taking tests. Any one strategy is not perfect. You have to choose what works best for you. So if you learn some strategy and it's not giving good results, think about why. Think if you could do something else that would work better. Or ask your teacher if they have any other recommendations. A very simple example of this is those stupid bubble plots that you're taught to use when writing an essay. Westerners learn that in high school. When I learned it I thought it took more time than it was worth and never used it. My papers came out fine.


Education is one area where you can and should think for yourself. So take the strategies your teachers give you with a grain of salt. The strategies they teach are what works for them or has worked for others they have known. But everybody's different. Try the strategy and if it works then keep using it. But if it doesn't, then try to find something better. If you can't find anything better then the problem is probably not the strategy but your lack of understanding of the subject, which is a different story. But try things out. Find what works for you. And don't be afraid to not follow all the things your teacher recommends!


▼▽▼▼【講師】Amberly先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Something Interesting】2008.10.22 (Wed)
・【an interesting book】2008.11.28 (Fri)
・【To study methods】2009.01.14 (Wed)
・【The 90%】2009.02.04 (Wed)
・【Why I can remember why caffeine is good for you.】2009.02.25 (Wed)

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Recently one of our students took the TOEFL test, and she told me that she couldn't believe what a high score she'd received. I could certainly believe it, though, because she had made obvious progress since she started with us. Not only do our students improve their test scores, but their English levels also improve noticeably. Another student who finished the same course last week noted, "I had a hard time understanding you at first, but now it's easy!" When he first joined us, his English level seemed pretty low to me, too, but no longer.

It's always nice to hear reports like these, but we get used to it around here. The Kaplan method works if the student does his part!


▼▽▼▼【講師】Kurt先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【How much will I improve?】2008.10.08 (Wed)
・【The Importance of Writing】2008.10.29 (Wed)
・【Bias in the News】2008.11.19 (Wed)
・【TOEFL iBT】2009.01.07 (Wed)
・【improving your English Level】2009.01.28 (Wed)
・【Grammar】2009.02.18 (Wed)

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