4. For the prosperous life of your children I.

4. For the prosperous life of your children I.

Dear Parents

1. Try to solve family problems and quarrels between your children in a peaceful way. Do not show that you are tensed up.

2. When visitors come to your house during examination time, do not talk aloud with them for you may distract your child.

3. Do not take the children out of station. May contract cold, cough etc.

4. Due to stress on studying or about studying, they may lose their energy. Keep good amount of fresh fruit juices at home.

5 Keep (OTC) over the counter medicines for headache, cold fever, wounds ready at home.

6. If they make a mistake, correct them in a softer way.

7. Keep studying area clean. Do not dump your things there.

8. Pay whatever dues to be paid in schools and other places your children use in advance to prevent them from being tensed up.

9. You can help them to wake up in the morning (peacefully, happily!) and give them tea or coffee or other drinks to rejuvenate them.

10 Arrange for tuitions if they cannot comprehend certain subjects.

Continued

Learn through others experience.......you stay young!

3. Winning or Finishing

3.  Winning or Finishing

Winning the race and finishing the race are two different things. To win you have to finish within a certain time. You also have to have pacemakers. Pacemakers are available when you get into group tuition classes!

Suppose 40 questions are to be done in sixty minutes, each question shall be done in 1.5 minutes. But this is not a general rule. Because, if you are asked, ‘What is the unit of electric current?’, to mark that the answer is Ampere, it should take about 10 seconds only. This time would be used for solving a mathematical problem which may take about 2 mins. An analytical or an application question may also take some time. Thus the time lost in answering difficult questions is made up in time gained in answering simple basic factual questions. Therefore if the questions are of right mixture then the average time of 1.5 mins for each question is o.k. At one time check if you have finished 10 questions in 15 mins. Questions are of basic simple facts 30% (no government wants its citizens to fail, for they may become social problems later!), applications 30%, problems 30% and higher abilities 10%.

When you buy a book…

1. Look for the best well known experienced authors/publishers

2. Year of Publication

3. Number of editions so far

4. Number of reprints

5. Read the preface and contents and check if it fits your requirements.

6. Look for as much flow charts and diagrams as possible, memory retention will be

    better with visuals than words

7. Answers for questions given should be at the end of the book, not below the questions.

Learn through others experience.......you stay young!

1.Multiple choice questions - the making and practising

1.   How are objective questions of MCQ type made?

      A fill in the blank question is given to a class. This question is later converted to a multiple choice question (MCQ). The choices are chosen from one 'correct' answer or 'most probable' answer and the 'most frequent' wrong answers given by the students as other choices. Since the most frequent wrong answers are chosen as the choice, the students who finish the MCQ are often very happy because what they look for is in there! Do not be deceived because the answer you looked for is in there. Be careful. Do not fall into the trap. Read all the answers before ticking the correct answer of your choice. The second or third choice may be a better answer. That’s why they use the words 'most probable' answer in the question paper.

2.   How to practice objective – MCQ questions at home?

Answer the questions and ask someone at home to correct them. Tell them to just only mark the correct answers and leave out the wrong ones. Tell them not to write the correct answers. Try the wrong ones again and ask someone to mark them as before. The third time you try, refer to the text book and find out the answers. Then you check with the given answers.

There is an analogy to this. You may see cricket or football matches any number of times in TV. That doesn’t mean that you can play the game well. You have to get into the field and play the game and feel the game. Similarly to become talented in MCQ game you have to practise it as stated above. Do not learn by looking at the answers. If you learn by looking at answers or by being prompted by someone or by looking at the book, you become dependent on something and become helpless in the exam hall. You have to train your mind/brain to tackle problems in its own way. That’s why I suggest the above method of answering MCQ at home.

Be alert when you see the following words in the MCQ 

'frequently'

'always'

'All of the above'

'True'

'False'

'not true'

For Double negatives, create the equivalent positive statement and consider

Look for words or alternatives in questions that eliminate that option.

Learn through others experience.......you stay young!