Articles

Learning To Learn For The Excellence In Competitive Exams

  • Posted By
    10Pointer
  • Published
    02 September at 06:00 PM

In the first article of this series, we had discussed that you should be aware about why you are choosing a particular exam and your choice of career, if your career choice, your priorities in life and the exam or nature of the job you are aiming align with each other or not. Hoping that you must have taken the exercise, reflected on your choices and finalised the exam you want to appear for. Now, let’s take a step ahead in this competitive journey – learning to learn for achieving your goal.

There are many types of learning – teacher driven, student centred, self-learning etc. For competitive exams, you need to wisely choose how you want to prepare. Mostly it will be your own will which will drive your studies. Attending classes/ taking video lectures will be good to understand basics concepts but you can’t expect to find everything with teacher/ mentor’s support. Hence, you will be a self-learner. Self-learning is when you take complete ownership of your learning, find guidance, help, resources, plan and evaluate your learning. 

While self-learning for cracking exams, it is important to regulate your learning. Regulation doesn’t mean having a strict routine, going to classes every day, attending all lectures, referring hundreds of books or studying 18 hours a day. Self-regulation is about knowing what needs to be done for the exam and acting upon it. Self-regulated learning involves activities like knowing your strengths and weaknesses, plan your studies, plan how and where you want to study, monitoring and evaluating your preparations yourself. Here are some practices which you may opt for your preparations: 

Start with Solving a Previous Year Question Paper 

First thing you should do to start your preparation is to solve a previous year question paper and analyse it after solving. It gives you overall understanding of areas of your strengths and weaknesses. Topics which need more preparation and topics you can manage with a little attention. Also, you come to know how much you can score without preparation which may be a major confidence booster.

Look at Distribution of Marks and Cut-offs

After understanding your problem areas and strengths, next thing you should do is to go through the complete syllabus and topic-wise distribution of marks. After that, check cut-offs for last 5 years and see the trend. This gives you clear picture on how much you need to score and where you can score maximum. Identify areas having higher weightage and needs maximum preparation – these should be first ones on your study schedule. 



Plan your Studies

Now it’s time to plan your study routine. During initial days, when you have time in hand, it is advisable to improve on your weaknesses. Later, when the exam is approaching, you can play on your strengths. Identify a quiet place to study where you can focus. Allot a particular time of the day for your studies. Try not to change the time-slot to make a habit of sitting for studies every day. Identify people with whom you can study and go to people while in confusion or need of guidance. 

Identify Methods for Studying

Analyse your past experiences to identify your preferred method of studying. Some people might want to study from different books, get conceptual clarity first and then go for tests. However, competitive exams are mainly objective hence, not every time it is required to read complete books to gain theoretical knowledge. Depending on the nature of exam, best suitable methods can be identified. Some students might refer to books, some might like video lectures, some might join coaching, others might say that they will take question papers as reference and work backward. 

Note: Your methods are your preferences but make sure you are constantly in touch with question papers. Everyday or every alternate day, solve a question paper. It may be based on topics you covered or previous year question papers or topic wise questions from previous year papers etc. Keep time check for solving question papers. 

Performance Monitoring and Self-evaluation

The last and most important step in self-regulated learning is to monitor your progress time to time and evaluate what you have studied. Spend two hours every week on a weekend to reflect on your preparations. For reflecting and assessing your performance, you might want to use following guidelines. 

  1. Make a note of topics or subjects you have covered in the week.
  2. Check if you can remember what you have studied.
  3. Go through your answers from the questions/ papers you solved in the week.
  4. Understand what where you went wrong – in conceptual understanding or silly mistakes or calculation mistakes or understanding language of the question or took more time to solve than allocated time etc. Note where and how you have gone wrong so that you don’t repeat the same mistake. 
  5. Make short notes on your problem areas and strengths.
  6. Create a plan for next week taking into consideration performance of the week. 

If you take complete ownership of your studies the way it is explained here, you will become a self-regulated learner who is aware about his/her preparations completely. Hence, there will be no surprises at the day of your exam and you won’t feel nervous as the day approaches.

In the upcoming articles, we will come up with more reflective strategies to enhance your preparations and keep you motivated throughout your preparations. 

Verifying, please be patient.