If you are like most high school and college students you start every course a little behind or a lot behind. Then as the semester goes along, you fall farther behind. Each new assignment is more difficult and takes more time. It’s discouraging and difficult to keep striving. Even when you study hard, your grades may not improve.
Here’s what’s going on. To enroll in Spanish 2, you have to pass Spanish 1 with a C or better. Let’s say you know 500 of the 1000 Spanish words you were supposed to learn in Spanish 1. At the beginning of Spanish 2, the teacher does a brief review of the grammar and vocabulary from Spanish 1. That helps, but there’s a lot from Spanish 1 that you don’t know. So every time you have to read a story, answer questions, or write in Spanish, you not only have to learn the new vocabulary and grammar, you also have to look up the words and grammar you don’t remember from Spanish 1. That slows you down and you never seem to have the time and motivation to nail your lessons in Spanish 2. So every week, you fall a little further behind.
If you are in this situation, whether with Spanish, math, science, English or history, you are not alone. You probably are thinking:
• I’m no good in this subject.
• I don’t like the subject.
• The teacher doesn’t present the course so that I can get it.
• As hard as I try, I just can’t seem to catch up and stay up with the class.
It may not seem there are any good options. You may think your choices are:
• Get a poor grade and live with it
• Get a poor grade and retake the course in summer school
• Work longer and harder
There is a better way. Change your methods so you can learn twice as fast. Use you faster learning rate to catch up and keep up at the same time. What are the best methods? They are actually pretty simple:
• Practice doing what you are trying to learn to do.
• Practice until you are 100% Done learning each lesson.
• Go back and fill in any holes in what you should already know.
Doing these things takes work, but it pays off. As you learn at the A level, school gets easier and more fun.