Link and Acronym Memory Strategies By Andrew Zelin

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This week in CLS 105 I experimented with two strategies, LINK, and Acronym sentences in my accounting 252 course. I chose to use these two memory strategies because I am a visual and aural learner. Being a visual and aural learner I thought that using creative and visual methods to help me memorize information could prove useful.

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The first strategy I experimented with was LINK. The first thing I did to implement this strategy was I selected a concept I needed to memorize. The concept I selected was Target-Profit-Analysis. Target Profit Analysis is computing the number of units that must be sold using either the equation method or formula method. The second step I took was I created an absurd visual representation that can help me remember this. I thought of a man shooting arrows at a target with equations and formula's written all over the target. The last step I took was I copied this down and drew a picture. Now whenever I am working with target-profit-analysis this image always pops up in my mind.

The second strategy I experimented with was an Acronym Sentence. To implement this strategy the first step I took was I selected a group of terms I needed to remember. In this case I selected the terms that make up The Activity Base. These terms are unit's produced, machine hours, length driven, and labor hours. As an accounting student I only need to remember the first word the rest is self explanatory. After I was finished picking out group of terms I underlined the first word in every term and arranged them to create a word. The word I created was MULL. From now on when I am working with activity base I always think MULL and I immediately remember Machine hours, units produced, length driven, and labor hours.

E For my final evaluation I conclude that for my aural, visual learning style both the link and acronym methods worked very well. The imagery and conception of these strategies worked very well for my learning style. Both did a excellent job cementing the concepts I was trying to remember in my mind. I definitely plan on using link and acronym sentences in the future.

Memory-Sam Elman

Memorizing used to be something I had trouble with and sometimes still do.

For this week in CLS 105 we learned about different MEMORY TECHNIQUES that could help us for some of our other courses. The strategy that i used was LINK. I used this for two of my courses. HEA335 and COU101.

Link is a strategy that is able to help you with memorizing things by making cool nicknames or pictures that are similar to the information you are learning. For me being an Aural learner this was very helpful.

I thought that LINK would be helpful for my HEA335 course because I have my final coming up and have a lot of memorizing that I need to do. One thing that i have to remember is all these different kind of definitions. Usually I have a lot of trouble memorizing things like this. One of the words that I need to memorize is Barriers Action. Which to me sounds like a difficult thing to memorize. Something that i thought would help me remember this was by thinking of an Action movie such as James Bond. Another word that i have to memorize is Citizen Responder. I thought that i went a little creative with this one. I said Responding to someone on the phone.

The reason that I picked LINK for my COU101 course was because it is a class that i also have to memorize a lot of different things. One of the things that i have to memorize is Mnemonic Devices. Something that i thought that would help me memorize this was by thinking of different kind of devices such as a phone and ipod. Now right away i will be able to know what a Mnemonic Device is.

Being an Aural learner this is a very useful strategy because it able to keep you active with trying to remember things that you normally might have trouble with.

Looking back on LINK i had a lot of fun with it. As it was able to help me with my courses it also made me think of cool different things. For now on i am always going to try to use this strategy because it really helps you memorize the information that you need to.

1 Plus 3 Note by Jin

As I'm not a English native speaker, it's really difficult to understand what other people are saying, or I cannot take a good-quality note although I do understand. This is because the speed of translating and shortening the contents should be much slower than Americans. Due to these difficulties, I have suffered to take a note. Even though I took a good one, I could be so confused because the note was not nicely organized.

However, I was able to experience several types of different note-taking skills. I had used Plug-in note taking skill last time, but I think that 1 Plus 3 Note-Taking method is also one of the effective skills. For using this skill, I took a note during the class, and when I came back home, I did split one page into three parts. On one part, I put the content that I took during the class, and some explanations and definitions on another part. On the third part, I put some questions to review.

I used 1 Plus 3 Note-Taking Method during ECN 207 because I thought that this course requires students to have good organized structure of studying and memorize or understand a number of new professional words. As this certain note-taking skill has total three big steps of process; identifying the important materials, restructuring them, and finally anticipating test questions, it would help me to do well on ECN 207, and it really did. It helped me to identify the new terms that are really uncommon for me, transfer to easy work and understand better, and have review time. It was very useful for this course.

When I thought about the other courses that might require to have this kind of note-taking skills, I was able to notice that my Chinese class could be well suited with 1 Plus 3 Note-Taking Method. There are some reasons for that I chose this course. Learning new language, as people would know, makes basic-learner to suffer from memorizing the

words. This reason could be similar to the one that I chose ECN 207 class. In order to use this method, what I did at the first was taking a note in the class, I was trying to write down all the new words that professor wrote on the board. Then, when I came back home, I divided three parts of one page on the other page. On one part, I put these words orderly, and I was trying to find all the definitions or the meanings from text books and internet and put those on the another part. On the last part, I was trying to make some questions to self-checking.

Since I had experienced the unique and creative note-taking skill, 1 Plus 3 Note-Taking Method, I was able to organize and restructure what I had learned during the class. It also allowed me to understand well the class works. I would love this note-taking skill and will keep using it!

TART- Sam Elman

This week for CLS 105 I had to try a READING SKILL to help me in some of my other courses. The strategy that I used was TART. The Two courses that i used this for was WRT 105 and HEA335.

Tart is a strategy that is able to help you for lecture-dependent courses and is also able to help you create test questions and prepare for the exam. But it is mostly helpful for Visual and Kinesthetic learners. Since I am an Aural learner I was worried how I would do with this. But I actually found it to be easier than i expected.

The reason that I chose TART for my WRT105 class was because I had to do a lot of reading assignments and have a huge essay coming up. During class my professor introduced us the difference between a strong thesis and a weak thesis. I wrote down some key things to look for when i do the reading. So for the reading i highlighted and annotated important things that showed me the difference between the two.

The reason that i picked TART for HEA335 was because we have readings and power points that we do everyday and to be honest sometimes i am very confused by it. Also have a huge test coming up. So i really thought that TART could help me understand it better. So I kind of did the same exact thing that i did for WRT 105. First I HIGHLIGHTED all the definitions and wrote down some questions that could be on the test and similar questions to what we were doing in class. After I highlighted each definition I then began to copy it all onto a seperate piece of paper. Then i wrote down a few questions on an index card about one of the topics in the chapter that i really wasn't sure about and wanted to ask my professor about it.

Since i am an Aural learner it really helps me to annotate and highlight because it is able to make me get a better understanding of the reading. I have a lot of trouble with writing notes in class. So usually I try my best to write the information down but i mostly pay attention and then try to write down everything after and then begin to highlight the information.

Looking back on TART i found it to be very useful especially in my HEA335 class because i now have a great study guide with the definitions that i made and it will help me study for my exam. For people like me who usually have trouble with writing notes and then understanding the reading I recommend you to try this out because it will make you much more confident and really help you out like it did for me.

Reading skills (TART & Flash Card) by Jin

For this week, I as one of the students in CLS 105 course had tried to use some reading skills to develop my other course. What i used for my CFS 388 course was one was TART, and another was Flash Card. In fact, each reading skill has own advantages and right position, depending on in which class you are going to use the skills. There are some reasons that I chose the two different reading skills; TART and Flash Card.

First of all, TART. Before I used it, I looked up the meaning of the strategy. Basically, this word, TART, represents some different four words; Terms, Attend, Read, and Test. When I saw this explanation, I thought that it's just only what normal people usually do when they study, or do homework. However, as most people know about the importance of basic skills and the lowest solid foundation, I re-thought about it.

What I did for 'Terms' part on CFS 388 course at the first, I tried to find all the bold words, because those are well deeply explained by the writer, meaning those are significant. Next step, Attend! Absolutely I went to every course by figuring out the difference between the technical terminology in the textbook, and my professor. After attending the class, I read the chapters that professor went over during the course. I focused on understanding the words that I never heard or heard, but don't know. Last one that I did was testing myself. I created several questions for each chapter, and before the course test, I tried to answer as much as I could.

By having done this strategy, I could realize that TART as a reading skill has lead students to follow the most basic steps and allow them to study in detail. I was a kind of person who study briefly, and look up only bold cases, but after this work, I might be toward a systematic & scrupulous reading skill-user.

Flash Card reading skill was also used in CFS 388 course. Personally, I believe that it's very useful when people try to memorize professional words such as Vas deferens or Cremaster muscle. According to explanation from the textbook about Flash Card Reading, this strategy is most efficient for a text-dependent course. Although CFS 388 is basically based on the lecture, when we had a mid-term, my professor assigned us to study textbook because half of the questions would come from it.

First step I did for this strategy was skimming or reading

thorough whole chapters to find out where the necessary information is located. After that, I began to read section by section. It took pretty much long time to summarize the important sources. I wrote an explanation of certain word on one side, and the word on the other. When I put the word on the flash card, also put a page number to find it later more easily. For the last step, left thing is only taking myself with the flash cards that I put the words and meanings. However, I didn't make 5 questions on the back of each card although I had a test, because I wanted to focus on only the words.

As I went through these steps, it was not that difficult to study and memorize the hard-meaning words. Even though those are still difficult to fully understand, now I can feel that it's much easier, also comfortable.

Before I put a period on this post, I would like to say 'Thanks' to Dr. Blumin to enable me to experience these useful reading skills. Both TART and Flash Card reading are very efficient ways of reading.

Tart Reading Strategy By Andrew Zelin

This week in CLS 105 I experimented with the Tart strategy in both my SHR 247 and accounting 252 courses. I chose to use this strategy because I am a visual and aural learner. Being a visual and aural learner, I thought that I would be able to find success because of the reading and listening that the Tart strategy requires.

I tried Tart first in accounting 252. The first step I took was to look up and read the bold definitions and key terms for chapter 6 in the managerial accounting textbook prior to the lecture. Next I attended the lecture and took notes as I normally would in my notebook. When class was over I reread the lecture notes and read the entire chapter. Lastly, I with this built up knowledge from both the text book examination and the professors lecture, I created test questions that I thought my professor may ask on our next exam. Because this is an accounting class, the questions were naturally mathematical. I found this strategy especially effective here because it instilled a sense of familiarity with the mathematical concepts the professor covered during the class before she ever covered them. Thus, making it much easier to take notes, understand the professor, and read the notes and textbook.

The second class I experimented with Tart was SHR 247. My experience in SHR247 was somewhat different from my experience in accounting because we watched a documentary on Ping Golf for part of the class. First I opened the SHR 247 textbook and looked up the key ideas and definitions in chapter 5. I attended the lecture as I normally would and took notes in my laptop from both what the professor was saying and the documentary. If it wasn't for the textbook examination prior to the lecture, I don't think I would have been able to understand the points the CEO of Ping Golf was trying to make. Following class I reread my notes and read the entire chapter. I was very satisfied because I was able to draw parallels between the chapters key concepts and the documentary very easily. Finally, I made word answer based test questions using examples from the documentary, lecture notes, and textbook.

I found this strategy very helpful for both courses because I feel the strategy's core purpose is to familiarize and test students on information using textbook and lecture methods. Both of these methods are complementary to my learning style.

Plug-In Note Taking by Jin

It's true that so many note-taking skills exist in this World. All of these, I would like to introduce about Plug-In Notes today. In honest, I tried to use or experience a number of different types of note-taking skills, but I could not really find out my own fitted one. However, there was one seemed like my style; Plug-In Notes which was introduced on CLS 105 course.

When I listen to the introduction of this way at the first, I expected that this skill might be useful for some courses; ECN 203 and ENL 207 that I'm taking now.

The picture on the upper left side is an example of Plug-In note that I used for ENL 207 course. Before i went to the class, I just guessed about some questions which will be discussed during the class. That work brings out 5 questions. Of course, I was able to answer those questions by taking the class. I believe that it was really useful work for me, because it made me to pre-think about the subjects and to prepare for the class.

The second picture on the right side represents a Plug-In note for ECN 203. It also gave me some positive opinions about this note-taking skills. Since I had done same procedures as I did for ENL 207 , it also helped me to do well on my course.

Sam Elman-Note Taking Plug In

Note taking has always been something I had difficult with. Usually when you take notes in class they are for a purpose and most likely will be all the information on your next test.

Recently in CLS 105 we have been trying out different note taking strategies that will help us for exams coming up in any of our courses. For the Plug In notes you could either chose to do it during class or after class. In my COU101 course we do a lot of note taking and I tried out this technique for it.

For this course my professor sometimes hands out the notes. So this would be even easier for me to write out questions and answers that i think will be on the exam that is coming up.

During class I looked at the notes first and looked for keywords. As i found keywords i began to highlight them and looked for important information that i thought would be helpful. I also wrote some side information as she was going through the lesson.

After class i then looked at my notes and began to type up some questions that i thought she would use on our upcoming exam. This did not take me long because i pretty much highlighted everything that was important. I then began to answer each question.

I probally could have had questions already prepared to do during class but i thought this way would be easier for me and more helpful.

I also made a study guide with the keywords.

This was helpful for me because i was able to point out and find things that are important and make questions out of them. I was able to learn a lot. I also plan to meet with my professor and shower her some of the questions I made.

One Step at a Time By Andrew Zelin

This week I experimented with the One Step at a Time strategy in two of my courses. The courses I used this in were SHR 247 and Accounting 252. I chose to use this strategy because I find boxes very useful when it comes to CLS strategies and I think breaking down a problem could be a good way of finding the possible solutions.

Because I am a visual and aural learner I love using different types of organization diagrams such as boxes and charts. For this experiment, the purpose (actions) is to isolate a problem, list the consequences, possible to do's, and will do, each in seperate boxes respectively. The materials for this experiment is just a blank sheet of paper. In SHR 247 I have a test on wednesday and the problem i listed was that I'm going home, I said the consequences are I have less time to study due to traveling, and the family could be distracting. For possible to do's I said I have to bring all my studying materials home, I have to create a new fritter finder that incorporates a schedule for the weekend and manually chose study times, and lastly I said I had to not allow my family to distract me. For will do wrote "not allow cousins to visit during study hours". I had an entirely different situation in Accounting 252. I had a quiz on Thursday directly following a major test on Tuesday. So in this case, I had to create during the week consequences, possible to do's, and will do.

My final evaluation of the One Step at a Time strategy is very positive. I enjoyed using this strategy. It helped me realize what I had to do way before I did anything. I like how it helped me plan out my weekend and my study hours. Organization is a huge problem with me, and I strongly believed this strategy alleviated some of those issues.

Source Outline-Sam Elman

This week in CLS 105 one of our homework assignments was to make a source outline for an Exam that was coming up.

I used the source outline for my COU101 class. I thought it would help me out. I plan to use it for HEA335 as well. I have 3 exams combined in these two courses that are coming up soon. One that I just had and using the source outline was very helpful.

The steps that i used to make the source outline was I took the 5 major topics from chapter 8 in my textbook and organized it. I put all the information underneath each topic. This was able to keep me focused and organized as i said before. I find the source outline to be the most useful because if you have an assignment in your textbook you can make it very easy for yourself and make an outline for each topic and copy all the information that you think is important and place it underneath.

I found this to be more useful to me then the topic outline. I believed it was more useful because for the topic outline i just listed the 5 important topics. But it didn't really help me as much as the source outline did.

I recommend everybody to try the source outline. If you have trouble sometimes like i do with reading textbook assignments this will especially help you.

Rankin Priorities by Tony

While trying all the strategies recommended in class, i though Ranking Priorities helped the most. I sometimes have trouble when trying to find out what needs to be done first. This strategy shows what is important and what is not at a certain time and it catches your eyes. What's a priority was always a question in my head, but this time I actually wrote it down on a piece of paper so I could easily see what needs to be done.

I chose CLS project as the most important assignment and Earth Science Exam. Those two are in group A because they need to be done by Monday. There is something else in group B like Recitation quiz and Blogging for CLS which are less important than those in group A. Then in group C, I wrote down homeworks for ECN and CHI which are easy jobs.

This strategy really helps when you do not know what to get done first. This is kind of like a TODO list but in order of importance. Try it!!

1+3 Note Taking by Andrew Zelin

This week in CLS 105 I experimented with the 1+3 Note Taking Strategy. I chose to use this strategy because of all the note taking strategies, This one seemed to be the simplest, cleanest, and fit my style of studying the best. I chose to use it in my accounting 252 and economics 205 classes.

(Learner)In the 1+3 Note-Taking is a method of note taking I took notes in both of my accounting and economic classes as I normally would. (Action) After each class. I went to the next page (Materials) and created 3 sections with specific dimensions. In the left section I copied key ideas, in the big right section I went into more detail with key ideas and even made a graph in my economics class. Lastly, towards the bottom of the page I wrote down a few test questions I thought the professor may ask.

Based on my experience (Evaluation), I found this strategy very effective. Because the strategy forces you to go through and reorganize your notes immediatly following class, it automatically reteaches you some of the information you missed. I also like the way it help me clean up the notes and reorganize them neatly. They are much easier to read and understand this way. And finally the test questions made me think even deeper about the topics, I actually I had recheck the notes for the answer to my own question. I enjoyed this note taking strategy and plan on using it in the future.

One step at a time by Jin

During this week, i had used one of the problem-solving techniques; One step at a time. For me, i believe that this technique would help me to take care of my school works, and organize what i'm doing.

There might be some different ways to do it. However, what i just did was that i analyzed one work as specific as i could. As you see on this picture, you can notice that i numbered up to 6. It means that one small work that i have to do to finish one big completed work.

It was not that difficult to do it. People just think of the technique, one step at a time, as having something done step by step. Also, if you have a color pen, you are able to mark point things. However, don't worry that you have no color pens, because what i did was just underlying those important things, and made them capitalized.

By doing this method, i could be organized to do my work, and felt i was settled down. I think feeling those kind of things are very important. People sometimes made some mistakes to do their assignments or miss parts of them.

Now TIME TO TRY THIS! (One Step At a Time!)

Ranking Priorties Sam Elman

Last week In ClS 105 we had to do a homework assignment in the textbook for Ranking our Priorties for upcoming assignments. I found this to be very useful because I was able to make a list of upcoming assignments.

Usually I am not very organized and this was able to keep me very organized and now I have a list of things that need to get done. I put the list write above my desk so I could look at it.The two classes that I used was CLS 105 and COU101.

For ClS 105 I had a lot of assignments and projects coming up. So my first priority was to finish working on the faculty project. I had most of it done already but i just needed to finish writing my reflection. My second priority was to write my blog and explain everything. Which i am right now. My next priority was to get ahead start for journal#4. I was able to get that done and its not due till wednesday. So now I don't have to think about it. Then next I read and did the text book work. My final priority was to use the 20 minute testing prep for my COU101 exam on tuesday. It was very helpful and I made a study guide.

For Cou 101 I had a lot of assignments and projects coming up as well. My first priority was to study for my Exam on tuesday and figure out how i wanted to do this. I made a study guide and few index cards. The next priorty I needed to do was finish reading my book and take notes for it. The next priority i needed to do was work on my Hero Presentation. I had to make a power point and was able to start that. This is not due till october16th. So I got a lot of that out of the way. The last priority was to read chapter 8 in the textbook.

I will continue to make a list of my priorities because I found it to be very useful and it keeps you organized. I am very excited now to use this for the remainder of the semester.