You will be judged, for your entire life, on the basis of how well you write. If you write well, people will think you are smart. If you write poorly, they will think you are dumb. That is perhaps unfair, but it is the reality, and you might as well face it now.
Anyone can learn to write well, although for some people it does not come easily. Still, there are certain easy lessons that take no great effort to master.
1. Your vs. You’re
Many people make this error, and all it takes to avoid it is to take a second and think about what you’re trying to say.
“Y-o-u-r” is a possessive pronoun, as in “your car” or “your facebook.” “Y-o-u-’-r-e” is a contraction for “you are,” as in “you’re screwing up your writing by using your when you really mean you are.”
2. It’s vs. Its
This is another common mistake. It’s also easily avoided by thinking through what you’re trying to say.
“I-t-’-s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” “I-t-s” is a possessive pronoun, as in “this studying has lost its charm.” Here’s an easy rule of thumb—repeat your sentence out loud using “it is” instead. If that sounds goofy, “i-t-s” is likely the correct choice. Another way to keep track is to remember that contractions always have apostrophes, whereas some possessive words, like “yours” or “hers”, do not.
3. There vs. Their
This one seems to trip up everyone occasionally, often as a pure typo. Make sure to watch for it when you proofread.
“T-h-e-r-e” is used many ways, including as a reference to a place (“let’s go there”) or as a pronoun (“there is no hope”). “T-h-e-i-r” is a plural possessive pronoun, as in “their bags” or “their opinions.” Always do the “that’s ours!” test—are you talking about more than one person and something that they possess? If so, “t-h-e-i-r” will get you t-h-e-r-e.
4. Affect vs. Effect
As with any of the other common mistakes people make when writing, it’s taking that moment to get it right that makes the difference in catching this error.
“A-f-f-e-c-t” is a verb, as in “Your ability to communicate clearly will affect your income immensely.” “E-f-f-e-c-t” is a noun, as in “The effect of a parent’s low income on a child’s future is well documented.” By thinking in terms of “the effect,” you can usually sort out which is which, because you can’t stick a “the” in front of a verb.
5. The Dangling Participle
The dangling participle may be the most egregious of the most common writing mistakes. Not only will this error damage the flow of your writing, it can also make it impossible for someone to understand what you’re trying to say.
Check out these two examples :
After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges.
Umm… keep your decomposing brother away from me!
Flitting gaily from flower to flower, the football player watched the bee.
If you said that to the football player's face just the way it's phrased, you could end up a bloody lump of pulp lying on the astroturf, because he might conclude you think he "flits gaily," a thing most people in his profession don't do, at least in public.
The problem with both of the above is that the participial phrase that begins the sentence is not intended to modify what follows next in the sentence. However, readers mentally expect it to work that way, so your opening phrase should always modify what immediately follows. If it doesn’t, you’ve left the participle dangling, as well as your readers.
1) Cut Out the Noise
· Turn off email and IM alerts
· Listen to music that you enjoy, but that fades into the background
Getting into a state of concentration can take at least fifteen minutes. If you are getting distracted every five, you can’t possibly focus entirely on your work.
2) Structure Your Environment
The place you work can have an impact on your ability to focus. Try to locate yourself so you are facing potential distractions such as doors, phones or windows. This way you can take a glance to assess sounds that would otherwise break your focus.
3) Clarify Objectives
Know what your goal is clearly before you start. If you aren’t sure what the end result is, the confusion will make it impossible to focus. Unclear objectives often result in having to redo sections of work.
4) Divide Blobs
Big blobs of tasks that have no clear start or end point destroy focus. If you have a large project that needs work, clearly identify a path that you will use to get started working on it. If the sequence of actions isn’t obvious, it will be difficult to concentrate. Taking a few minutes to plan not only your end result, but the order you will complete any steps, can save hours in wasted thinking.
5) Know the Rules
Get clear on what the guidelines are for the task ahead. What level of quality do you need? What standards do you need to follow? What constraints are there? If the rules aren’t clear from the outset, you will slip out of concentration as you ponder them later.
6) Set a Deadline
Deadlines have both advantages and disadvantages when trying to force concentration. A deadline can make it easier to forget the non-essential and speed up your working time.
Time limits have disadvantages when they cause you to worry about the time you have left instead of the task itself. Using deadlines is recommended when:
Time is limited. If you only have a day to complete work that could easily take weeks, chunking it into specific deadlines will strip away everything that isn’t crucial.
It’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. If your task could easily expand to have new features or ideas, use a deadline to keep it under control.
To avoid procrastination. A tight deadline can save you if you are worried about procrastinating.
7) Break Down Roadblocks
Roadblocks occur whenever you hit a tricky problem in your work. This can happen when you run out of ideas or your focus wavers. Break down roadblocks by brainstorming or planning on a piece of paper. Writing out your thought processes can keep you focused even if you might become frustrated.
8) Isolate Yourself
Become a hermit and stay away from other people if you want to get work done. Unless your work is based on other people they will only break your focus. Create a private space and refuse to talk to anyone until your work is finished. Put a sign on your door to steer away drop-ins and put your phone somewhere that you can hear it, but can’t reach it.
9) Healthy Body, Sharper Mind
What you put into your body affects the way you concentrate. Nobody would expect peak performance if they showed up drunk to work. But if you allow yourself to get chronic sleep deprivation, overuse stimulants like caffeine or eat dense, fatty foods your concentration will suffer. Try to cut out one of your unhealthy habits for just thirty days to see if there is a difference in your energy levels.
10) Be Patient
Before beginning a project, sit and consider what you want to accomplish for fifteen or twenty minutes before you begin. During this time you may feel a strong urge to leave or do something else. But if you are patient, you may stumble upon an inspiration and enter a state of flow. Without a little patience, you can’t take advantage of flow when it rushes through you.
If you need strong concentration, periods of 90-120 minutes are recommended. Any less than that and you will waste too much time getting started before the flow can continue. More than this is possible to sustain focus, but you will probably benefit from a quick break.
The SQ3R method has been a proven way to sharpen study skills. SQ3R stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review. Take a moment now and write SQ3R down. It is a good slogan to commit to memory to carry out an effective study strategy.
Survey - get the best overall picture of what you're going to study BEFORE you study it an any detail. It's like looking at a road map before going on a trip. If you don't know the territory, studying a map is the best way to begin.
Question - ask questions for learning. The important things to learn are usually answers to questions. Questions should lead to emphasis on the what, why, how, when, who and where of study content. Ask yourself questions as you read or study. As you answer them, you will help to make sense of the material and remember it more easily because the process will make an impression on you. Those things that make impressions are more meaningful, and therefore more easily remembered. Don't be afraid to write your questions in the margins of textbooks, on lecture notes, or wherever it makes sense.
Read - Reading is NOT running your eyes over a textbook. When you read, read actively. Read to answer questions you have asked yourself or questions the instructor or author has asked. Always be alert to bold or italicized print. The authors intend that this material receive special emphasis. Also, when you read, be sure to read everything, including tables, graphs and illustrations. Often times tables, graphs and illustrations can convey an idea more powerfully than written text.
Recite - When you recite, you stop reading periodically to recall what you have read. Try to recall main headings, important ideas of concepts presented in bold or italicized type, and what graphs charts or illustrations indicate. Try to develop an overall concept of what you have read in your own words and thoughts. Try to connect things you have just read to things you already know. When you do this periodically, the chances are you will remember much more and be able to recall material for papers, essays and objective tests.
Review - A review is a survey of what you have covered. It is a review of what you are supposed to accomplish, not what you are going to do. Rereading is an important part of the review process. Reread with the idea that you are measuring what you have gained from the process. During review, it's a good time to go over notes you have taken to help clarify points you may have missed or don't understand. The best time to review is when you have just finished studying something. Don't wait until just before an examination to begin the review process. Before an examination, do a final review. If you manage your time, the final review can be thought of as a "fine-tuning" of your knowledge of the material. Thousands of high school and college students have followed the SQ3R steps to achieve higher grades with less stress.
Many of the questions you find on class tests will be based upon the information your teachers orally present in class. Therefore, you need to write class notes that completely and accurately include the most important information presented by your teachers. This is hard to do because your teachers can talk faster than you can write.
It would be nice if your teachers talked slower so that you could keep up with what they are saying as you write your notes. This is not realistic though. It is up to you to write more quickly. One way to do this is to write abbreviations for words. An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word used when writing to represent the complete word. You must be able to recognize the complete word from its abbreviation.
Many words have a commonly used abbreviation. Here are some examples of words that have a common abbreviation:
Word - Abbreviation
department - dept
introduction - intro
junior - jr
mathematics - math
weight - wt
package - pkg
negative - neg
magazine - mag
foot - ft
highway - hwy
You can form your own abbreviation for just about any word. Here are three ways you can do this.
1. Write just the beginning of a long word. Here are some examples of long words that have been abbreviated by writing just the beginning of the word:
Word - Abbreviation
different - diff
incorporate - inc
elementary - elem
molecular - molec
division - div
feminine - fem
population - pop
ambiguous - ambig
separate - sep
hippopotamus - hippo
2. Leave out the vowels when writing a word. Here are some examples of words that have been abbreviated by leaving out the vowels when writing the word:
Word - Abbreviation
century - cntry
mountain - mntn
reason - rsn
popular - pplr
quality - qlty
point - pnt
school - schl
clean - cln
teacher - tchr
progress - prgrss
3. For words that have just one syllable, write just the first and last letter of the word. Here are some examples of words that have been abbreviated by writing just the first and last letter of the word:
Word - Abbreviation
quart - qt
tick - tk
girl - gl
night - nt
link - lk
land - ld
round - rd
pack - bk
field - fd
heart - ht
Use common abbreviations of words whenever you recognize them. For other words, form abbreviations by using one of the three ways you just learned. Use the way that best fits the word for which you are writing an abbreviation. Do not try to abbreviate every word you write in your notes. Abbreviate those words that are important and for which you can quickly form an abbreviation. REMEMBER: YOU MUST BE ABLE TO RECOGNIZE THE COMPLETE WORD FROM ITS ABBREVIATION. Knowing the context in which you wrote the word will help you recognize the complete word from its abbreviation.
Using abbreviations for words will help you take good notes more quickly. Having good notes will help you do better on tests.
Most college students tend to share similar feelings of anxiety mixed with hope towards their first day of class. Everyone... even the worst of students... tends to enter "back to school" mode with a genuine sense of motivation. Many of us become ironically eager to purchase new textbooks, to see new teachers, and to adjust to a new schedule. We even convince ourselves that we are going to excel this semester... that we are going to live up to our "full potential" and score perfect marks even if we've never come close to doing so in the past! Hours later, we own at least a few of our books... we've looked over a syllabus or two..and we've begun to plot out an easy path to success: 40% for the mid-term, 50% for the final... 10% for an essay.. no problem... we can hack it...What could possibly go wrong?
What usually goes wrong is poor planning. Overly-creative, highly intelligent students begin each semester with genuine hope and personal promise but typically end the semester with a sense of underachievement and dissolution that had begun to set in even before mid-terms. Understand that when a professor hands out a syllabus, it is essentially serving as a contract between teacher and student-- as a mandate for what is to be expected and as a set of guidelines dictating how the student's work will be evaluated. But on paper it all looks so simple: This quiz will earn us this many points... that exam will add on that many points...Syllabi tend to give students an illusionary sense of ease because they enable us to visualize the entire semester on two or three sheets of photocopied paper. Syllabi do not, however, have the ability to show us the in-between days... the work that must be done at home... the long hours of laboring necessary to achieve a perfect score on each exam. And so we subconsciously note the date that first test will take place and wrongly allow ourselves to slip into a state of academic ease until just a day or two before test time...when we realize we don't know the material well enough to even get a "B."
How can a student avoid this? Don't look at the whole semester right when you first get your syllabus. Break each semester down into little, sub-goals first. You wouldn't leap up an entire flight of stairs...you'd walk them each one at a time. The same principle applies here: Don't even look at the first quiz or test yet.. it's probably still a long way off in the grand scheme of the academic term. Look on your syllabus at the FIRST lesson to be taught. Worry about how to excel at THAT lesson and ONLY at that lesson. Don't think of the mid-term or any other assessment yet to come. Concentrate only on what is to be expected of you in the very next class and focus all of your time and energy on achieving a mastery over that one subtopic. Do this for each class and when it finally does become time for an examination-- you'll hardly need to study... you'll only need to "review." The secret is truly in the psychology and it's far easier said than done... We challenge you to make it happen this school year!!!
Good Listening In Class
It is important for you to be a good listener in class. Much of what you will have to learn will be presented verbally by your teachers. Just hearing what your teachers say is not the same as listening to what they say. Listening is a cognitive act that requires you to pay attention and think about and mentally process what you hear.
Here are some things you should do to be a good listener in class.
Be Cognitively Ready to Listen. Come to class cognitively prepared to listen. Make sure you complete all assigned work and readings. Review your notes from previous class sessions. Think about what you know about the topic that will be covered in class that day.
Be Emotionally Ready to Listen. Come to class emotionally ready to listen. Your attitude is important. Make a conscious choice to find the topic useful and interesting. Be committed to learning all that you can.
Listen with a Purpose. Identify what you expect and hope to learn from the class session. Listen for these things as your teacher talks.
Listen with an Open Mind. Be receptive to what your teacher says. It is good to question what is said as long as you remain open to points of view other than your own.
Be Attentive. Focus on what your teacher is saying. Try not to daydream and let your mind wander to other things. It helps to sit in the front and center of the class, and to maintain eye contact with your teacher.
Be an Active Listener. You can think faster than your teacher can speak. Use this to your advantage by evaluating what is being said and trying to anticipate what will be said next. Take good written notes about what your teacher says. While you can think faster than your teacher can speak, you cannot write faster than your teacher can speak. Taking notes requires you to make decisions about what to write, and you have to be an active listener to do this.
Accept the Challenge. Don't give up and stop listening when you find the information being presented difficult to understand. Listen even more carefully at these times and work hard to understand what is being said. Don't be reluctant to ask questions.
Triumph Over the Environment. The classroom may too noisy, too hot, too cold, too bright, or too dark. Don't give in to these inconveniences. Stay focused on the big picture - LEARNING.
Transient Credit at Ohio Northern University
1. Check out onu.edu to see if the school you wish to take transient credit at will transfer here!
2. If so, apply to that school!
3. Once accepted and such, go to http://www.onu.edu/registrar/Transient_Student_Request.pdf, print this out, and do the following:
4. Fill the form out to show how credits will transfer from one school to the other
5. Then take it to your dean, or if you are a biology major, Terry Keiser first!
6. After the Dean has signed it, keep it for proof that you have permission that you can take the class.
7. Go home this summer and pass with a “C”, not a “C-“ Ladies, we want the credit to transfer!
8. Make sure your school sends an official transcript to ONU asap!!!!!!
9. Here is the registrar website with some tips:
http://www.onu.edu/registrar/transint.htm
The DETER Strategy for Taking Tests
To do well on a test, you must have good knowledge of the information that is being tested. But you must also have a strategy for taking the test that allows you to show what you know. The DETER strategy can help you do your best on any test. Each letter in DETER reminds you what to do.
D = Directions
* Read the test directions very carefully.
* Ask your teacher to explain anything about the test directions you do not understand.
* Only by following the directions can you achieve a good score on the test.
* If you do not follow the directions, you will not be able to demonstrate what you know.
E = Examine
* Examine the entire test to see how much you have to do.
* Only by knowing the entire task can you break it down into parts that become manageable for you.
T = Time
* Once you have examined the entire test, decide how much time you will spend on each item.
* If there are different points for items, plan to spend the most time on the items that count for the most points.
* Planning your time is especially important for essay tests where you must avoid spending so much time on one item that you have little time left for other test items.
E = Easiest
* The second E in DETER reminds you to answer the items you find easiest first.
* If you get stuck on a difficult item that comes up early in the test, you may not get to answer items that test things you know.
R = Review
* If you have planned your time correctly, you will have time to review your answers and make them as complete and accurate as possible.
* Also make sure to review the test directions to be certain you have answered all items required.