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The writer of this excellent essay is Kelly Ritter. I like this essay very much.
It is a very simple essay yet her findings towards memory techniques are quite exuberant. Her insight towards memory technique is very good and helpful to the readers and I believe she applies this in her study. I got this essay from here and basically I don’t know her. Anyway, I managed to contact her and she gives me permission to put her essay in this website. I would like to express my gratitude and thanks to Kelly Ritter for giving me permission to publish her essay in my website. All the credits solely are given to Kelly Ritter.

 Memorizing and Retention  

As a new student, the difficulty I was faced with was how to retain the information I was learning. There are twelve principles to committing something to memory: selective, association, visualization, elaboration, concentration, recitation, intention, big and little picture, feedback, organization, time on task and ongoing review.

I had to be selective about what information was
going to be important to the class I was attending. In my writing class, for instance, I had to concentrate on my use of comas. Too often, I was putting comas in my assignments where they were not needed. You have to be selective on what information a professor or instructor wants the class to remember. Trying to retain everything is nearly impossible.

Association is the linking of new information to familiar information you already know.  Connecting two or more items or chunks of information can be done by asking yourself what you already know about the information you are learning. Study questions that you create for yourself with the correct information from your notes or textbook. Link printed material with pictures or diagrams and put the individual information into a category, or schema that you develop.

Many learners are visual thinkers. They would rather see the information in a picture or graphic so they can better understand the material. Visualization is picturing yourself achieving a goal, seeing the important objects you need to know or creating a model or picture using color, size and shape to strengthen your ability to memorize the material.

The idea of elaboration is also called elaborative rehearsal; this is the process of thinking or working with the information in other ways to increase your comprehension. Often, writing about the information I need to retain, helps me learn more about the subject. Weaving the big ideas or concepts together with their related details creates a map of how the information fits together within the context of the subject matter.

Concentration is often difficult to do with life’s numerous distractions. I have to choose an environment that is conducive to concentrating when I am reading or working on an assignment. Being an active learner is helpful in concentrating on your work, I like to draw or write about what I am learning. Taking notes on the material you are reading or listening to in class helps you to be engaged in your schoolwork.

Recitation is saying out loud the information you are working on, group discussions, talking to a friend or giving a presentation to the class, are ways to use recitation. Your brain will be 80% more likely to retain the information if you talk about it within the first 15 minutes of hearing it, putting it into your long term memory.

Learning a subject with a goal in mind is what is called intention. Creating a list of priorities and organizing the items on the list either by their difficulty, order of importance or in some other logical way helps you to create a plan of action.

Identifying the main ideas or concepts, as well as, the important details such as: facts, vocabulary, functions or steps in a process, is what is called the big and little pictures. After you read a textbook or hear a lecture, convert the material into a basic picture. What is the main idea and what supports the subject with the smaller details?

Checking the accuracy of information you have tried to remember is called feedback. Feedback is built into most study skills strategies, the four ways to give yourself feedback is by: reciting the information, looking away after you have reviewed your notes to see if you are retaining the material, writing summaries of the information and reworking the homework assignment or textbook information into some other format.

Organization is done by putting the material into meaningful chunks to create association in a logical structure. Making lists, notes, graphics or charts, or tables will help you to organize the material in a chronological or logical order so you can review the subject matter and remember it later.

 There is what is called at 2:1 ratio for studying class material. For each hour that is spent in class, a student should spend at least two hours studying the subject out of the classroom. The amount of time on task helps you practice or become familiar with the information you are trying to recall.

Lastly, ongoing review of material will help you imprint the knowledge in you mind and help build depth of the subject you are studying. To access the information stored in your memory, you will need to see or hear the material a number of times. It is said that you will need to see something at least seven times before you have committed it to memory.

These twelve memory strategies have helped me create a framework while going back to school. I hope you will utilize this information so that you might be successful in understanding and passing the classes you are taking.

 Twelve Principles of Memory: 

·        Selective·        Association·        Visualization·        Elaboration·        Concentration·        Recitation·        Intention·        Big and little picture·        Feedback ·        Organization·        Time on task·        Ongoing review

>I haven’t seen Asrar for about two days; anyway, my discussion with him and Yar Muhammad from Afghanistan really captures my interest of unity between Muslims in Kansas. Yar complaining to me of those Saudis who even did not want to admit that they are from Arab(which means they are Muslim) and refuse to answer salam. They prefer to use “Hi” instead of “Assalamualaikum”. When being asked by Yar, why did they do that, the easiest answer from them is “we are at North America and we must integrate ourselves to their culture”. Masya ALLAH. May ALLAH give them guidance. Ameen

 I believe unity among Muslims only can be developed if Muslim really cares of their religion i.e deen. It is from there it will develop the love towards their Muslim brethren, regardless of where he/she comes from, color of their skins and language that being used. As followers of Abrahamic faith, what matter most is taqwa.

They managed to convince me that the origin of someone does not determine he or she will be a good muslim, >eventhough he/she comes from Saudi Arabia or Madinah Al Munawarah. For this long, I respect those Arab because they have and understand the language of Koran and how beautiful it is being able to understand the whole Quran while others reciting of Koran during solah. Anyway, I have seen those guys who are from there and yet, they are snobbish and interact less with us, the Ajam, and sometimes I wonder is it because of our language limitation (we are unable to communicate in Arabic or their in capabilities to interact in English is low) or is it because of the overwhelming feeling of nationalism  superiority within them because they are Arab?

I don’t want to think about them anymore, of course they will be pro and cons of everything, but to me this is something new, and I put it inside my blog as my new perception towards Arab and I hate the Arab nationalism.

Alhamdulillah, lastly I managed to finish the book titled “Adhan Over Anatolia”. I finish it 2 days ago, and these are some important notes that I manage to take them from the book.

Mustafa Kamal Attarturk and Khilafah:

Marian Khazi wrote: “ It may be true that Kemal Attarturk helped save Turkey from being dismembered and gobbled up physically by Europe but at the same time –evidently without even grasping the contradiction, which manifest itself so glaringly in Turkish life today –HE GAVE OVER his country, body and soul to forcibly conquest by the values and indeologies of the very Europeans whose mastery of his homeland he had resisted so strongly. Indeed he wouldn’t be ruled by them nor allow his people to be ruled by them, but instead he himself imposed the rule of their value system on his people. HE WAS in short, the most mentally DEFEATED, culturally subordinated of allthe leaders of the Muslim world, choosing to turn himself and his people into an imitation of those whose ways were utterly alien to the accepted values of the society, although he had lately risked his life many times over in order to avoid their domination of his homeland.”(pg 136)

She explained more the statement above of what a muslim should do in particular regarding to maintain and strengthen our dignity, “ Atarturk and his like minded societies(my understanding-regardless of where you are either in Malaysia, America, Singapore, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and etc)indeed betrayed and deceived their people for indeed , it was Islam which had uplifted them and infused life into society”(pg.136).

In fact, the truth about Kamal Attarturk is mentioned here.

So, to my readers, this is a fact, we are nothing without Islam and how beautiful are the words of  Rab’I Ibn A’mir when he said this in front of Rustum:

“Allah (the Almighty) has sent us so that we may liberate fellow human beings from subservience to other fellow human beings and bring them to obedience to the One True God. We are here to take them from the narrowness of the world to it’s spaciousness. Our aim is to free them of the persecution perpetrated against them by other religions. We want to bless them with the justice and equity of Islam”

I guess, those are my ranting for today. I am quite tired, see you soon.

Essential Time Management Skills: 

Before I teach you further on the essential elements of time management skills, let me introduce you to a very basic concept of study skills. It is very important for you to know your prime time as you work the best during your prime time.

Prime time for everybody is not the same; some works best at night, for those who prefer to wake up early, their prime time could be as early as 8-10 am. In my case, I work best from 10am to 4pm. In order to succeed you need to know your prime time.

For those who don’t know when is their prime time, I advise you to take notice of your daily timetable, and please do some jotting down of your activity. Some said it is like knowing when you get your best work done and acting on that seriously. This will lead to a realization of the meaning of it which is when you are likely to be most active, effective and enthusiastic.

 Back to the prior discussion of me knowing and realizing my prime time, so I will be extra careful not to waste my time doing any unimportant and crucial activities. Rather I will put all my energy and focus as well as efforts to do works on my PRIORITY LIST a.k.a STUDY PLAN. 

Study Plan: 

What study plan will make the best out of you? My answer will reflect back on my prime time which is, your study plan will be best if you are comfortable with it. In my opinion, if you don’t like your study plan and you can’t follow it, it is useless. So it is very important that you like your study plan and first, it should suits you well. You might ask me, my prime time will be during my working hours, so how am I going to accommodate it so that it will be the best? In this case, my answer is, you have to develop your new prime time or rearrange it, the best maybe you can start/studying during the time which is most closest to your prime time.

Inside your STUDY PLAN, you need to have few elements. These elements are crucial because good time management basically is based on these elements. They are:

a)      Weekly Planner:

It will assist you to get the overall pictures of your activity for the whole week. This is when your planning will be done for the next two or three days ahead. So please get and have your weekly planner as soon as possible.

b)      Priority LIST

This will assist you to sort out the level of urgency for everything that is written on your Weekly Planner. You can highlight U-Urgent or Need to be Done ASAP. When I said it is ASAP, it does not mean that you have to do it clumsily. It means you need to give your best shot at it as well (or in another words, you must do it during your primetime). M-Mediocre or it means you will do it if you feel it is realistic and rational to do it. L-Low means if there is enough room to accommodate the activity, if not, you can do it some other time.

c)      Daily Schedule

This should be at b) but I put it here so that you will realize how important Priority List to your Study Plan. The function of daily schedule will be the same as Weekly Planner plus I don’t want you to miss out few activities that you might not notice of them. Again, fit whatever in your Daily Schedule with Priority Lists.

Ok guys, that’s all for now. See ya soon.

EMOTION:

What does it like to be alone in this world? You are surrounded every day and every minutes by people, who says they love you, know you or claim that they love you very much, but yet when it comes to particular things of your emotional needs i.e you need to voice out your dissatisfaction, the asshole question was coming out from their mouths saying, what’s wrong with you? As if and plainly appear to be in control of everything, seems to be far more matured than you.

How are you going to face this “sweet moment”?

It is disheartening and what a heartbreaker because your expectation fells into a deep abyss. Will I be able to see the sunshine again?

Or whenever I see the sun shines again, it is not my eyes see it, but it is fully controlled by a faculty of my background schemata that uses a lot of unwanted things. It is kind of scary isn’t it?

 RETALIATION RETALIATION RETALIATION Offensive !! or again in the defensive moods?