Essay Writing
By Kevin
Get Cracking!
ERPZ comes up with advice about writing now and then; earlier I looked into my writing styles following advice from The Economist. Kwang Guan did a piece on adjectives, and for advice on writing Personal Statement, it's also helpful to look out for stuff applicable for normal writing as well.
For my friends who're going back to university and trying to write good, generic essays, here's some key points about essay writing that's really important. Hopefully, it'll be useful especially to the boys who are entering university only after two years of National Service and feeling dumber.
1) Cut down on needless adjectives
2) Vary sentence lengths
3) Focus on the topic at hand, don't allow yourself to stray
Yup, writing is that simple.
Learning By Examples
By Kevin
Matching Context
Materials on ERPZ are often more focused on delivery of concepts; in particular, our current set of notes in the Economics Section deals largely with the theories and concepts covered in the syllabus and not so much on how to tackle your exams. Essays requires additional skills typically not covered in your lecture notes or textbooks. You could learn them from model essays but it would be better if you build up a style for yourself.
I'll be writing quite a few entries on essay-writing for Economics, which can also be applied to other social sciences at A Levels. I'll start off with an emphasis on examples. The school usually only teach you how to do half of your essay - the conceptual part. And if you don't explain and illustrate (diagrams for) your concepts particularly well, then you can't even get a pass. The other part of your essay has to do with application, which really means explaining in context and giving examples tailored to the context.
When dealing with a question that asks about market structures in Singapore; perhaps one requiring you to cite an example of a oligopoly. You could talk about the hypermarkets or supermarkets but you have to define them carefully and describe the correct players:
Examples of Players
Hypermarts (Giant, Fairprice Extra, Carrefour)
Supermarkets (Cold Storage, Fairprice, Sheng Siong)Why Oligopoly?
Hypermarts and Supermarts compete on prices and promotions, enjoy large economies of scale from marketing (bulk purchase, advertising, transport) and are usually anchor tenants at various shopping malls. Their mutual interdependence is reflected in attempts to market their house brands during recessions and also trying to differentiate by positioning themselves slightly different. Cold Storage goes for the 'sophisticated but affordable' image while Fairprice going for the 'simple and affordable' image; of course, Sheng Siong targets majority of the households looking for cheap deals.
Within the Singapore market, there are also other shops dealing in the same sort of 'industry' as the hypermarkets and supermarkets so one needs to be careful when discussing them. It is important that you look into the scale of the market you're hoping to discuss about. If you're thinking about just a large neighbourhood or area; then players may actually be engaged in monopolistic competition rather than oligopoly.
Examples of Players
ECONS Mini-market & Neighbourhood Provision ShopsWhy Monopolistic Competition?
Compete based on niche markets, providing specialized services (eg. Home delivery by provision shops) and benefit from relatively inelastic demand for necessities.
Do not confuse the different market structure; be clear about the scale of the market you're discussing and think about the players. For localized competition, the players could be specific outlets or stores; but then for a grander scale market, the players would be the group (like with chain-stores and lots of outlets). The explanation on why each of these examples would fit into your concept or theoretical framework is extremely important. Saying stuff like 'most markets in Singapore are Oligopoly, for example the Telecommunications industry' will not be a clear demonstration of your depth of thought. To give your essay more rigour you have to describe the competitive behaviours of the firms in the industry and give examples of actual marketing campaigns or events.
Search and Research
By Kevin
Looking Up the Web
It has been a long time since I wrote something about handling school work and such. I've been working on a couple of articles for some external parties and doing quite a lot of research and writing. The experience can be frustrating and tiring as I plow through loads of data, informative material and readings and then get lost in bits of thoughts here and there, never settling down to write. Such is research, you ask a few simple questions that you expect could be answered with a sentence or two but end up having loads of related answers and information that leads you to the fact that answers you're looking for is way more complex. Then you realise you have got to put together evidence for each of your claims and explanations. People were asking me how I manage all that stuff, I told them that you've got to work out a plan somehow.
So in this article, I'd be discussing my method of planning writing and research. It's by no means a definitive answer to managing your research or school projects but it might be an option you'd like to choose. I'm writing very generally about the kind of information research that leads to writing a paper/article; the sort that doesn't require you to don on a lab coat and hold up test-tubes.
Ultimate Tool
I recommend that before you start using Google, lay out some fundamental questions your paper/article would answer or specific information it will provide. It can be as general as an overview to a topic, or as specific as the number of petrol kiosk in a particular town. After listing them out, mark out the more specific questions and then hunt for the data first. These are usually the data sets you are going to use to introduce a particular claim or to support your theories. If there's no such data available then you can find other proxy indicators or try and switch the type of evidence. It is important that you start off checking for the availability of the data you need or whatever you're going to write would be groundless anyways.
After gathering the data you need, hunt for general articles on the topic that you are working on. These are the articles that refer to other more specific sources for information, or sites like Answers.com and Wikipedia. They serve as a directory for the topic and also to alert you or anything about the issue/topic that you might have overlooked. Often, these can also be blog entries that link up articles of related topic, much like the ones on ERPZ. When you're clear you have a general idea of the topic and know briefly the issues involved, start planning your writing, listing the arguments, the progression of arguments and the sequence you present information to make your case. Often, some information you will need to provide are things you are not necessarily aware of, perhaps the revenue of a particular firm, the market share in an industry, or the response of a CEO to a recent affair. These are the stuff you didn't initially set out to include but subsequently find rather significant.
Armed with the plan, start searching specifically for the information you need and formulate/sharpen your arguments according to these information. Unknowingly, you have actually slashed down the amount of content that you've read. By using general articles as signposts for your planning, you have drawn up the parameters of your research, something difficult when you've not read up anything or done any research. This explains the preliminary research into key and essential data you need as well as the general articles to get you started. The rest of your writing would build around these anchors that you've found in the beginning.
Then, follow through your plan as you write. This works for any volume of research, those that takes days to weeks and possibly months. For the ones where data sets have to be built from scratch either through ripping apart official statistics or carrying out your own surveys, the process would be placed between preliminary research and the ultimate planning. So happy searching and re-searching!
Importance of Focus
By Kevin
Getting focus right...
It's been a while since I last written something on studying; recently I observed how some students take a long time to study. Obviously, many of these people spend substantial amount of time plainly staring at pieces of information, occasionally reading through them with a tiny bit of appreciation and often not quite understanding what they are studying anyways. Computer gaming, and loads of interactive stuff online coupled with consistent television watching has reduced our attention span significantly and impaired our abilities to focus.
So to improve how you study as well as your concentration, you might like to try a few of the following:
Plan Revision & Stick to it
The first step to keeping focusing is having a good, realistic plan. Without a plan, when we decide that we're going to study, we'll often just lay out the books and stare at words, possibly read a little and then zone out. When we don't have a plan that dictates specifically what we are going to study and for how long, we'll often just drift about the different materials we have, not doing anything eventually. So come up with a proper plan, noting down what topics for what subject you'll be studying and for how long. Give yourself breaks between topics and when you're executing your plan, make sure you follow through and only skip the breaks if you believe you can continue. If you find yourself needing more or less time than planned, adjust your plans accordingly. Don't tire yourself out if you are fast with your studying; reward yourself with a longer play time or break when you finish early.
Find a Good Site
Some people just can't study at home. I'm not exactly such a person but many people around me are like that. The problem is when there's people familiar around you, you'd be tempted to eavesdrop their conversation, observe what they are doing - in other words, doing everything else except the task at hand. This happens less (at least at a lower intensity) when it comes to having strangers around you, unless you're really busybody. Studying outside might be a better option; Starbucks is pretty friendly with studying people, especially the more remote branches, The Coffee Bean is not.
Media White-out
For those who can't even withstand a bit of distraction will need to try a boycott of media and other attention-seeking stuff. Turn off your TV, radio, computer for a pre-designated time that follows from your study plan. Do not allow yourself to use the computer or those devices even when you're taking a break. Limit distractions to nuts, snacks, and drinks without digital or analog devices that produces visuals or audio. These people might realise they'll be better off staying at home and paying their family to get out of the house. Of course, once you're done with whatever you need to accomplish, you can get back to the stuff you like to do so that they act as a reward for your efforts.
A measure of self-awareness is necessary to help you with this; knowing how your mind gets distracted and what it is easily distracted by will help you attain focus through the elimination of these distractions. It sounds like a pretty simple concept but people usually don't take steps to help themselves concentrate. Instead, they wait around for their moods to come or the distractions to go away; if you want to make any progress at all, you'll have to start taking charge of how you waste your time.
Holding Ideas
By Kevin
All at the same time...
Some students struggle with social sciences and humanities like Economics, Geography and History because they think they can't hold two contradictory ideas at the same time and not take a side. Economist are somewhat famous for being able to do that and often criticized for being that way. As a matter of fact, humans are remarkably capable of doing that; we overrate our consistency of thought and the need for ideas that don't contradict. When we demand scientific proofs for certain claims yet openly express faith in certain religious claims, we're adopting contradictory frameworks of proof.
The reason why these subjects require that we hold contradictory ideas or for us to withhold judgment of these ideas is the lack of a proper quantitative approach to evaluating them. We might be able to come up with pros and cons but we are unable to assign a positive figure to denote the value and significance of the pro and a corresponding negative figure for a con and then evaluate them in an accounting matrix that will tell you which is better and how much better. Any attempts at that will be subjective and arbitrary anyways. As a result, it is important that students of these subjects hold on to them without judging but maintain the ability to dissect and analyse these ideas, zoom into certain features and investigate different aspects of it when necessary. More importantly, we'll have to master our language and internalize the nuances of the typical jargons used in the field to discuss these observations we make.
As humans, we will definitely have preferences for some explanation over others as well as some outcomes over others and this is a reason behind all the disputes that social scientist usually have with each other, including high profile ones by economists. And worst, unlike sciences where there are experiments everyone can agree on to check their ideas and theories to discover 'the truth', the search for truths in social sciences have often ended in vain because of the dynamic nature of the field. Scientists might not agree before a discovery is confirmed (Linus Pauling, a super-Nobel laureate with 3 Nobel prizes famously believed that DNA's structure should be a Triple Helix) but once it is confirmed, we find little delusional souls continuing with their false beliefs unless they are ignorant of the confirmation. Economics had its share of control experiments that happened in the world, often by chance. Unfortunately, they can never be repeated perfectly and their results are never agreed upon by experts in the field.
This is not to say that the subjects offer little value to the world; in fact the dynamic nature of these fields mean that there is always questions to answer and things to explore readily. And that is why we need more people to be able to hold different ideas at the same time and have different opinions on the same issue under different sort of circumstances and be able to see the world this way.
To Read, or Not
By Kevin
Stacking Up...
It sometimes appear to me amazing how highly people think of textbooks and course books. It makes me feel like writing one; perhaps one that teaches people when they should be using their textbooks. A textbook is basically course material that is used to teach you on a subject and when you have learnt about the stuff, there's little need to do a wholesale revisit, unless you're confident you've forgotten everything.
Why should you torture yourself by relearning everything you learnt and frustrating yourself with some minor definition deviations your memory have insisted upon and trying to 're-memorize' the 'right definition'? And more importantly, if you can learn the subject or whatever you're trying to learn without a textbook, why bother to get one?
A textbook has a couple of main uses, some of which concerns the students and others are mainly preoccupations of teachers and textbook writers. The functions students are usually concerned about are explanation and representations while those teachers are interested is includes those, and in addition, the standardization function. It's not difficult to see why this is so, students are hoping to learn something from the textbook; the explanations helps them understand and possibly provide them a means of explaining the concepts to themselves and others while the representation gives students a means of expressing the ideas and concept on paper (ie allowing them to take exams).
The teachers would love textbooks for those two facts since they relieve them somewhat of their teaching responsibilities but more importantly, it helps them standardize what their students learn and cope with queries that they might have. This is especially important for more contentious issues in the subject that has yet to be resolved by experts and the syllabus prescribes some default stand on the matter for time being.
As a student, one should see the textbook more as a guide than an authority and use it accordingly. Going through it once and understanding the concepts one seeks to master is basically all that the textbook should offer. A slow learner might revisit it a couple of times to grasp a concept or to master the explanations fully; and occasionally one could browse through it as a reference for the way they represent certain information (in the form of diagrams, charts and such) but it is difficult to gain anything more than that on repeated revisits to the textbook.
The ideal usage of a textbook is to synthesize the stuff from different sources together with it on your notes and chucking them aside when you're doing your revision - rely just on your personal notes (those that aggregate information from your readings of textbooks, your prescribed readings and lecture notes). Of course, this advice is more for students who revise consistently and are wholly familiar with the content which they're sitting an exam for.
Remembering Stuff
By Kevin
If only it's that simple...
It's been a long time since the previous entry; ERPZ have been very active with posts in the month of November generally but kind of stalled this moment. I've not written about studying techniques for a while now and I'm hoping to revisit it. Today's topic is somewhat related to memorizing stuff, something I almost never dwell on because I believe that when you understand something, you won't have to memorize it to remember it; the associations made in your brains when things you already know would help you anchor new concepts firmly in your mind. These associations can only be made because you understand the concepts.
The reality is that there might be many things that are not about understanding but pure memory. Alternatively, understanding may only come with exposure to an unrealistic amount of facts that would have to be remembered anyways. When that happens, we have to resort to 'memorizing'; a process we normally understand as 'getting stuff into the brain'. The question is how things normally enter our minds. The mind is a closed system which receives information only through the neurons and these cells in turn, receive the information they're transmitting through the sensory organs. In other words, our senses are the ultimate gateway to the mind and thus our memory.
Yet when we study, we often overtax our visual sense as we task it to commit things we read into memory. For some audio learners, reading out chunks of text may help but people rarely attempt to go beyond the visual-audio means of learning. There's more to our senses than our eyes and ears; our skin, our muscles can all work in sync with our eyes and ears help us to remember things. There is a reason why big events tend to stick to our minds more than small events - those events are big because they arouse more of our senses, we see, smell, hear, anticipate, feel through our skin and react to them through our muscles and thoughts. That's why it's so hard to remember a chunk of exchanges perhaps in Macbeth if one don't feel for the characters or comprehend the context of the story in the first place (insufficient arousal to our senses). The principle of having more information to anchor new ideas works the same - understanding the circumstances where a poem was written and the background of a poet naturally helps you remember the poem better (not to mention the rhymes and choice of words which are designed to introduce patterns that our minds can recognise more easily and thus recall).
Thus, to help yourself memorize stuff, pick up things that help arouse more of your senses: read aloud as you look through your notes, process them in your mind and write them in more concise or condensed forms on a piece of paper all at the same time. This way, you remember the words you read, the things your hear, the different reactions your mind produce to the things you read and the muscle actions involved in penning down the concise form of the things you're trying to remember. You may not progress as fast in terms of covering content when you do this compared to just plain reading, but the effect of memory is so significant you will soon realize that multiple reading of the same material is no longer justified with such intense 'memorizing'. In tech speak, the amount of bandwidth each senses can offer as a gateway to the mind is limited and to expand this bandwidth and thus increase retention in our mind, there's a need to use other channels, other senses.
To reinforce the stuff 'memorized', one could use mindmaps to surface connections between the things read and absorb after the studying process I prescribed above. The mindmap is to help you see more clearly the big picture of the disparate information you've been trying to take in. It reviews things you've learnt and bring to your attention some stuff you might have missed out and have to relook. The mindmap can be tossed aside after use (I recommend just trashing it) since its use is limited once it's satisfactorily formed.
This article might be a little too late considering people are almost done with O Levels and A Levels now but hopefully, students who are still studying and moving on to higher level educations would find this useful.
Welcome the Sciences!
By Kevin
Mixing Stuff Around
During the ERPZ break, our links did more than re-organize themselves; some additional reads were added and in particular, stuff about science and technology. They're the sites of science magazines, Popular Science, New Scientist, Nature and Scientific American.
Not only would articles and materials from these sites be helpful to those curious about scientific developments, they're surprisingly useful for students of GP when tackling science and technology questions. New Scientist sometimes evaluate technologies, Scientific American provides insights into not only latest developments of science but also effects of older developments.
With regards to study methods, an area that ERPZ constantly explores, Popular Science is quoting scientific findings that support our conventional wisdom and making prescriptions for our lifestyle. Of course, for those students who are totally into sciences, you might be interested in what Nature has to offer.
And there's more; the all-pervading nature of Economics means that these science magazines can't help but mention at least a little things related to the subject - the most obvious being this article from Scientific American. Businessmen and economics students definitely loves to know more about technological advancements' impact on economies and business models as evident from The Economist.
Taking Notes
By Kevin
We all take notes during lectures; I've got friends who practically pen down everything the lecturer says and others who merely fills up blanks in the notes. I'm pretty sure neither constitutes note taking so I decided to explore what taking notes mean in education and learning. My questions was; how do you take notes that would benefit you in learning the stuff of interest?
Do it right
Lectures
At lectures, I found that the best was stick to the stuff given, filling in blanks wherever necessary and taking note of things not mentioned in the notes given. Don't allow the note-taking to distract you from learning during the lecture. Listening to the teacher and observing the projected slides or images or even looking at the demonstrations that the lecturers are showing are way more important than getting the notes down. The fact is that you're going to remember things more clearly when you focus and not when you write them down. Of course, information locked in paper has their kind of permanence but then you're compromising on some subtle details in those information if you're trying to get down everything during the lecture.
I believe that any knowledge or information impressed upon the mind in the form of the booming voice of a lecturer or the visual memory of a live demonstration in the lecture hall of an experiment would be way stronger than something you try to memorise off a sheet of paper. Besides, these strong impressions tied to your lecturers, professors and tutors would give you the confidence in the information you manage to lock within your mind. Information you read off notes or memorise from textbook would provide less confidence because you would have doubts about your own means of interpretation or your reading of the stuff when you're at exam situation.
Revision
Most people I know don't take notes during revisions. Revisions are the time to read through notes you've written, they say. Wrong! The thing about writing notes is that it's not so much for your reading pleasure later but for the act of doing it. The act of writing notes (in the right way, a point to be elaborated later) actually helps you absorb and remember the concepts. The idea is to transfer facts and knowledge into your mind and not on to another piece of paper. The paraphasing, the need to look up dictionaries for technical terms you're unsure about, the work involved in finding out what each concept or theory seeks to explain are all part of the process of note-writing when you're revising for your exams or tests and these are exactly the same things that will contribute to your learning.
And when you take notes during revision, synthesize materials and knowledge you obtain from different sources - the textbooks, the reference materials, your readings, lecture notes and the informal stuff you've written down yourself. Write things down because they guide you to learn the concept/subject in question and not because they've been printed on the sources where you try to copy them from.
The Right Way
After being a student for so many years, I've come to believe that there's a 'right' way to take notes. First, take down only concise materials and not chunks off textbooks, readings and lecture notes. Next, write only things you understand and find out things that you don't during the process of note taking. In other words, get beside a computer and google stuff you're unsure about as you try to take notes from your readings and so on. Just don't become distracted by the computer and end up being on Facebook. Finally, draw diagrams whenever necessary but don't get too concerned with trying to beautify your notes and take hours sketching brilliant artworks - the whole point is to practice applying, penning the stuff you learn.
A final note is that your notes should ideally be comprehended only by people who are already familiar with the things taught in class or have already read through everything that you've read to compile the information. Your notes should not be a duplicate of everything explained on your lectures and end up becoming another textbook of sorts.
Tale of the Valiant Knight
By Martin See
Your eyes are fixated on the digital clock located at the front section of the school hall. The time inches towards judgement day. You are five minutes away from taking the most important examination in your life; the obstacle that separates you from your goals. Your stomach churns and groans in trepidation. Your hand shakes to its own rhythm. Fear chokes you as you struggle to recall the labyrinth of theories that you desperately studied the night before the examination.
You are afraid of the questions that lie ahead. How will I respond if I encounter unfamiliar questions? What happens if I run out of time to complete the paper? What will I do if I can't achieve my desired grade? These insecurities and uncertainties gradually worm its way into your mind, poisoning it with a cloak of pessimism. Any self-belief that you had prior to the examination would be drained away in a fashion similar to the Dementor's kiss.
For those of you who have accounts of such harrowing experience, I have a lot of sympathy for you because I know exactly how it feels to be that student. During my early schooling days, I was allergic to examination! The allergy manifest itself in many unpleasant ways. It was such a horrible experience! After being immeasurably frustrated by the same problem time and again, I decided it was time to control my mind and protect it from doubts and fears.
I had a taste for fairytale so I imagined myself as a valiant knight who was clothed in sturdy armour and equipped with the most menacing-looking lance. I was to ride to the land of Mathematica and to slay its heinous King using my newly acquired knowledge. In another scenario, I was an intrepid knight confronting the infamous nine-headed beast in the notorious wasteland of Scientia. I know it sounds like an absurd story to you but it did the trick! Through the power of imagination, I was no longer the kid sitting for the most important examination but I was the valiant knight, a noble man full of confidence and self-belief.
My new mindset yielded very positive results. The surge in confidence and my belief in my abilities influenced the way I studied subjects and how I answered questions. As Henry Ford, the automobile industrialist, once said, "If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." Many students cannot achieve their full potential because they are weighed down by their doubts and fears. They don't believe they have what it takes to score distinctions. Are you one of them? If you fit the bill, it is time for you to change your mindset and protect yourself from the adverse influence of pessimism. You can start doing so by transforming into the valiant knight!