Being an effective learner

In the journey of my life, I have been keeping striving to create success years. In my opinion, I think the most essential thing you have to do as the first step is to take a personal inventory about yourself after I have experienced failure and success, and then you make changes with motivation. For me, my goal is to be an effective learner.

Hence, in order to be an effective learner, I should strengthen my strengths and improve my weaknesses by being modest about myself, reviewing my notes harder before tests and finishing an essay earlier and go to tutors for correction Firstly, my strength is that I always obey the rules in class because I am afraid of doing most things that might have comments on me. For instance, I am usually in silence whenever it is time for group projects or study hall. I seldom go to ask professors for assistance about solving questions because I am too shy to speak to others.

I usually do not discuss with a loud sound so that I will not affect others and also receive negative comments from my classmates. In addition, I am usually responsible for my attendance in school. I have never missed any class in high school and in college for personally reasons only if I am badly hurt in an accident or have a serious illness. With the help of the strength, I get full scores on the parts of attendance all the time so that it benefits my GPA in school.

In addition to obey the rules in class, my strength is that I have a better study habit about grasping knowledge for tests and assignments in college now because it benefits me a lot on study. For example, while taking a class, professors usually write down a lot of information on whiteboards. Some students do not usually take those notes down because they feel troublesome or lazy. However, I take those notes down, and I also highlight or underline parts of the essential information that professor mention more than 3 times in class in order to have materials to review for tests and assignments.

Moreover, because I have complete notes, my classmates usually borrow them from me for making another copy so that I have the chances to socialize with them. The attitude brings me a better social life, which is one of the weaknesses I am going to talk about next. Nonetheless, I also have a weakness as an English learner that I need to alter in order to succeed in becoming a more effective English learner in and out of school. That is arrogance. I have been being affected by the weakness for years because I could tell by the past examples about getting low grades on my compositions.

I usually rush on continuing doing my work until it will soon be the deadline for handing in the work. For example, I came to study in Mount San Antonio College in Fall 2010, and I took four courses for the term. One of the courses was about American Language Reading. At the beginning of the course, I worked really hard by taking every note down in order to get an A in this course. In the next weeks, I realized that I had learned almost 90 percent of the words and phrases from the text book, so I started to be arrogant about getting an A and did not review them after each class.

I only reviewed the notes that I made a night from the class. As a result, when I took the test, I found that I was unable to solve those questions because I could not remember those familiar words any more. Finally, I had a worst score that I had never gotten before. Secondly, the last weakness is the problem of time management. For instance, it took place while studying in Mount San Antonio College, and I am now still being affected by the weakness. The professor usually gave us an essay as an assignment to work on at home each week.

Because I thought that finishing the essay was quicker and easier since I organized for the essay and made a prewriting, I put the essay off had fun for days, and worked on it later until it was almost a half day from the deadline. After I started to work on the essay, I started to realize that I did not have enough time for revising the paper myself or by the tutors although I had finished the paper. Consequently, I did really terribly on this essay as I imagined. The first change I could make in order to become a more effective learner is to review your notes harder before tests although you have learned them before.

After the mistake, I have realized that no one could remember a piece of information forever if you do not refresh the knowledge in your mind. If you do not refresh the knowledge again and again, the knowledge will be easily erased from your mind. Therefore, the first thing that I would avoid from happening again is not to be arrogant about myself and always keep the saying “ No one could remember a piece of information forever if you do not refresh the knowledge in your mind” so that next time I will not be arrogant again.

Secondly, I should review the words although I have read them before. Because now I take many basic courses, I have plenty of time to do other things. I should spend the time on remembering the words and phrases each day until I could use them wisely in my composition. The second change I could make in order to become a more effective learner is to be serious on the problem of time management. The change that I would make is to finish the essay earlier so that I could have time for revising the essay.

For example, if an essay is given on Tuesday, I should organize the essay and make a prewriting on Wednesday because these two things will not take too much time. Then, on Thursday, I should spend almost at least 12 hours on writing the rough draft. After writing the essay, I should revise it before I post on the blackboard. In addition, if I still have time on Thursday or Friday, I could go to the tutors for correcting my paper in order to receive suggestions for my essay, such as sentence errors, better thesis, better introduction, better conclusion, deeper vocabulary and so on.

After tutoring, I come back home and make a second rough draft until you are satisfied about the essay. Finally, you post on the blackboard. In conclusion, I have realized what my strengths and weaknesses are and how my weaknesses affected my life. Thus, I am going to make changes in order to turn all the weaknesses into strengths. All I need is to be modest, responsible, tolerant and active although the journey for making changes would be herky-jerky.