Teachers, after teaching mathematics for a number of years notice that students make the same excuse when it comes to mathematics. “I’m not good at math.” “I need assistance with the homework”, I don’t know where to start”, “I’m a dull person” and other comments and excuses.
These excuses are unfounded and baseless. While it is true that every individual has different innate skills, it is also true the skills can be learned and acquired. In particular, students who are in college possess the ability to learn and acquire new skills that they never had.
No one developed the ability to play the keyboard or the guitar right from birth. Those skills were learned. Neither are people born with the abilities to repair electrical faults of fix pipes. We all understand that to acquire certain skills, all we need do to be resolute in our desire to learn them, and we will! Similarly, everyone isn’t Albert Einstein or Pythagoras, but everyone, most especially college-potential students, can acquire the skills to solve maths problems. Just like students playing the piano or saxophone become perfect with practice, students also become exceptional in understanding mathematical concepts and solving maths problems with practice!
Practicing these tips below will ensure you excel in college Math in style.
Read Your Mathematical Textbooks Using Certain Study Skills
Mathematics textbooks are very much different from books on geography or biology. Hence, they need to be approached differently. To get the most out of your math textbooks, you need to adopt a specific style that goes beyond memorizing the technical formulas and concepts. For instance, a math argument, or even derivation, is a sequence of logical or mathematical-steps that lead inarguably from one theory to conclusion. Once the derivation is complete, you can reapply the conclusion in any state in which the assumptions hold. The argument might involve an equation or even sequence of equations on many lines.
Read More Than Once to Grasp Concepts Completely
Students make the mistake of approaching mathematics like other subjects by reading it once and expecting to understand the concepts. Don’t expect to completely grasp the material in your mathematical text at once. Even professors and experts in mathematicians don’t just read their texts once. It might take you two, three, or even more attempts before you completely understand the concepts.
Read once to get the most important ideas. Don’t try to understand each line of a multi-line derivation, however, look at the beginning and the result to see what the derivation accomplished. Also, read the most important results plus the formulas carefully to ensure you understand what they say.
Attend to Your Homework
Your tutor will often give you homework problems to be submitted and graded. Contrary to popular belief, homework is not given to define what you need to practice. Usually, homework assignments provide the teacher with a feedback on your performance level. Also, with homework, you know how well you measure up to standards.
Reading and Understanding Mathematics
Mathematics is a course of numbers and figures rather than words. Hence, thoughts and ideas are always presented using notations. Math notation is a powerful as well as a precise medium for expressing these thoughts. As a student keen to understand math effectively, one of the most significant things you must learn in a maths class is the “relationship between the symbols” in an equation plus the thoughts they express. When you clearly understand the thought the notations convey, you can conveniently apply them in solving problems.
Conclusion
Just like with other areas of study in life, there’s a general pattern to learning math. It applies to the structure of the whole course as well as to other skills in life.
You’ll understand this concept if you have ever learned to play a game or even a musical instrument. To excel in math, practice each mathematical concept and theories in isolation and under a controlled situation, until you can do them easily with confidence!
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