How to Achieve Academic Excellence in Schools and Colleges: A Complete Guide to Study and Exam Skills

By Joseph Ssebunya

This book demonstrates that academic attitude is the starting point in the search for academic excellence. The book is written for students and counselors on academic excellence. It covers the skills required for successful studying and revision. Further it has unique lessons on how different examination questions can be understood, answered appropriately and highest possible score attained. It is meant for the secondary, advanced secondary and college students. This book is also useful for teachers who want to nurture their students into highest achievers. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: GDY Publications Company Ltd.
• Release date: Dec 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9789987452385

Book preview

Joseph Ssebunya

GDY PUBLICATIONS COMPANY LTD.

P.O. Box 32172

Telephone: [phone]

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Text © Joseph Ssebunya

Graphics, layout, illustrations and cover design © GDY Publications Company Ltd.

First Edition 2014

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ISBN 978-9987-452-38-5

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All rights reserved; no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior written permission of GDY Publications Company Ltd.  This book may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise disposed of by way of trade in any form of binding or cover other than that which is published, without prior consent of GDY Publications Company Ltd.

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Author: Joseph Ssebunya

Pictures: GDY Publications Co. Ltd.

Art work: Goodluck Mashala. 

Page layout: GDY Publications Co. Ltd.

Cover design: GDY Publications Co. Ltd.

Editors: Gabriel  D. Kitua, Nicholaus Asheli, Emil G. Kitua

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abbreviations Used in the Book......................................................................vi

Dedication...........................................................................................................vi

About the Author..............................................................................................vii

Introduction......................................................................................................viii

1. Forming Academic Attitude....................................................................1

Attitude............................................................................................................1

Academic Attitude..........................................................................................1

Positive Attitude ............................................................................................2

Genius or Attitude? ................................................................................3

The Attitude to Examination Results....................................................5

The Examination Dogmas......................................................................6

Do not Fear Examinations ....................................................................6

Positive Fear ...........................................................................................7

What Causes Failure in Examinations ................................................8

The Cost of Negative Attitude to Examinations.......................................10

Forget the Option of Cheating the Examinations....................................11

Can Waragi Help? ................................................................................12

Your Handwriting...Your Attitude.......................................................13

He Improved his Handwriting.............................................................14

Negative Automatics Thoughts...........................................................15

Control your Inner Conversation........................................................17

How to Maintain a Positive Mental Attitude............................................18

Chapter Summary........................................................................................19

2. The Revision Process ..............................................................................21

The 3H Principle of Revision......................................................................21

Why Students do not Enjoy Revision.........................................................22

Effective Revision.........................................................................................23

Before Revision......................................................................................23

During Revision.....................................................................................24

Study the Syllabus................................................................................24

Note Making .........................................................................................25

How to Organize Study Materials..............................................................26

Five Rs of Revision (Active revision) ........................................................27

The Revision Environment..........................................................................29

Stages of the Revision Process .................................................................30

Time and the Revision Process...................................................................32

Class Breaks...........................................................................................32

Days to go...............................................................................................33

Parents and the Revision Process..............................................................34

How can a Parent Support Revision ..................................................35

Chapter Summary........................................................................................35

3. Study Skills.................................................................................................37

What are Study Skills? ................................................................................37

Past Papers in Revision .......................................................................38

Benefits of Using Past Papers in Revision ........................................38

Marked Scripts and Question Approach............................................39

How to Use Past Papers .............................................................................39

The Challenge of Examination Authorities...............................................40

Revision Groups............................................................................................40

Benefits of Group Work in Revision ..................................................41

How to conduct group discussions? ..................................................42

The SQ4R Model of Effective Revision.....................................................43

Effective Reading, Revisited ......................................................................45

Skimming in Revision .................................................................................46

Overlearning.................................................................................................47

How Much Should one Revise at a Time? ........................................47

A Case for Sleeping......................................................................................49

Guided Dreams - Learning by Sleeping.............................................49

What if you Oversleep? ...............................................................................51

Empowering your Memory.........................................................................53

Summarizing Skills......................................................................................54

Acronyms................................................................................................54

Memory Chunking.................................................................................55

Key Point Stress....................................................................................56

Idea Mapping................................................................................................56

Categorical Clustering.........................................................................57

Interactive Images................................................................................58

Memory Card.........................................................................................59

Concept Isolation..........................................................................................60

Visualizing Skills..........................................................................................60

Active Silent Verbalisation...................................................................61

Mental Imagery.....................................................................................61

Associative Retrieval............................................................................63

Can One Really Use Mnemonics? .............................................................64

Chapter Summary........................................................................................65

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4. Understanding Examinations ..............................................................66

The Examiner................................................................................................66

How to bias the Examiner...........................................................................67

Examiners’ Reports......................................................................................68

What do Examiners’ Reports say........................................................68

Do not Set your Own Questions.................................................................70

Common Examination Verbs......................................................................70

Examination Instructions............................................................................72

Questions you Need to ask Yourself Before Attempting an Examination  75

Examination Formats...................................................................................76

Approaching Essay Questions....................................................................76

The Essay’s Introduction......................................................................77

The Essay’s Body...................................................................................77

The Essay Summary / Conclusion.......................................................78

Using Paragraphs..................................................................................78

Using an Essay Plan..............................................................................78

Answering Essay Questions.................................................................79

The Hows of Answering Essays in History........................................80

The Hows of Answering Essays in Religious Studies .....................81

Approaching Objective (Multiple Choice) Questions .............................82

Approaching Structured Questions - SQs.................................................83

Other Examination Formats.......................................................................85

Chapter Summary........................................................................................85

Relevant Further Readings ............................................................................87

End Notes..........................................................................................................88

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE BOOK

ACSEE– Advanced Certificate of Secondary Education Examination

CBD- Central Business District

CSEE– Certificate of Secondary Education Examination

IB– International Baccalaureate 

IGCSE-International General Certificate of Secondary Education

KNEC– Kenya National Examinations Council

MCQs- Multiple Choice Questions

NECTA- National Examinations Council of Tanzania

SQs– Structured Questions

UCE- Uganda Certificate of Education

UNEB- Uganda National Examinations Board

DEDICATION

To my teacher, Mrs. Joyce N. Kalule, for seeing me through the hardest phase of my academic life; for financing my high school education and for enabling me to excel in my academics. I thank God for your life and heart.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Completion of this book is attributed to inspirations and inputs from a handful people. The first to acknowledge is Cissy, my wife for encouraging me to write. I would also like to acknowledge Matungwa Godfrey for assisting in the initial editing process; Nicholaus Asheli, Emili G. Kitua and Gabriel D. Kitua for final review of the manuscript. Finally but not least, Goodluck Mashala for the illustrations and Bachard Kimani for the cover picture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joseph was born in Kakiri, Wakiso district, in Central Uganda. He is a graduate teacher and holds a Diploma in Psychotherapy. Joseph was the Director of Studies at St. Mbaaga’s College Naddangira from 2003 to 2005. He was Deputy Headmaster 2010 and then Headmaster of Peace Secondary School, Bukoba Tanzania since 2011.

Joseph Ssebunya

He worked with SOS Children’s Villages Uganda 2005-2009 as a Youth Development Worker, where he was coordinating the educational, placement, career counseling and the psychosocial well-being of young people. 

He is a co-founder of Youth Empowerment Services. This is a youth education and development organization that works with schools, families and youth and childcare NGOs to offer therapy services to adolescents, study skills counseling and career guidance and other youth programmes to improve the education, social and mental welfare of youth.

INTRODUCTION

How to excel in academics offers tips on how to approach revision and prepare for examinations in a variety of subjects across a spectrum of academic levels. Every academic reader will find lessons and tips to benefit him/her. The readership is expected to span from secondary school to the university. It should be noted that this book is only a guide and students only have to pick issues which they find workable and relevant to their academic level and ability. School administrators, academic counselors and teachers will also find the book a useful resource in their work.

Efforts were made to use the simplest language possible. Where complex terms were used, attempt was made to explain them. For that reason, most students will be able to read and comprehend the content.

The book clearly presents the concept of educational guidance with a focus on the academic and other issues pertinent to excelling in national examinations and getting the best out of school. It offers a study skills counseling kit to teachers and learners of almost all academic levels. The book is made of four small chapters that focus on attitude and technique with respect to passing examinations excellently. The chapters are as follows:

Forming Academic Attitude, which examines student’s feelings and perceptions that relate to examinations and schooling, and how to develop an excelling attitude to education. By outlining common areas of weakness related to academics, it helps students to do a self-examination with the intent to finding solutions to the factors that hinder their academic excellence. It also challenges them to develop the ‘I can’ mentality to all the subjects they study.

Revision Process discusses the elements of active revision and the stages of the revision cycle, as well as the techniques every student needs to make revision stress free. Simply put, this book shows what a student ought to do to revise effectively. It features the aspects that students need to take them seriously if they are to benefit from revision. The chapter makes a distinction between reading and revising, and challenges students to exert themselves in the revision process.

A chapter on Study skills will enrich students with good methods of revising their study materials. It will help students learn how to use past papers, and how to conduct meaningful group discussions. The SQ3R model is explained in such a way as to assist students understand what exactly to do with their study notes to bring about quick memory. The book also deals with well explained memory skills every student needs so as to improve his/her retrieval ability. 

The chapter on Examination Skills is intended to help the student to discover the most important aspects or elements to consider with respect to examinations. The chapter specifically helps the student to come closer to the setting and marking rooms by appreciating what the examiner wants and how examinations are structured. It offers tested skills on how to face different examination formats and how to handle examination stress.

Generally, this book is a wonderful resource. It gives the students all the important study skills that they need in order succeed in their academic endeavours. It is expected that students will benefit a lot from this rare resource.

Education is an attitude ... and if you have the kind of positive attitude toward learning, you will do well. But if you have a loser’s attitude or a defeatist attitude toward learning, then you will never learn anything’ -Robert Kiyosaki[1].

‘Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration’ – Thomas A. Edison[2]

Attitude

Attitude is one of the three dynamic realities that determine what we call personality. The others are feelings and behaviour. Attitude has a causal relationship with these two and you can tell somebody’s attitude by the kind of behaviour or emotional displays you observe from him/her. And yes, a given attitude of mind influences a given pattern of behaviour. Instead of using the word attitude, one could talk of interest, desire, bent or liking. I don't like Biology could be interpreted as I have a negative attitude toward Biology.

Attitude is a one word every teacher uses in assessment of students’ life at school. How do we know that someone has a positive or negative attitude toward a particular object or experience? By the direction of his/her personality in respect to the relevant object or experience.

Academic Attitude

Academic attitude or learning attitude is one’s mental disposition toward academic work based on clear expectations. It is about how much you are bent toward achieving your academic goals; how much ready you are to struggle to succeed in academics. In this chapter, you will learn that in all your academic pursuits, you need to set up your mind first on your academic attitude.

At times, your attitude to academics, especially to particular subjects is formed by what others, your peers, say they have experienced about the same subjects. Peer pressure can contribute both to positive and negative attitude. For instance, you may have been told that Mathematics is hard and you stored it in your mind. Then they told you it is not easy to pass Physics at high school. If you believed them, you surely will not pass. Why? Because our attitudes determine our actions.  If you believe you can never pass a particular subject, you should ask yourself these questions: why did the school and your teachers believe you can pass? Why should you waste your time on the subject if you will fail anyway? If you form your academic attitude on what your peer pressure alone chances are that you will fail.

Academic ability, or potential, is your intellectual capacity or orientation for learning a given subject or body of knowledge. When we perform well in a subject,