TART

I always had lots of problem with the reading. I am not a student who can read the book in short period of the time, and understand every material. I have to read slowly, again and again. This was very stressful for me, because there were lots of things to read at the University. Especially for Japanese, it took a lot of time for me to read the book because it was mostly written with the Japanese. For the most of the time, I took the test without reading text book, because it took so much time. For this time, I used TART (Terms, Attend, Read, and Test) for my Japanese exam. I first read the terms and definitions, which were written at the beginning of the chapter. Then, I created abbreviations for the terms that my professor often used. This really helped me to get used to the certain terms that professor used a lot in the class. By getting familiar with important terms, I could actually concentrate better in the class. After that, I attended the class and I tried to listen for the technical terminology that was written on the book, and which my professor used for many times. Then, I reread my class notes right after the class. At this time, I used 20 minutes test prep. I wrote the terms that professor used a lot in the class, and right after the class, I read those words again. This helped me to remember those terms. I also used Plug in note. Since I found this note strategy worked best for me, I always used it to do the in-class note taking. By doing TART and the plug in note together, I felt much easier to organize the information.
The picture below is the plug in note that I used with the TART.


Also, by concentrating on what terms my professor was emphasizing, I could concentrate better in the class and I listened more carefully on what professor was talking. After this step, I did the reading. I read the materials that we covered on that day. I found out that the reading was not as hard as I thought. Before doing this TART, I just opened the book and tried to read the textbook. At that time, I could not really concentrate and had a hard time to understand the whole material written on the text book. At this time, however, by doing 'Terms' and 'attend' before 'Read', I found that reading became much easier. I realized that I needed these two steps before reading. It became clear that what terms I needed to focus on, that I could focus on the important information. I found out that to read with a purpose was the important thing to do. I could even read the whole chapter, much faster than before. I believed this thing happened because I already knew what the important terms I needed to focus on were. I, therefore, didn't have to waste much time on reading the unnecessary information. After reading, I created test questions that my professor might ask at the coming exam, and I answered to my questions. This was the strategy I used at the exam experiment. When I did exam experiment, I didn't focus on reading too much. I focused more on the class notes. At this time, I focused more on the text book. Then, the surprise thing happened. There were three questions actually came on to the exam. While I was doing exam experiment, only one question came out to the actual exam. At this time, there were more questions came out to the test. I found out the importance of reading the textbook. Even though I listened carefully during the class and wrote the class notes, I realized that to reread the text book many times were very helpful to understand the materials we learned. Also, I found out that reading was not hard thing. It was actually easy to do that there was no reason to not do the reading before an exam. The picture below is to show the process of my TART.