Things to Remember When Sending Written Correspondence

January 28th, 2012

Whether you are sending an email message, text or written letter, you have to remember certain things so that you could effectively express your writing and what you want to say to the reader. Most often, your written correspondence says a lot about you so it is important that you have to improve your writing skills once in a while.

The first thing you have to take into account is the type of format that you have to use for your written correspondence. If it is just a simple email letter to your friend, you can just type your message without any formal format. However, if it is a cover letter for a job application, you have to use a business letter format which contains the date, return address, body of the letter, salutation and closing.

You have to make sure that your message is very clear and straight to the point. Formal written correspondence should always have clarity without the need to include unnecessary information.

When sending effective written correspondence, you should keep in mind that shorter and straight to the point letters are better. Always keep your writings concise because the reader may lose interest if he opened your email and see a letter that will take several minutes to read and understand.

Of course, grammar is always important when sending written correspondence. To avoid these mistakes, you can have someone proofread your writing before you send it. Reading messages and letters containing wrong grammars can be quite embarrassing and the reader may think that you don’t have the proper skills in writing.

If you are sending out a formal written correspondence, the tone of your writing should always be professional. You cannot send out informal writing to your boss because he or she might find it offensive. Match the tone of your writing to whomever will read your letter.

Those are just some of the things that you have to keep in mind when you are writing an email or any written correspondence. Writing skills is very important and it will go a long way especially if you are in the corporate world and you often send written correspondence to your boss, colleagues and business associates.

Motivating Yourself to Study

January 22nd, 2012

Even the brightest and the best students can sometimes find it hard to study. You have to know how to motivate yourself to study hard because this can be the key to find that extra energy and avoid cramming.

A messy desk or study area is not inviting at all. You can start by organizing your table and cleaning all the mess because a clean study area is conducive to studying. An organized room, desk or study area can motivate you to open your notes and start studying.

It also helps to remind yourself about your goals and purpose for studying. You can ask yourself where you want to be ten or twenty years from now. You also have to realize that those goals and aspirations greatly depend on your grades and academic performance. Your studying is like a bridge that you have to cross in order to reach those goals.

Decide whether you want to have mediocre or average academic records or excellent and high academic grades. Consider it a personal achievement on your part if you successfully forced yourself to study.

Before even sitting down to study, you have to visualize a positive outcome for your tests or exams. If you continue thinking that you will do poorly in your test, you are already defeating yourself and the outcome would not be good. If you know that you will get a high grade in your exam then the motivation part will come easily.

Different Exam Relaxation Tips

January 19th, 2012

Every student knows that final exams can make you tense and nervous. It is important that you can control these feelings of anxiety and tension because this may lead to stress and it may affect your exam performance. You can use these exam relaxation tips to condition your mind and body to relax during the exam.

Students who are confident and positive before the exam usually get higher grades than those students who tend to worry a lot. If you are well prepared and you have studied weeks before the exam, chances are, you feel tremendously confident that you can answer all the questions in your exam.

It is important that you eat properly before your exam. Drinking enough water and eating healthy food can make your brain sharper and more focused. A full breakfast before an exam is ideal so that you won’t get hungry and get distracted when you are answering the test.

It is proven that sleep deprivation can greatly affect the brain’s ability to recall information and focus. You should sleep early the night before the exam so that you will feel well rested in the morning.

During the exam, you can skim the questions first before answering them right away. You can take note the easy questions and the harder questions included in the exam. You can answer the items that you think are easier than the other questions.

Anxiety and tension can be lessened through proper breathing techniques. Deep breathing can reduce fast heart rates and relaxes tensed muscles. So go ahead and breathe deeply before answering your exams.

If there are breaks during your exam, you should definitely take advantage of it. You can walk around, stretch or go to the bathroom. However, you should not let your mind wander too far away from the exam during your break.

The Importance of Formal Writing

January 15th, 2012

Formal writing is still very important today and it is a must for every student to learn this writing skill. Even though we always use informal writing on our texts, online chatting and emails, we have to develop the formal style of writing because we need this when applying for a job, writing a report and other formal and business settings.

When writing for a college application or sending a job application letter, you will need to put it in formal writing. A good formal writing skill will give the reader a good impression about yourself. Your resume or application letter can show traces of good character, confidence and intelligence if it is well written and error free.

In the corporate world, the standard for written communication is formal or business writing. If you do not have the skill to write a good formal letter, then it would be very hard for you to communicate or present your ideas.

A well written report or business letter shows credibility and professionalism. A poorly written report will not be taken seriously by your boss or your business colleagues. Some companies see poor formal writing as a sign of incompetence from the employee.

Formal writing is also a way of showing your respect to the recipient of the letter or the email. If you write clearly, without any errors and well formatted, this shows that you really took the time and gave special attention to construct the letter.

Ways on How to Remember Things

January 14th, 2012

Sometimes it can be hard for the students to remember everything they have studied, especially if they just reviewed and studied a few days before the exam. Difficulty in remember things may come with age but most often, it is just the lack of mental focus and concentration which leads to forgetting the things they have studied. Here are some tips on how students can remember things easily when they are studying.

Before studying, you must clear your head of all the unnecessary things that you are worrying about or keep thinking about. Create a space in your mind to store all the information that you need to remember. If possible, avoid all the distractions that you will encounter when you are studying.

It is proven that you can remember an information if you say it out loud several times. Just thinking about it will not help in retaining the information in your memory. You have to read it out loud or say it repeatedly until you are sure that you have memorized the information.

You have to use your visualization technique. You can picture out the information in your mind and create an image which is easier to remember.

You can also create acronyms to help you remember long information that is hard to memorize. One example is the color spectrum which is easier to remember because of the acronym ROY G. BIV.

You can create a rhythm, beat or rhyme to make things easier to remember. You may even use a popular tune or beat so that you can remember the information clearly.

While you are studying, you can write down the information that you need to remember in a separate paper. Writing things down when you are trying to store it in your memory is effective.

These are just some tips that you can use when you are studying for your exam. You can easily remember those notes and lessons when you use these tips.

 

Using Audio Visual Aids in Oral Presentation

January 10th, 2012

There are a few things that you should check when you are using an audio visual aid in your oral presentation. If you want your oral report without any glitches and troubles, you can follow these simple tips.

Your visual aids must be seen by everyone in the room. This means that the font size of your visual aid should be seen by your audience at the back of the room. If you are using Microsoft Word, it is recommended that you can use a font size of 16 pts and above.

You can use cartoons, sketches and drawings as visual aids. This is also a good idea to hold the interest of your audience. Sometimes these drawings and images interpret the report better than texts.

Slides can be used as prompts on your report. You can just supplement the heading instead of the whole sentence. You should be able to explain every word or heading of the slide as you continue reporting.

When using overhead transparencies, it is best if you use dark pen and only show the relevant section. Remember to turn off the overhead projector when you are not using it.

You should make arrangements well ahead of schedule. Sometimes you would have to borrow your audio visual equipments from the school library or other departments. You can come early before your presentation to check whether all the equipments are working perfectly.

 

Maintaining the Interest of Your Audience During Oral Presentation

January 8th, 2012

During an oral report or presentation in your school, it is always important that you maintain the interest of your audience towards you and what you are reporting. Most teachers and instructors award higher grades for those students who give a very engaging report and holds the interest of the rest of the class.

One of the things that will lose the interest of your audience quickly is if you read your entire report. Remember that this is an oral presentation, you can glance once in a while on your cue cards but never read it in front of your audience. Cue cards or scripts are helpful so that you won’t forget anything so use it only when you need to. Try to visualize listening to an oral report that is just being read for several minutes, it can be really boring and you would lose interest quickly.

Here are the techniques so that you can hold the interest of your audience when you are doing an oral report:

  • You should vary the tone of your voice when you are presenting or reporting. A monotone voice is not very good to listen to. Without any changes in tone and pitch or without any feelings in your voice, this can either bore your audience or put them to sleep.
  • You should avoid speaking too quickly. It is also important that the audience understands every word you are saying. Talking too fast will make it harder for the audience to understand you and they may lose interest. The audience and your instructor may also get the impression that you are nervous or you just want to finish your report quickly.
  • You should connect with your audience by maintaining eye contact with them all the time. This is also a good strategy to keep their attention and interest to you.
  • Do not forget to smile at your audience. A face with no expression or a glum face is not good to look at. Smiling at the audience will easily put you and the audience at ease.
  • It is okay if you can walk around and move while doing your presentation but not too much because this may indicate that you are too nervous. If you choose to stay stationary, you should not slouch or lean on the wall and table.
  • Do not do anything that would cause your audience to be distracted. One example is chewing a gum while talking since this may distract your audience.

Those are the ways or strategies that you can follow so that you will maintain the interest and attention of your audience. Remember them next time you are in front of the class doing your oral presentation.

What is in Your Dictionary?

January 6th, 2012

The dictionary contains an alphabetical list of words along with their meanings. You may think that this is the only use of the dictionary but there are still other uses for your dictionary. Here are the list of things that is found inside your dictionary.

  • Dictionaries should contain definitions and word meanings
  • Synonyms
  • English spelling
  • Pronunciation of words
  • Grammatical information
  • Origin of words
  • Plurals of nouns
  • Parts of speech
  • Prepositional rules
  • Word usage
  • Capitalisation

Your dictionary can also help you with a number of tasks. A dictionary can help you find words of similar meanings. A dictionary can also include maps, information about geographical places, famous people, pictures of state or national flags, listing of state capitals, illustrations and other lists of facts.

You can find a lot of information in the dictionary if you know how to use it properly.

Different Technology Used in Schools

January 4th, 2012

In the 80′s and early 90′s, technology was just playing a minor role in schools but we can see today that universities and schools use different kinds of technologies to aid in teaching their students and facilitate in learning. Technology has become an important and vital part of our culture and this means that our children must be taught properly how to use these technologies.

Students are required to learn basic computer skills such as typing, documenting and using the internet. Schools have computer laboratory rooms where they teach the students how to use the computer. Schools may allow students to bring their own laptops for taking notes.

Teachers may use DVDs and digital cameras to clearly show in visual form their lessons to their students. Digital cameras may also be used by students in certain projects to record their activities. Projectors may be used so that everyone can watch the presentation made by the teacher or the students themselves.

Schools will also provide educational software in different kinds of subjects such as math, science, art, literature, music and so on. These software may evaluate the strong and weak points of the students and this knowledge can help the teacher on what areas to concentrate when teaching the lesson to his or her students.

There are also technologies used in school which helps those students who have certain disabilities. There are voice recognition technology software which can help students who are blind use the computers in school.

These are just some of the technologies that are being used in the schools today and this is just the beginning. The development of technology will continue in the future and there is no sign of stopping. It is necessary for the coming generations to know how to use these technologies properly.

Different Reading Skills: Skimming and Scanning

January 1st, 2012

Skimming and scanning reading materials is a reading skill and technique which has its purpose. There are different reasons why you are reading a particular text or a paper, either you read it thoroughly or you just skim and scan it.

Skimming is what you use when you just want to get a general impression of a reading material. An example of skimming is when you are looking at a book and you look at the cover, the back cover, the title of the book, the contents page, the chapter headings, the first and last sentence of the paragraph for each chapters and the sub headings. You just skim over the book so you will have some idea on what the book is all about. You don’t actually need to read through the whole book just to get an overall impression, you skim through it in a matter of seconds or minutes.

For scanning, this is the technique you use when you are trying to find an answer to your questions. An example of scanning is when you are trying to find a name on a phone book. You do not read the names one by one, instead you scan the page down quickly until you see the name you are looking for.

Skimming and scanning is often used when you are trying to get an answer quickly from the reading material or the book. If you read through the whole paper or article, you are wasting a lot of time instead of just getting the answers quickly by scanning or skimming.