| Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Top Words. My name is Alisha and today, we're going to talk about 10 ways to stop procrastinating and study. Let's go! |
| 1. Register for a challenging test. |
| To register for a challenging test, that means registering for a test that is slightly more difficult than your current level. So if you think of yourself as, like, a beginner right now, maybe try registering for a test that is at, like, the lower intermediate level. So, if you always register for a test or give yourself some goal that is slightly more difficult than your current level, you can always try to be pushing in the… in the upward direction. You can always try to be pushing to improve little by little. So, I say challenging, I don't say difficult, because if you're a beginner and you register for an advanced level test, it's going to be really difficult to meet your goal. It's going to be really difficult to study everything to pass the advanced test. But, if you set smaller goals, smaller test goals, maybe you have a better chance of achieving those goals and your motivation will stay up. So, try registering for a challenging test to give yourself a goal. |
| 2. Find a movie or TV show to understand. |
| The next idea is to find a movie or a TV show to understand. So, finding a movie or a TV show that you can watch every week or just maybe your favorite movie in the language you're studying, can be a really fun way to motivate yourself. So, if you have like a TV show you want to watch every week, you can focus your energy on trying to learn the vocabulary words or to learn the expressions that are used in that TV show, and perhaps week after week, you'll start to hear some similar things and start to pick up the way that people speak in that show. So, having something that's kind of fun and a little bit entertaining to use as you study, can help you enjoy what you're doing a little bit more. So, the same thing can apply to a movie. If you find a movie that you really like or you really are inspired by that movie, it can help you as you study because it can motivate you and inspire you to want to know all of, like, the aspects of that movie, to know everything, all the details of that movie. So finding something that's kind of a little entertaining to help you study can be a good way to stop procrastinating sometimes. |
| 3. Get a study buddy. |
| The next idea is to get a study buddy, a study buddy. So what is a study buddy? So "buddy" is a word we use for friend, so a "study buddy" then is a friend that you study with or a friend that you tell your study goals to, someone who can make sure you are responsible for your behavior. So if you have a study buddy, you can maybe check in with them every few days or, like, once a week, maybe you go to a study group together or maybe you practice conversation together. You can set goals with your study buddy so you don't feel like you're studying alone all the time. If you study alone all the time, you might feel like I have nobody to practice with or nobody understands my goals, or I feel like I'm the only person with my goal. So having a friend, having a study buddy, can help you to feel a little bit more like part of a team and to help you like through questions that you might not understand, or maybe they have some resources that you don't have and that can help you as you study. So, getting a study buddy can be both really fun and really helpful for you. |
| 4. Enroll in a course. |
| The next idea is to enroll in a course, enroll in a course, so like to enroll in a course means to start a course or to register for a course. So in this case, we're talking about a course of study like a language course if you're studying English. Enrolling in a course can be helpful because it creates accountability, it creates responsibility. If you enroll in a course, you're paying money, presumably, and if you miss a class, if you miss a session of your course, you can think of it as money wasted essentially. So if I'm paying maybe $50 for each lesson in a course and I don't attend, that means that I'm wasting $50. So if you think of it this way and you are enrolled in a course, then maybe this can help you study because you don't want to waste your money. So by attending class, you're using your money well, you're using your time well to study and you also have the option to talk to your classmates and to the teacher there about any questions that you have. So enrolling in a course, especially like a weekly course or maybe even like a daily course or intensive course, can help you in a lot of different ways, I think. |
| 5. Create a social media account for your studies. |
| The next idea is to create a social media account for your studies. So this is a popular way to get some daily practice actually creating with the language that you're studying. So, a really common tool for this is Twitter. I've seen many people use Twitter to do this. They create a Twitter account that's specifically for their English language studies. So, people will write about their day in English, if they're studying English. So, if they don't have a chance to maybe speak with colleagues in the language they're studying or to write an email for example, if they don't have a way to practice making outputs, many people choose to use social media to do that. So, it's kind of a way to reach out, to find other people who are studying or to find resources to read every day about the thing you're studying, but you also have the chance to create something yourself. So if you like, you could try making a social media account that's devoted only to your studies. So try that out! |
| 6. Sign up for a regular event in your studies. |
| The next idea is to sign up for a regular event in your studies. So, that means if you're studying English for example, maybe you can try to attend, like, a monthly get-together in English somewhere. So this can be about your hobbies, it can be about just something in your community, a school event for example. If you find something that you are able to do in English, in this case, that's also related to your hobbies, it can be helpful for you because you start to see the ways that you can use English in a situation outside of just your textbook maybe, or a situation that's outside of just your studies, by getting an idea of how other people are using the language and getting an idea of, like, how you can potentially use the language in other ways. So going to a regular, like a monthly event or maybe something twice a month or whatever, that's maybe outside your course or outside of your test studies, can be another good way to get some exposure to have a chance to actually use the things you're learning and to learn new things. |
| 7. Make studying part of your daily routine. |
| The next idea is to make studying a part of your daily routine. So, by this I mean, for example, taking 30 minutes in the morning or 30 minutes at night or maybe 30 minutes at lunch, whatever it is for you, finding time in your day, every day, to do a little bit of study. So, even if you're only doing 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night, it's better than zero. So that's 20 minutes over the course of one day which is still better than zero minutes ever. If you can find a way to make studying part of your day and you can kind of create a routine that studying is a part of, it can help you just kind of become used to doing that. So studying doesn't feel like a job or studying doesn't feel like a chore, it's just something you do like brushing your teeth or cooking breakfast or having a cup of coffee or whatever. So, if you make studying part of your routine, then after a while, it might not feel like work. It might not feel like study. It might just feel like okay, this is just a thing I do at this time of the day. So, give that a try. Try to integrate study, try to put study into your daily routine. |
| 8. Reward yourself when you finish studying. |
| The next idea is to reward yourself when you finish studying. So, when you finish your studies, whatever that time period might be, whether it's 30 minutes or 1 hour or you went to your course for the week, try finding a way to reward yourself for studying. This can be a very simple thing like, for example, buying yourself a cup of coffee or… you get to have a piece of chocolate or after you finish studying, you can watch your favorite TV show. So find a way to put reward into your study routine. So, once you finish studying, there's something good that happens that you can expect at the end of your study period. So kind of reward yourself, so that it helps you develop and feel motivated to continue doing that study routine. |
| 9. Make your goals public. |
| The next idea is to make your goals public. So, make your goals public means share your goals with people. So, if you don't want to share your goals with everybody, maybe you can just tell a few friends about your goal. So, if that goal is to pass a test for example or if that goal is to master a certain grammar point or maybe the goal is to learn a certain number of vocabulary words, whatever that is, try telling people about that goal because then it kind of creates some responsibility for you, like, if you tell people about that goal, they might ask you about it in the future. And if you say I didn't do it or I couldn't do it or I'm not studying at all, you might feel kind of bad about that, actually. So, actually, telling people about your goal creates that accountability and that responsibility for you. So, try sharing your goal with the people around you. Also, they might support you. There's a chance that they can support you or they can offer help, they can offer something to help you achieve your goal. So, try that. |
| 10. Make studying a game. |
| The last idea is to make studying a game, to make studying a game. So in some cases, you can find applications or you can find games, you can find ways to study where like someone has already programmed a game like especially for vocabulary words, for example. You can find a way to enjoy your studies. If that doesn't already exist, try to invent a game, especially if you have a study group or a study buddy. Try to find creative and fun ways to use the things that you're studying, then you can actually enjoy your studies. You don't have to think of it as work, but you can actually see how your studies can be fun. |
| Some examples of games that you could use when you study English, you could use… there's like a game called Scrabble where you… you get points by creating words. So, the more words you know, the better chance you have of getting a highest score in the game. So Scrabble is one way that you could do it. |
| For children, one that's good is sort of like a… it looks like a worksheet actually, but it's called Mad Libs, it's called Mad Libs. This is something that my brother and I used to play when we were little. It's a worksheet, but some of the words are missing in the worksheet and we can't see the whole story, really. It's good to play this game with two people. So, one person reads the worksheet and there are blank spaces on the worksheet that say adverb or adjective or verb. So, you ask the other person to give you an adjective, to give you a verb and you write those words in the story. When they've given you all the words that you need to make the story complete, you then read the full story to the person using the words that they have given you, and it usually becomes something kind of funny. So, this can be a good way to test your grammar and also just to get kind of creative with the sorts of words that you're choosing. So that might be good for kids as well. |
| So there are a lot of different things that you can do. Of course you can create your own games as well. |
| So those are 10 ways to stop procrastinating and study. I hope that those are helpful for you. If there's something that you like to do or something that you think has been helpful for you in the past to stop your procrastination, let us know in the comments. It could be helpful for somebody else. Thanks very much for watching this episode of Top Words and I will see you again soon. Bye-bye! |
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