“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” -Bruce Lee
We all know that practice is the ultimate ticket to hit the jackpot of victory because from time to time, everyone has repeatedly chanted “practice makes perfect” as their mantra to success. This is the reason why homework and assignments were created as they act as a form of practice for students to reinforce what they had learnt during class or tuition session.
For students who opt for online tuition or one-to-one private tuition, they are often given tuition assignments to complete before the next lesson. This is often looked upon as extra work which adds on to the list of school work that has to be done. However, students should not take this is as contributor to their stress ; instead, they should recognise its benefits.
Here are the benefits of tuition assignments to improve grades!
Benefit No.1: REINFORCEMENT
The biggest advantage of tuition assignments is essentially reinforcement of the content that has been taught by the tutor. Tuition agencies in Singapore have free test papers uploaded for students and tuition teachers assign mock papers or pages from assessment books to give students the opportunity to strengthen the content in their mind.
Revisiting topics by doing some practice is an excellent way to ingrain important pieces of information in the mind. This is active learning which allows students to remember content much more effectively, as opposed to passive learning methods like reading. When the mind is actively involved in thinking process, it better encodes what it internalises.
Benefit No.2: KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW
Ignorance is not a mistake, but being ignorant about your ignorance is dangerous. When students are told to do tuition assignments, they will discover their weaknesses and realise what they are lacking. This is the best way to improve as students can then ask the right questions to seek the best clarification from their tuition teachers.
This gives an opportunity for students to ask themselves some important questions. For example, students would be able to reflect on how they arrived at a conclusion, or why they may have developed a misconception. When identifying learning gaps, students would be able to flag them out. Tuition teachers and students can then work together to patch these learning gaps together.
Benefit No.3: DOUBTS
Having doubts and having questions arise in the mind is important. This is the only way that students can clarify concepts which seem unclear. In the process of learning, it is not possible to absorb everything (down to the nitty gritty details) in the first time of listening to a tutor explain a topic or when attending a lecture.
We only tend to internalise 25% of the information in the first round of learning something. Thus, there would definitely be lots of doubts buried down deep which has to be dug up the surface.
Benefit No.4: FAMILIARISATION
When students revisit topics or when they practice questions, they would be familiarising themselves with the pattern of questions being asked in examinations. It may seem as though questions are extremely challenging, and “out-of-the-box”, however, over time, when students view more and more practice papers, they would be able to catch a pattern.
Questions are often asked in fixed pattern and students need to figure out methods to answer them. Doing this alone is extremely challenging. However, with the expertise of a tuition teacher, this becomes easier.
Benefit No.5: SPEED AND ACCURACY
With more and more practice by doing tuition assignments, soon enough, students will eventually pick up on their speed in answering questions. We are well aware of the fact that time is the biggest enemy for students during examinations. Coupled with time restriction is also exam anxiety, which makes students more prone to making careless mistakes.
In order to answer with precision and speed, students need to practice beforehand by doing tuition assignments.
Benefit No.6: REVISION
We all something called the “forgetting curve”. This is essentially found by a German psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus, who wanted to understand more about the science behind why we forget.
His research had revealed that memories weaken over time. This means that if we learn something new, we would remember less and less of it as days and weeks go by, if we do not make the conscious effort to recall it. This is exactly why revision is of paramount importance, and what better way to do it then by doing tuition assignments as a form of revision?