Learning Tips and Study Habits

It develops learning skills if you get to be fluent, and flexibility when you apply for a job, being bi or even tri lingual is a plus.

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Here are a few cognitive benefits of multilingualism that have been confirmed with well-respected scientific experiments and data surveys. There are many more brain health benefits to multilingualism that are currently being explored and the research looks promising, however I have only included several conclusions which have been extensively tested for accuracy with various addtional studies:

• Bilingual children show advanced metalinguistic understanding (the ability to recognise language as a process as well as a "thing") at an early age, especially in their control of language processing.
• Cognitive advantages appear in bilingual situations that involve systematic uses of the two languages, such as simultaneous acquisition settings or bilingual education. In plain English, this means if you recieve lessons in math or history (for example) in two different languages at the same time you will have greater understanding and retention of the concepts you have learned.
• Multilinguals have recently been proven to have superior logic and resoning skills (only IF they consider a problem in both languages however). The most likely explanation for this phenomenon is the theory that "framing" a problem in more than one way leads to greater perceptivness and therefore higher probablilty of finding a solution.
• "Emotional" intelligence (EQ), or the ability to understand and communicate effectively with others, is increased due to greater exposure to a variety of effective communication methods and styles.

Although these benefits are most pronouced in children who get an early start learning a second or third language, adults who choose to become bilingual later in life most certainly have the ability to take advantage of these brain-boosting benefits as well.

Source: As communication specialist at Dino Lingo- languages for kids, it's my job to stay up to date on all the latest language aquisition research.

Here are some reasons why skipping homework brings your grades down:

• Teachers grade the homework and getting a 0 or an F will bring your grade down a lot
• Homework helps you learn the material and if you don't know it, your test grades will be bad
• Homework helps you practice for the tests and if you practice, your grades will come up

Here are some more opinions:

You can't, to get good grades, you have to do your homework, projects, and activities that the teacher has you do. Do your homework and learn, so you can get a good education so you can get a good job, and live in some degree of comfort.

Here are some ways:

• Make it into a game - write your vocabulary words or whatever you need to learn on index cards and have a family member or study buddy hide them around the room. When you find one, whoever can say the correct answer wins a point.
• Another game - give yourself a point whenever you finish an assignment. Ask your parents if they will give you a reward when you earn a certain number of points. This could be a special food you like, going on a family outing, or helping you buy something you really want.
• Make a chart showing how well you're doing - use a big poster paper or sheet of construction paper to make it colorful. Every time you finish an assignment, give yourself a star, or a bar on a line, or color in a bit more of a column. When you make a good grade, add another one. See how fast you can fill up the chart!

An idiom is a phrase which cannot be understood by just looking at the words. You need to learn them because you cannot figure them out any other way!

Let me give you some examples - see if you can understand this paragraph (I'll put the answers at the bottom for you, but try it alone first)

Pull your finger out! I'm no agony aunt, so don't spit the dummy. And don't tell me you've a hitch in your giddy-up or I'll take the Mick. You thought it was all beer and skittles, right; you're in your salad days? Well, you'll be thick as mince if you don't know the difference between "up the stick" and "up sticks!" Are you all mouth and trousers or all hat and no cattle? Would you say you're a man of parts, a man of the cloth, a man of letters, the man on the Clapham omnibus, or the Vicar of Bray? You might just be a young turk, or hairy at the heel! All and sundry is going to go all pear-shaped if you don't wise up. Well, I suppose she'll be apples.

Hmmm ... still think you don't need to learn idioms?

How many of those did you know? Did you try to look any of the words up? Didn't work, did it?

Unless you know an idiom, you can't look it up by defining the words - after all, people who die don't really kick a bucket, and cats and dogs don't really fall out of the sky in a heavy rain.

Idioms are just part of the language that you have to memorize so that you can understand what people are saying. Like slang, they change and shift meaning as people develop new ways of saying things.

What's that? You want to know what the paragraph means?

If you click on the Related Question below, you can find links to the websites that I used to find some of those obscure idioms, by the way!

Here are the meanings of the idioms I used above:

• Pull your finger out - hurry up!
• Agony Aunt - the writer of a newspaper column where people write in and complain about their lives
• Spit the dummy - whine and cry and give up
• A hitch in your giddy-up - not feeling well
• Take the Mick (or take the Mickey) - to tease
• All beer and skittles - all fun and games
• Salad days - the best days of your life
• Thick as mince (or just thick) - not very smart at all
• Up the stick (or up the duff) - pregnant
• Up sticks - to leave
• All mouth and trousers - all talk and no action
• All hat and no cattle - the American version of the above!
• Man of parts - someone who can do many different things
  
• Man of the cloth - a clergyman
  
• Man of letters - an educated man
  
• Man on the Clapham omnibus - the average citizen
  
• Vicar of Bray - a braggart
• Young turk - a rebel
  
• Hairy at the heel - someone who is untrustworthy
• All and sundry - everything
  
• All pear-shaped - all wrong
• Wise up - get some sense or understand something
  
• She'll be apples - everything will turn out for the best
  

Reasons to study Black History:

• Anything you study makes you smarter!
• The history of African Americans has many important leaders who can help us to understand the way the world works.
• Studying the history of Blacks in America, and the slavery issue, helps us to avoid such horrible things in the future
• Human beings first developed in Africa, so studying African history is studying human history
• African culture includes such great civilizations as Egypt, Carthage, Morocco, Nubia, and Ethiopia.