The Most Effective Secret to Easily Achieve High Scores - A Summary of Exam Methods Used by Top Students

Author: Liu Chang / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-07-01
Features: Emphasizing the Review of Basic Knowledge
Basic knowledge is the foundation of the knowledge system, the key and tool for analyzing and solving problems. The deeper and more firmly one understands basic knowledge, the easier it becomes to solve fundamental problems. Mastering basic exercises not only consolidates and deepens previously learned knowledge but also lays a solid foundation for tackling complex problems.
There is a world-renowned school in Japan where most of its students are admitted to top universities. In their book The Ace of Exams—Completely Mastering Basic Knowledge, which summarizes decades of educational experience, the school writes: If you think we teach special tricks, you are mistaken. Since our founding, we have always emphasized the importance of firmly grasping basic knowledge. Without a solid foundation, no matter how hard you try, you cannot succeed. To review basic knowledge well, one must start by mastering the review outline and reviewing textbooks thoroughly. The review outline is the standard reference for comprehensive review. One must deeply understand its essence, clarify the specific requirements in various aspects, and use it to guide the entire review process—just like a technician holding a blueprint while assembling parts. Never deviate from it for even a moment. Textbooks are the foundation of learning. Only by reviewing them thoroughly can one master basic knowledge.
Take mathematics as an example. Mathematical methods and concepts are closely linked. It is hard to imagine finding clever solutions without a clear grasp of basic concepts. However, many students still neglect to start with textbooks and instead jump to various review guides or specialized collections of practice problems, treating them as treasures and believing that understanding these will give them the magic pill for exams. In reality, these are all approaches that neglect the fundamentals and may even backfire.
To illustrate this, imagine you want to grow a large tree but don’t want to put in the effort to dig up the roots. Instead, you lightly pick and pluck the branches and leaves, thinking you’ll end up with a complete tree. In the end, you’ll only get scattered branches and leaves, no matter how hard you try—you’ll never get a whole tree.
But is it enough to just study textbooks and ignore review guides and practice problem collections? Not necessarily. When textbook review reaches a certain level, and students have not only become relatively proficient in basic knowledge but also have developed a solid foundation through practice, under the guidance of teachers, browsing through one or two carefully selected review guides can further deepen their understanding of the knowledge system and enhance their grasp of it. Combining this with textbook study and then doing a variety of comprehensive exercises of different types will achieve the effect of polishing the already good and making connections through analogy.
Some students might think that the difficulty of recent exam questions has been increasing year by year, and their comprehensiveness has also been growing. Is it worth spending so much effort reviewing basic knowledge? This is a thoughtless idea lacking analysis and experience. In truth, no matter how difficult or comprehensive the questions may be, they are still just variations on the basics. In such a situation, reviewing only basic knowledge without rigorous comprehensive practice is not enough; but if one neglects basic knowledge review and prematurely focuses only on comprehensive problems, it will only lead to a superficial understanding of knowledge, creating a situation where one is neither good enough at the basics nor advanced enough in comprehensiveness.
For this reason, many schools propose the principle of starting accurately, taking steady steps, being solid, and gradually improving as the guiding philosophy for comprehensive review. Practice has proven that only in this way can comprehensive review achieve a balance between depth and breadth, yielding relatively ideal results.
During the process of reviewing basic knowledge, it is essential to emphasize understanding and avoid rote memorization. Whether in liberal arts or sciences, the starting point must be understanding. Only by truly understanding something can one grasp it firmly and apply it flexibly in practice. Knowledge learned through rote memorization is difficult to digest, easy to forget, and hard to apply in real-life situations. In fact, during comprehensive review, the workload is heavy, and the content is vast. Rote memorization alone is not enough to handle it. Only by starting with understanding, focusing on it, and supplementing it with necessary scientific memory techniques can one master the knowledge system in an organized manner and apply it effectively.
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