【推荐3】Science can help you improve your study methods. For more than 100 years，psychologists have done research on which study habits work best.     1     . Here are 4 tips to improve your study habits.

Nate Kornell，a psychologist at Williams College，thinks it's a good idea to study the day before a big test.     2    . Instead，space out those study sessions. Kornell compares our memory to water in a bucket that has a small leak. Try to refill the bucket while it's still full，and you can't add much more water. Allow time between study sessions，and some of the material may drip out of your memory. But then you'll be able to relearn it and learn more in your next study session.

Musicians practice their instruments. Athletes practice sports skills.     3    . "If you want to be able to remember information，the best thing you can do is practice，" says Katherine Rawson. She's a psychologist at Kent State University in Ohio. In one 2013 study，students took practice tests over several weeks. On the final test，they scored more than a full letter grade better，on average，than students who studied the way they normally had.

Nebel's preferred study habit is one of the best way. Before big tests，Nebel's mom quizzed her on the material. “Now I know that was retrieval（检索）practice，”she says. As Nebel got older，she quizzed herself. “    4    ，” Nebel suggests. “Put questions on one side and the answers on the other side and try to quiz yourself the way the teacher asks questions，”she adds.

It's hard to remember a string of facts and figures if you don't push further. Ask why things are a certain way. How did they come about？Why do they matter？Psychologists call this elaboration. It's taking class material and asking a lot of how and why questions about it. This helps you combine new information with other things you know. And it creates a bigger network in your brain of things that relate to one another，she says.     5    .

【推荐1】GET YOUR DEGREE AT HOME

Have you ever wondered what a Degree might be worth to you in your job or career? It means a lot of Americans with an Associate Degree average nearly $10,000 more in yearly earning than those with just a High School Diploma.

Harcourt Learning Direct offers you a way to get a Specialized Associate Degree in 11 of today’s growing fields—without having to go to college full time. With Harcourt, you study at home, in your spare time—so you don’t have to give up your present job while you train for a better one. Choose from exciting majors like Business Management, Accounting, Dressmaking & Design, Bookkeeping, Photography, Computer Science, Engineering, and more!

Your training includes everything you need!

Books, lessons, learning aids—even professional—quality tools and equipment—everything you need to master your training and more ahead to a new career is included in the low tuition price you pay.

Your education is nationally recognized!

Nearly 2,000 American companies — including General Electric, IBM, Mobile, General Motors, Ford, and many others — have used our training for their employees. If companies like these recognize the value of our training, you can be sure that employees in your area will, too!

Earn your degree in as little as two years! Get a career diploma in just six months.

The career of your dreams is closer than you think! Even if you have no experience before, you can get valuable job skills in today’s hottest fields! Step-by-step lessons make learning easy. Prepare for promotions, pay raises, even start a business of your own!

Send today for FREE information about Harcourt at home training! Simply fill in your name and address on the coupon above. Then write in the name and number of the one program you’re most interested in, and mail it today. We’ll rush your free information about how you can take advantage of the opportunities in the field you’ve chosen. Act today! Mail coupon today!

Or call the number below

1-800-372-1589 Call any time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

www.Harcourt-learning.com

E-mail: Harcourt@learning.com

【推荐3】Not setting homework can be impossible in certain situations. There are many arguments in favor of homework, and most teachers would agree with many, if not all, of the following: homework is a perfect opportunity to go over calmly what was done with the teacher, and rethink and develop that initial input; homework offers a moment for students to work as individuals and develop learner self-governance outside the classroom; students and parents expect homework to be set and to be corrected. Nevertheless, the drawbacks that homework may have are often overlooked.

There are two key issues which need to be raised when dealing with the concept of homework. Firstly, there is the question of home. Often homework is not done at home at all, but at a friend’s house, on the street, on the bus on the way to class or sitting on the step outside school before it opens. What’s more, all too often, for it to be done effectively at home, homework requires the participation and involvement of other adults. Parents play a crucial role in a child’s education, but they can t always be available, for a number of very valid reasons, and a tutor’s ability to aid, guide, encourage and simply organize a son or daughter s study may be limited in many ways. The implication are unsetting: if homework is crucial to success in class, some children have an automatic disability.

Considering the second part of the compound noun opens up further questions. If the idea of home can be problematic, so too can the concept of work. Again, this will depend enormously on the context but, very often there is a lot of work put in. Demands on their time and attention span(持续时间)and all sorts of other impositions mean homework is usually something to get out of the way, to be ticked off as done, with the exercises completed as fast as possible. It is not always seen as useful times spent developing and strengthening what is done in class but, rather, as something quickly finished to keep the teacher at bay. It might be correct or not, copied from a friend or cut and pasted from the internet, but the important thing is that a teacher sees the exercise completed and, as a result, the task achieved: how much effort went into that result is not always appreciated or easy to evaluate and, even when work clearly falls below standard, and the mere fact of its having been done is often good enough. Teacher and students are happy because everyone has officially fulfilled their commitment.

The ideal that students go home, think back to what they did with their teacher, use the great resources their books and the internet provide to revise, reflect and put everything they have seen in class in place, into action, into practice, does not often happen with some students.

【推荐3】For centuries, artists usually give people an impression: they are the “Starving Artists”, struggling to make ends meet. Henri Murger proved that. He was born the son of a doorman in France. Living in Paris, he was surrounded by creative geniuses (天才) and dreamed of joining them, but he grew upset with his failure to earn money.

In 1847, Murger published a book. It’s a collection of stories about poverty, which launched the concept of the “Starving Artists” into the public’s understanding as the model for a creative life. To this day, it continues to exist as the model for what we imagine when we think of the word “artist”.

Today, what we forget is that the story of the “Starving Artist” is, in fact, just an imaginary story. Due to the power of the concept in Murger’s book, many of us just want to become lawyers instead of writers, bankers instead of poets, and doctors instead of painters. Nobody wants to struggle financially for a lifetime.

In the early Renaissance (文艺复兴), artists did not have reputations for being diligent workers. They were considered manual laborers, receiving small amounts of money for their work. Michelangelo Buonarroti, however, changed all that. He was not only a master sculptor but also the most affluent artist of his time. He established (确立) the idea that an artist could become financially successful.

Michelangelo did not need to starve for his creations, and neither do you. When we hear the tales and warnings about what it means to be an artist, we must understand an important truth — you don’t have to starve and you might as well make a living from your creative talents.