Understanding Your Own Reading Pattern (Part 1)

"During my university days, I had stayed with two of my friends in the same room with me. Coincidentally we were are all in the same faculty. There is this belief that those who don't leave their hostel to read in the main campus especially at night are laggard. Been in my first year then, I never wanted to be tagged " a laggard" as I knew what I stand for but also I didn't really want to go the main campus with them because I felt it is not my thing to read in the campus as I felt more comfortable reading in the room when all had gone to bed.

So on that fateful day, I reluctantly followed my peers to the campus after much Persuasion to read throughout the night. We left at about 9.32pm that fateful day and I was heavily kitted with my armoury of academic materials which included voluminous physics text book by Halliday and my engineering mathematics. I had hope that I would cover as much with motivation of my peers when we get to the campus.

On getting to the campus, a female friend to my room mate came to join us asking for clarification on key areas she couldn't understand, after putting her through for over one hour. We then faced our book to unravel the business of the day. I barely read for one hour when "the call of mother nature" descended heavily on me. I tried standing and walking around all to no avail. I convinced myself to rest my head for about 30 minutes to refresh my brain. And that was how I found myself sleeping the whole night there. I even used the voluminous physics as a pillow support! When I woke up around 5.00a.m , I was angry with myself and I knew I had wasted my time."

Everyone must understand we have different body chemistry as what works for the goose might not work for the gander. Know what works for you and the best time you can gain maximum productivity from your brain while study.

I hope to deliberate more on this in the part 2.

Spelling Deterioration in our Educational System Today

Have you wondered why the level of English language is going down in Nigeria. Even with high level exposure of students to improved facilities and modern ICT technologies in the educational sector.

I must say that even though the increased use of mobile devices has been commendable to assist in communication and perform other utilities in key areas , it has also done a lot of damage to the spelling philosophy and vocabulary of the students.

A common example is the social media which encourage people to write in an informal way and in short forms just to catch up with time in communicating with their peers on the other end. Spellings like "should" has been mutilated to "shud" or "shd", also "you" is commonly typed as "u" and so on. SMS has also be marked as one of tools that encourage mutilated spellings. People are often encouraged to either shorten their words so that they don't pay more by optimizing the space and reducing number of pages or they are in a hurry to send out such messages or just their culture of writing on mobile devices.

Due to the fact that majority of the students are more friendly to these devices than their books and study materials, they replicate these spelling pattern inadvertently in their normal school activities, thereby giving rise to a generation of students with poor mastery of their vocabulary.

Lessons Learnt: No matter, how slow you are in typing or writing, it is best you get it right from onset and then work on your speed later. Avoid shortening of words in both formal and informal communication , it can affect your communication skills without you knowing it.