Improve Your Planning Skills to Perform Better in College

Improve Your Planning Skills to Perform Better in College College can become a great struggle if you dont know how to balance your school, social life and probably a job. The ability to manage yourself and resources available to you, such as time and circumstances, determines your academic performance. If you want to be a successful and confident learner, you need to improve your planning skills. Why? Because planning and prioritizing will help you stay focused on the most important tasks and complete them on schedule. Here are a few simple tips on how to become more efficient by improving your planning skills. 1. Identify Critical Tasks First of all, you need to determine the most important tasks to make sure that they are done first. Accurately think about the crucial activities to be carried out during a day: maybe you have a scheduled meeting with your professor, a rehearsal with your band, need to conduct a research for your case study or write an urgent essay for your English class. It might be challenging to do it at first but as the time passes, youll be able to define the most relevant tasks among all other daily activities. 2. Arrange Tasks in a Logical Order To accomplish all the tasks that are assigned to you, you need to arrange them in a correct order. List all the things that should be done, the approximate time for their completion and the deadline. Then structure them in the following way: start from the smallest tasks that dont take much time and proceed with the more difficult and time-consuming ones. Do not immediately jump into doing a big task, it will just discourage you. Until you see that you have a lot of things to do, youll be overwhelmed. 3. Establish Priorities You need to differentiate between urgent, important and unimportant tasks. For instance, your essay with a one-day deadline is an urgent task. Starting to make a research for your paper is an important task but not critical. Watching a movie is an unimportant activity for your college performance, unless you need to write a movie review. You need to sort tasks by their significance for your academic success. 4. Create â€Å"To-Do† Lists By making organized â€Å"to-do† lists, youll be able to prioritize the things you need to do, keep track of what should be still accomplished and feel productive and prepared in all areas of your student life. To-do lists come in different shapes and forms, so its all about what works for you. There is a variety of apps that help create a personal to-do list or you can write information by hand to remember it better. Just make sure that your list is simple, specific and displayed in a prominent place to remind you of what is important. 5. Organize Personal Time for Your Responsibilities While planning, you need to find some time for your personal needs and responsibilities. Make sure that you always schedule such things as phone calls to your family, eating out with friends, shopping, etc. Your daily schedule should be realistic and include time for eating, sleeping and going out. If you just plan time for accomplishing the academic assignments, you will become exhausted very soon and wont be able to manage your workload. 6. Work Step-By-Step Working step-by-step will help you achieve a better output. If you have a systematic workflow and follow it, youll be more organized. Check your to-do list from time to time to make certain that you are on track and always cross out the tasks you have already completed. The feeling of progress will motivate you to do quality work in a faster way. 7. Remember the 6 Ps of Planning Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance. Planning skills are important in everything you do. A person who is organized can deal with all the tasks more effectively in less time. Once you start developing your planning skills, youll see how a more productive student you become. You want to complete everything faster, dont you? Then force yourself to plan! If you need help in creating long-term plans, check out our infographics on How to Write a 5 Year Plan.

Collocations With Money for ESL Learners

Collocations With Money for ESL Learners An important step to improving your English vocabulary is to not only learn the appropriate terms but to learn the words that commonly go together with those terms. These word combinations are often, adjective noun, verb noun, and noun verb pairs. Each of these collocation sheets provide collocations for commonly used words arranged into categories. Each collocation is illustrated with an example sentence. Adjectives + "Money" The following list includes adjectives that are commonly used with the noun money. Adjectives that are similar in meaning are grouped together. Each adjective or adjective group has an example sentence to illustrate usage. easy He thinks working in marketing is easy money. I think hell find its quite a different story. bonus, extra If you complete the project before next Tuesday, therell be some bonus money. hard-earned The best way to feel good about any purchase is if its been made with hard-earned money. government, public, taxpayers Its not right to waste taxpayers money on projects that benefit those who are already wealthy. pocket, spending Would you like a little extra pocket money this weekend? gas, lunch, petrol, rent, etc Could you lend me some lunch money today? prize, grant, scholarship They won a lot of grant money for their research into DNA. stolen, dirty, bribe, ransom I dont want your dirty money! hush, protection That gang is demanding protection money from every store on the street. Its scandalous! pension, retirement We plan to move to Hawaii with our retirement money. counterfeit, fake The police discovered more than $2 million in fake money. Verb + "Money" The following list includes verbs that are commonly followed by the noun money or an amount of a particular type of money or currency. Verbs that are similar in meaning are grouped together. Each verb or verb group has an example sentence to illustrate usage. coin, print The government printed a lot of money in 2001. count Lets count your money and see if you have enough to buy that. bring in, earn, make, The company brought in more than $4 million. borrow Could I borrow some money for this weekend? lend Ill lend you some money until next month. bank, deposit, pay in, pay into the bank, put in the bank I deposited a large amount of money last Friday. draw out, get out, take out, withdraw She took $500 out of our account. pay out, shell out, spend They paid out more than $300 dollars for that lamp. fritter away, squander, throw away I hate it when you squander our savings! hoard, save, set aside, stash away They set aside $200 each week for savings. contribute, donate, give They donated more than $200,000 to charity last year. give back, pay back, refund, repay Ill pay you back the money by the end of next week. owe She owes Thomas a lot of money. share Lets share the money weve found! accept, take Im afraid I cant accept your money. be worth That painting is worth a lot of money. change, exchange Id like to change twenty dollars, please. Could you give me four five dollar bills? allocate, earmark The committee decided to allocate $50,000 for the project. channel, direct, funnel The program directs more than $5 billion to help the homeless. embezzle, extort, siphon off, steal He was charged with embezzling money from the company. launder They used the internet to launder the stolen money. "Money" + Verb The following list includes verbs that commonly follow the noun money. Verbs that are similar in meaning are grouped together. Each verb or verb group has an example sentence to illustrate usage. come from something Money for the exhibit comes from donations to the museum. go to something The money goes to research. come in, flow in, pour in The money just kept pouring in! It was amazing! buy something Who says that money cant buy happiness? "Money" + Noun The following list includes nouns that commonly follow the noun money. Nouns that are similar in meaning are grouped together. Each noun or noun group has an example sentence to illustrate usage. management, manager I think you should hire a money manager for your savings. supply The money supply is very tight at the moment. order You can pay by money order. Phrases With "Money" The following list includes phrases made with the noun money. Each phrase has an example sentence to illustrate usage. bet money on something Lets bet $400 dollars on the race. get money off something Ask if you can get some money off the display model. get your moneys worth Make sure to spend the whole day at the park to get your moneys worth. on the money Your prediction was on the money! the smart money is on The smart money is on Tom for the directors position. throw money at something Dont just throw money at the project. Make sure you demand results. throw your money around Peter throws his money around like it meant nothing.