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So far we’ve touched upon 3 major skills students need to succeed, that schools unfortunately don’t teach.

Recapping, the first 3 skills are:

1. Goal Setting and Having Clearly Defined Goals

2. Time Management

3. Knowing How to Be Organized

Without these 3 skills, students won’t be able to duplicate successful results. Their efforts would produce hit or miss results with the worst case scenario being the demotivation of the student. It’s important to teach students these skills at a very early age so they could master these skills as they grow up. However, anyone could master these skills at any age.

Now lets get into 3 more skills students need that are elemental to their success.

4. Note Taking.

Note taking is definitely an essential skill students need. There are very few of us who could retain all the information they hear in a lecture. That’s why note taking is one of the key skills students need to possess. Note taking skills are important to have because there’s just too much information to remember when you’re listening to a lesson or instructions. By taking notes you could highlight important points that the teacher puts emphasis on and you’ll be able to keep all that information in one place. Another benefit of note taking is that the notes are written in your own words. There are countless times I remember reading a section in a textbook and not understanding what in the world the section was talking about, but when you write notes in class while the teacher is reviewing a particular topic, you could write the explanation in your own words for your own understanding. There are many techniques for note taking that’ll be discussed in future posts, but its essential to have the right state of mind that note taking is definitely an important skill students need.

5.  Taking notes is only half the work, Effective Reading is the other half.

What is Academic Reading? To put it simply, academic reading is a style of reading with the main purpose being to retain the information you’re reading. It’s unlike reading fiction because when you’re reading a story your main goal is to follow along and understand the events that take place. However, reading a textbook requires a much different style. When reading a textbook, you’re required to understand and retain the information being read in order to recall it from memory at a later time. If you’re required by your teacher to read a text, you’re going to need to know it.  Academic Reading is one of the important beginning steps to internalizing information which is the only way you could be really sure of understanding something in a complete and deeper sense.

6. Test Preparation is the culminating skill that brings together and applies all the other 5 skills mentioned.

So you’ve been told you have a test scheduled…. Now what? What’s your plan? What study material do you have? How much time do you have to study before the test? What material will the test cover? These are all questions you should be asking yourself the moment you know there’s an exam scheduled. Everything you do to prepare for the exam should fall under the answers to these questions. An important question most people have about test preparation is – How do you know if you’re ready for the exam? To be honest, there are two answers to that question that are complete opposites of one another.

A. You’ll never really know if you’re ready because you don’t know what the questions on the exam are. You might have missed something important while studying or even left out something insignificant that turns up on the exam. The only thing you can do is try your best. If you try your best, you will be more than happy with the results. Even if you don’t do great, you won’t beat yourself up over not putting in enough effort because deep down inside yourself you know you’ve tried your best.

B. You will know when you are ready. No one can describe the feeling of being ready for the exam except those that are. When everything you look at in relation to the material covered on the exam looks familiar to you, you will get this sense of confidence that you are fully prepared for the exam. Once you get the feeling that you’ve reviewed and internalized all of the material covered on the exam, you will be ready to take the test.

These are 6 skills students need that schools don’t teach. I’m sure there’s many more though. It’s essential that students are prepared to tackle their education and create their own success by using these skills. If you encounter academic problems or are having trouble doing well in a class, start by going over these 6 skills and asking yourself whether you’re lacking in any of them. It’s important to be honest with yourself when checking to see if you’re lacking in these skills because your goal is to enhance your performance.

If you feel like you’re using these skills efficiently but are still only seeing mediocre results, then ask yourself whether you need a tutor. Tutors are great at helping you achieve your desired results because they have the know how and the experience to bring out the best in every student. I talk about 8 Signs You Need A Tutor – HERE.

Read Part 1: 6 Skills Students Need That Schools Dont Teach (Part 1)

I’d love to know of any more skills you believe are important that schools don’t teach, so comment on them below.

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