Last minute revision, last minute studying, last minute cramming is all the terms that comprise the

same meaning. They are synonym in the student life. Being a student will definitely do the last minute revision no matter how hard you try to manage your time wisely. They say that, its better late than never to study in order to confront with exams and tests. But, no matter how it is done, last minute revision bring lots of negative effects which is lack of quality sleep, depression, physical side effects, less quality results, cramming and cause of spacing effects.

Staying up late wont help you study better plus if it is done last minute. One will suffer because of good quality sleep. Imagine a student has to sit for an exam the next day, so instead paying attention the class and study early, the student start cramming. While cramming, they took the quality time to sleep and force themselves to study. UA (University of Arizona) doctor, students agree that all-nighters better than nothing, but not by much. Findings of a study conducted at Harvard Medical School show that all-night study sessions may have a negative effect on students' grades - which does not come as a surprise to UA sleep experts. "This is nothing new," said Dr. Colin Bamford, director of the UA neurophysiology and sleep lab. "Every study to date has shown that, and I would expect this one to mirror the others." The Harvard study's control group slept regularly for four days, while the variable group was deprived of sleep for the first night. At the end of the four-day cycle, the two groups were tested on image recognition - and the group that got less sleep performed more poorly, because sleep deprivation has a negative effect on the cortex, the part of the brain which is responsible for storing information. Different individuals need different amounts of sleep, Bamford said. While one person may only need seven or eight hours of sleep, somebody else may need more. Whether someone is a "short sleeper" or a "long sleeper," the key factor is how much sleep is missed, not how much is obtained. More than an hour off of a person's normal sleep schedule may begin to affect memory retention, Bamford said.

Last minute revision will also cause depression due to the fact that one has to memorize so many facts and data. It is important to spend time on memorizing vital information in certain subjects such as History, Geography. Memory is also essential for solving Mathematics problem. If one cant focus while memorizing or spend such limited amount of time in studying or force to memorize, it will cause a depression and confusion which lead to blank brain where you dont know what to do at that time. You will be feeling so depress and feel sorry for yourself. Staying up late for last minute revision also bring a lot of bad side effects. These are the signs that one has been staying up late studying plus if the person always do cramming; More pimples Panda Eye black circle around the eye Big eyes bag Always scrawny Etc.

So, for girls out there, if you dont want to look old than your current age, please manage your study time wisely to avoid those symptoms.

Generally, cramming never brings the best out of us. You have to push yourself to the limit to memorize notes, data and facts. It is not good for your memory because you were massed presentation. Andres Ideus, a Pima Community College student visiting the UA campus, agreed with Bamford. "I'd say it would benefit your grade as an alternative to doing nothing, but probably the worst of the options you have," he said. Thus, cramming give us the less quality answer while answering papers.

Cramming will become a bad habit if it is not curbed. Bamford recommended studying prior to the night before a big test. If a student has studied regularly beforehand, he said, one last night of cramming would not make a difference in the grade. However, if a student doesn't know the material at all, Bamford said it is still better go into a test sleep-deprived rather than not knowing any of the information - meaning that the all-nighter will probably continue to be a staple of college life. In psychology, the spacing effect refers fact that humans more easily remember items in a list when they are studied a few times over a long period of time ("spaced presentation"), rather than studied repeatedly in a short period time ("massed presentation"). The phenomenon was first identified by Hermann Ebbinghaus; his detailed study of it was published in the 1885 book Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology. This robust phenomenon has been found in many explicit memory tasks such as free recall, recognition, cued-recall, and frequency estimation. Practically, these effects suggests that "cramming" (intense, last-minute studying the night before an exam is not likely to be as effective as studying at intervals over a much longer span of time. However, the benefit of spaced presentations does not appear at short retention intervals; that is, at short retention intervals, massed presentations lead to better memory performance than spaced presentations. Several possible explanations of the spacing effect have been offered. According to the deficient processing view, massed repetitions lead to deficient processing of the second presentation - that we simply do not pay much attention to the later presentations (Hintzman et al., 1973). However, according to the encoding variability view, spaced repetition is likely to entail some variability in presentation; under massed repetitions, however, the corresponding memory prepresentations are similar and relatively indiscriminable. The robustness of the phenomenon and its resistance to experimental manipulation have made empirical testing of its parameters difficult.

Finally, a theory that has gained a lot of traction recently is the studyphase retrieval theory. This theory assumes that the first presentation is retrieved at the time of the second. This leads to an elaboration of the first memory trace. Cramming/ last minute revision do not yield advantages because the first trace is active at the time of the second, so it is not retrieved or elaborated much. Bamford recommended studying prior to the night before a big test. If a student has studied regularly beforehand, Bamford said, one last night of cramming would not make a difference in the grade.

SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacing_effect http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/94/91/01_2_m.html

INSTITUT PENDIDIKAN GURU MALAYSIA KAMPUS TAWAU

ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROFIENCY
NAMA : AMIRAH BINTI AZMI : SYAFAZIELA BINTI BADRI : MUNIRAHBINTI AWANG NO MATRIK : 5590 : : KUMPULAN UNIT PENSYARAH PEMBIMBING TARIKH SERAHAN : PISMP ( JANUARI 2009) : PEMULIHAN : ENCIK THILLAI RAMAN A/L SUBRAMANIAM : 15 APRIL 2009