If you couldn t understand something, what would you do

1. Sometimes reading it again will help

Sometimes it really is that simple. The information doesn’t all find its way into your brain the first time, and you need to read it through a couple of times so that you can really focus on the words and understand what they mean. Often taking notes helps too, because if you write something in your own words, it’s easier for you to remember it. The same applies when you explain the thing to someone else – it reinforces what you have already learned. But sometimes, reading the same piece of information again and again doesn’t help. The words are just words – lots of words – and they don’t convey the meaning to you.

Maybe it’s a bad explanation. Maybe the information is being explained in a way that doesn’t work for you. Either way, rereading it won’t help. You need to find another strategy.

2. Ask questions

I will always do my best to explain things to students, but it helps if I know when they haven’t understood something. Sometimes as teachers we know when people aren’t following what we’re saying, but we’re only human and not mind-readers. How you ask will depend on what you’re learning, how big the group is, or how confident you feel. But if you haven’t understood something, it’s best to ask for clarification, or to go through it again, before the next lesson comes around and you’re building on the information that you haven’t understood. If that piece of information is important for the whole module or activity, you’ll struggle with whatever comes next.

It’s much better to say that you don’t understand something than to struggle on in silence. Maybe there are other people who haven’t understood it either!

3. Figure out the best time for you to learn

I mean the best time for you to study on your own. Are you a night owl or an early morning lark? Asking me to use my brain before about the third cup of coffee rarely ends well! I can manage simple admin tasks, but anything that is really hard is better left till later in the day when I’m more awake and focussed. You may have the opposite problem. You might be wide awake first thing, then struggle to focus as the day goes on and you become more and more tired.

Get to know what works for you, and try and work to your strengths, especially when you have to tackle something that you know will be harder for you.

4. Take good notes

I’m not going to tell you how to take good notes – it’s different for everyone. But whatever you do, it needs to be meaningful for you. Don’t expect your brain to be like a big sponge and absorb everything. If you note down the key facts, it will help you when you come back to revise the material later.

Also, if you’re having trouble understanding something, it will make it easier for you to pinpoint exactly where the problem is or what you haven’t understood. Then it will be easier for someone else to help you – either by filling in the gap, or explaining if you have misunderstood something.

5. Ask someone who knows the answer

This is what I ended up doing a couple of times during my course. I’m lucky because my partner understands the material that I am studying, and sometimes he explains things better than the book. His explanations are more logical – to me anyway – and he approaches things in a different way. It’s the same material. It’s the same knowledge that I need to complete the self-assessment questions afterwards. It’s just that his way of explaining the concept worked better for me. I didn’t do this all the time, but there were at least two points where I was stuck, asked him to help, and then understood what I needed to do so that I could complete the task on my own. Rereading the material wouldn’t have helped. I remember doing this at school. Sometimes one of my friends would ask me to explain the homework.. I didn’t do it for her, but I explained it in a different way – maybe a less complicated way – so that she understood the task, or why we had to do things in a certain way (the joys of German grammar rules!) I do it in my job now – especially when companies send their staff on expensive courses where the teachers won’t or can’t speak German. Sometimes people just need a bit of help to understand the exercise before they can actually do it.

So it doesn’t have to be your teacher. Do you know someone who could explain the thing that you don’t understand in a different way?

6. Don’t learn like a parrot

I was guilty of this at school, especially in maths. I didn’t always understand what we were doing, but I have a pretty good short-term memory and could memorise the steps we needed to take to solve a problem or get to the answer.
That was fine – as long as the questions in the exam were exactly like the ones in the textbook. But if anything changed, I wasn’t able to adapt the process in my head to the new situation, because I didn’t really understand it in the first place. I’d just memorised a sequence of steps. This isn’t really learning, and it won’t help if you are expected to be able to apply your knowledge in other situations.

7. It’s not you

One of the most important things is for me to say “don’t give up” and “don’t just assume that you have a problem”. Sometimes the explanation in the book, or the way that a teacher explains something, is really confusing. If we take the example of my course, most of the material is really good, but there was someone else who had struggled with the explanation that caused me problems. She asked someone else too. Maybe the explanation could have been better. Or maybe we just think in a similar way, and not in the same way as the person who wrote the materials. People learn differently. Also, rather than focussing on a solution such as “how am I going to fix this problem”, it’s easy to let the emotions take over. You can end up thinking “I’m just no good at…” or “I’ll never understand this” or “I’m the only one who is struggling with…” Not understanding something can affect our confidence. It makes us feel insecure because we don’t understand what’s going on, or which steps we need to take. That is normal, but it’s good if you can try and come up with a plan before those thoughts get the chance to take root and make you miserable.

How about you? Do you have any strategies for what you do when you don’t understand something? Let us know in the comments.

Also, if you’re learning English and you’d like some more one-to-one help with understanding things, have a look at my English lessons page.

More from English with Kirsty

If you would like more articles like this and other news from English with Kirsty to be delivered straight to your inbox, you can sign up for my monthly newsletter.

 Speaker 1:

This audio is used for the transcriber test at GoTranscript. And yes, you do have to type it.

Speaker 2:

This treatise will exhibit a bunch of easy methods of detecting fraudulent added adulteration of food and other stuff classed among the necessaries or luxuries of the table, and put the unwary on their guard against the use of such commodities, as are contaminated with substances deleterious to help that GoTranscript. Every sensible monarch is aware that bread, beer, wine and other substances employed in domestic economy are frequently met with in an adulterated state. The late convictions of numerous individuals for counterfeiting and adulterating tea, coffee, bread, Beer, pepper. GoTranscript guidelines and other articles of diet are still fresh in the memory of the public to such perfection of ingenuity has the system of counterfeiting and adulterating various commodities of life arrived in this country that spurious articles are everywhere to be found in the market and GoTranscript made up so skillfully as to elude the discrimination of the most experienced churches. of all possible nefarious traffic and deception practice by mercenary de Lis, though that of adulterating the articles intended for human food with ingredients deleterious to health is the most clear mental and has to just discussed every ordinary person other than Nosferatu. Numerous facts are on record of human food contaminated with poisonous ingredients having been vented to GoTranscript. The annals of medicine record tragical events ensuing from the use of such food. The eager and insatiable thirst for gain is proof against the prohibitions and penalties, even if they're enumerated in the good transcript guidelines. The possible sacrifice of our fellow creatures life is a secondary consideration among unprincipled dealers. However invidious the office may appear, and however painful the duty may be of exposing the names of individuals who have been convicted of poisoning food, it was necessary that cases should be addressed in their support. I have carefully avoided citing anything from the GoTranscript guidelines, except those which are authenticated in Parliament, dirty documents and other public records. To render this treatise still more useful. I have always also animate verted on certain material errors, sometimes unconsciously. Committed to accidental ignorance in private families and that GoTranscript during the preparation of various articles of food and of delicacies for the table, stating the experimental proceedings necessary for the detection of the fraud, which it has been my object to expose, I have confined myself to the task of pointing out such operations only as maybe performed by persons and acquainted with chemical science. It has been my purpose to express all necessary GoTranscript guidelines in the plain language divested of those recondite terms of science, which would be out of place in a work intended for general preview. So, if the views hidden should induce a single the reader to pursue the object for which it is published. My work will have been done. The main thing I want to do is impress upon the minds of GoTranscript transcribers that, contrary to what Dr. Tim Leary may have said, that is dead. In that airport for the abolition of such nefarious practices, it is in the interest of all classes of the community to cooperate fully.

Speaker 1:

This audio is used for the transcriber test at GoTranscript.

1) If you couldn’t understand something, what would you do?

a) Mark that word as unintelligible with the specified time [unintelligible 00:00:13].

b) Skip this word as it wasn’t said at all.

c) Make up your own markings and guess the word according to the context.

2) I met ____ in Lithuania.

a) Jane

b) JANE

c) jane

3) If there is a sentence, “Last month, I went to Warsaw, the capital of Poland’’ but a speaker pronounces it as Varshav, how will you transcribe the name of the capital?

a) Warsaw.

b) Warsaw, Warshaw, Varshav. All the options are acceptable.

c) Varshav. Transcribe the way it sounds.

d) Warshaw.

4) If the quality of audio or video Úles is horrible, what do you have to do?

a) If the audio is inaudible, let the support know about this case. GoTranscript will contact the client and provide him with the refund.

b) Just do your best and try to work on it regardless.

c) If many parts are simply unintelligible due to the accents or topic, leave the file for other people who may provide quality work.

5) A customer dictates instruction on how to transcribe audio. Do you have to transcribe the instruction word for word?

a) Instruction for spoken directions (new paragraph, comma, period) should only be followed unless a client specifies otherwise.

b) Instruction should be followed AND transcribed.

c) Instruction should be transcribed.

6) If a speaker made a grammatical error in the sentence “I saw one children”, how would you transcribe it?

a) “I saw one childrens [sic].

b) I saw one children [sic].

c) I saw one children.

7) My eyes ___ blue.

a) was

b) be

c) are

d) is

8) Which of the following, slang words or spoken contractions, should be transcribed in a Clean Verbatim Úle the way it is said?

a) Spoken contractions

b) None

c) Slang words

9) Which sentence is correctly capitalized and punctuated?

a) yes, Ana. You can. do this

b) Yes, Ana. You can do this.

c) yes, Ana. You can. do this

d) Yes Ana. You can do this.

10) If there is an ‘et cetera’ in the audio, what should you do?

a) Leave ‘et cetera’ out.

b) Transcribe it as etc.

c) Transcribe ‘et cetera’ as a part of the audio.