Being first in your class is a goal that you can work toward, but you must set it for yourself from the first day of high school. 【小题1】

Read beyond assigned reading. Following your course outline and doing all of your assigned reading are important. But to pull ahead to first rank, you also need to read books that can provide that extra information you need. 【小题2】 Prepare an extra credit report based on what you learn.

【小题3】 Don’t just physically sit in the chair. Be a part of group discussions, and volunteer for extra projects and teams. Take leadership roles whenever they’re offered. If the class has a debating team, take part in it often and come prepared with notes and references for every debate.

Ask for help when you see you need it. Balancing different classes and assignments can make it difficult to keep up in every subject. If you feel that you are having trouble grasping certain topics, don't struggle until your grades begin to slip. Turn to the teachers if necessary. 【小题4】 Show an interest in your classmates. Your teacher will notice.

Ask your teacher for extra credit assignments, particularly if you receive a disappointing grade in a subject. Don’t merely accept the mark. Do everything you can to raise it.

Stay physically fit. 【小题5】 Eat well, drink lots of water and get plenty of sleep. Spend time outdoors and away from your studies. But be disciplined(有条理的). Schedule a study period for each day and stick to it.

While Jennifer was at home taking an online exam for her business law class, a monitor a few hundred miles away was watching her every move.

Using a web camera equipped in Jennifer’s Los Angeles apartment, the monitor in Phoenix tracked how frequently her eyes moved from the computer screen and listened for the secret sounds of a possible helper in the room. Her Internet access was locked－remotely－to prevent Internet searches, and her typing style was analyzed to make sure she was who she said she was: Did she enter her student number at the same speed as she had in the past? Or was she slowing down?

In the battle against cheating, this is the cutting edge and a key to encourage honesty in the booming field of online education. The technology gives trust to the entire system, to the institution and to online education in general. Only with solid measures against cheating, experts say, can Internet universities show that their exams and diplomas are valid—that students haven’t just searched the Internet to get the right answers.

Although online classes have existed for more than a decade, the concern over cheating has become sharper in the last year with the growth of “open online courses.” Private colleges, public universities and corporations are jumping into the online education field. spending millions of dollars to attract potential students, while also taking steps to help guarantee honesty at a distance.

Aside from the web cameras, a number of other high-tech methods are becoming increasingly popular. Among them are programs that check students’ identities using personal information, such as the telephone numbers they once used.

Other programs can produce unique exams by drawing on a large list of questions and can recognize possible cheaters by analyzing whether difficult test questions are answered at the same speed as easy ones. As in many university classes, term papers are scanned against some large Internet data banks for cheating.

Today we will explore effective and ineffective ways to study for tests. You might learn that some study habits you used in the past might not be the best methods.

Rereading and highlighting (划重点) are common strategies that you will see in schools around the world. Students look at information they have already read in an effort to remember what is important. Students often combine (结合) rereading with highlighting. They underline important information in what they read.

Both rereading and highlighting are ineffective study tools. While better than not studying at all, they are not as useful as other habits. For example, with rereading, it’s maybe not that effective because you are not trying to actively get the information back. With rereading, what is going to happen is that it is going to feel like you already know the information because you’ve already read it. So, you have this sense of fluency that is leading you to think “OK, yes, I know the information.”

The problem with highlighting is that students have a false sense of understanding-similar to when they reread information. Also, there is a second problem that comes with highlighting. Students aren’t always aware of what the most important information is. So it’s possible that they are maybe highlighting details that aren’t as important as the higher level concepts.

So what should you do if rereading and highlighting are not the best ways to study for a test? One idea is to test yourself. Simple flashcards and practice exams can be helpful when you want to make sure that you have learned something.

Another strategy is to practice remembering the new information over time, instead of doing everything all at once. Regardless of which strategy you choose, you should know that effective learning takes time and it takes effort.

The next time you have a test coming, try to plan for the big day so that you can give yourself time to develop different study habits. And remember, rereading and highlighting are better than not studying at all, but there are better methods out there!