Best study methods/options

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I am creating a new thread for this because I think this may become a long one so please excuse this [mods/admin]. Studying for the A+ has been a widely discussed topic on the many forums I subscribe to and I would like to discuss it here to get more opinions and ideas.

First of, I am being told that in order to pass this exam I should halt and put aside all of the "practical" stuff and only concentrate on the book, when I am finished with the book and hopefully have passed the exan THEN I can apply what I have learnt, what say you guys to this please?

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Personally, and i dont think i will be the only one saying this, but IMO they should both go hand in hand.

Read a chapter of the book, then while still fresh in your mind apply what you have just learnt practically.

I think you will find that this method will help you to understand what you are reading.

You will find that if you are planning on progressing onto the Microsoft exams then Hands-On labs tend to play a very big part.

 

i agree, i think the theory should go with the practicial, say you learn about dynamanic disk, do it in real life (in a sim), at least then you get the "feel" of things...

 

I also agree that practise goes hand-in-hand with reading.

As I'm now getting on a bit (where's that zimmer gone...) I find it helps a great deal to do them together.

Harry.

 

When studying I find it best to go for one chapters worth of information per day. Somedays it sinks in, somedays it doesnt and you have to re-read and re-read again before it sinks in. Once I've read the chapter once I'll read it again and make notes on it. Then I will either A) try to apply in my lab what I have read in the chapter, or B) Use the power of t'Internet to expand what my core text says on the subject and clarify my understanding of the subject.

Never try to take in too much information at once though!

 

Yes, this is how I'd prefer to do things, both theory and practical chapter by chapter. I am having trouble creating Index cards though because Meyers has the info spread out so I make a card at the end of chapter 2 on CPU and then have to redo it in chapter 3 and so on, that's one problem for me.

I am thinking of just reading through the entire book just to get a general knowledge and familiarize myself with everything without doing any specific memorizing of chapter by chapter stuff, when I am finished with the book then go chapter by chapter back from the beginning and make the notes and memorize, this a good idea?

 

What i do it finish the chapter then do all the practices and related hands-on while its still fresh.. also the mind seems to retain more if you actually do it.. like if i need to be aware of errors for example ill cause the error to happen to see how and why it happened and then fix it! Come exam time i know everything about that error!

 

I am guessing this will work only for a "few" things as I am up to page 135 and I don't see anything that I can do hands-on? All of this stuff is mainly memorizing.

 

mike, I'm getting back in pc's ater a lay off and have been reading the Myers all in one (which is the book I assume your working from) and have found that the more practical aspects of the book do come later on. The first few chapters are mainly a historical look back at the various incarnations of the major pieces of a computer. Great for me as I need to know all that I've missed but maybe a tedious exercise if your fairly fluent with the major workings of a pc.

I've been volunteering time with my IT dept. and that's been excellent as things have come up that I've read and been able to put a practical slant on, even stuff that normally wouldn't. So I'd say mix up the study with some practical fiddling!

 

sorry havent got my copy infront of me.. what have you covered?

 

It's great to know that I can get to do some level of practical stuff [thanks] as I am not keen on memorizing or cramming this entire book with over 1,000 pages.

Only covered, the insides of a pc, Microprocessors and RAM so far and didn't see anything practical to do as of yet.

Lord Deckard has raised an interesting point in the other thread which is, I had looked at the objectives before purchasing the Meyers book and did not pay attention to it anytime afterwards because it gives only an outline and I had thought that the Meyers book would cover ONLY what would be coming on the exam, I am enjoying the Meyers book but still would like to get a course which deals strictly with the exam, this way I can know exactly what to study for the exam and what would be deemed as extra research?

 

Mike, as you progress in IT you will find that there is no such thing as a study guide that exactly reflects the content of the exam. For the Microsoft certs, you need at least two or more books plus other sources to fill in the gaps. This is where the Internet and especially Technet and all those long white papers and RFCs come into play.

 

So this means that I will have to study "more" than what's in this book? Right now I am covering RAM and there are so many different terms [RDRAM, DDRRAM e.t.c] it's really getting on my freakin' nerves, how in the hell am I supposed to remember all of them?

 

You will - eventualy. Anybody dealing with fixing PCs has to know the memory types in order to be able to upgrade or replace it!

Harry.

 

Sorry guys, it's been a very loooong week, just very tired now and venting my frustrations, next week I will have to come up with some type of system to remember all of those RAM abbreviations and their meanings, in the same way that this link from Malnomates

http://www.umlandt.com/CPUs_summary.doc

has everything listed, does anyone have a similar link for RAM abbreviations?

 

Don't fret Mike!

There seems to be a mountain to climb in terms of what you need to remember,but it WILL sink in as continue through your studies.In a few months you'll be answering techie questions yourself in these forums and wondering what all the fuss was about!!

Study well,don't rush through any of the topics and make your own notes to read back on.

 

Appreciate the encouragement, I usually get frustrated around the weekends and everything always looks better after I have some Beer on a Saturday [best stress reliever].

 

Yup.

And...

Yup.

J.