CAN ANYONE BE GOOD IN MATHS?
This is rather a good question to ask, if can anyone really learn Mathematics or it is just a natural “talent” that certain people are born with?
Most students do not like Mathematics in South Africa. The whole point of learning it is pointless and of course, in real life, it seems not so applicable to have gone through so much sophistication, only to figure out that you don’t after all go around solving for x and finding tangents to curves. Besides the strong opinion that some people may have been born with the natural ability in Mathematics, some research as published, suggests that having the natural ability alone is not enough. Persistent hard work and adopting good study methods play an important part in improving the student’s ability in Mathematics over time.
And since Mathematics, like most subjects, carry over from the previous learned content in the previous grades, starting early to develop this ability would yield greater results in the preceding grades. What seems to be holding many students back is the negative attitude towards the subject itself. A large number of students in South Africa struggle to learn Mathematics from a very early age, due to various influential factors. This can lead them to easily drop their confidence in ever attempting to grasp the subject later on.
Drop the negative attitude towards Maths
Generally, a good attitude for the subject is usually a good start but that on it’s own requires hard work and good study methods thereafter. That means, practice makes perfect. In general, students believe that their ability to learn, pretty much anything, functions in one of the two ways, according to the research conducted by Patricia Lineham from Purdue University. The first one is, some people believe that their learning is “incremental”, meaning that they believe that they have the ability to continually improve if they keep studying and practicing.
The second one is, some people believe that their learning is “capped”, meaning that they believe that they can never get any better, no matter how hard they can try — if they wanted to try anyways in the first place. People who believe that their learning abilities are “capped” for a particular subject or more, in this context, Mathematics, basically could convince themselves that they are not good at Mathematics and that they never will or either that they were not naturally born with this ability to learn and master the subject. This is rather dangerous as it is nothing more than having a negative impact on your self-motivation and confidence.
Changing your attitude, towards learning is very important for you to be able to begin learning Mathematics. Positive attitude fires up your optimism, creativity (or generally improves your thinking patterns), helps you to stay motivated and to keep achieving goals and to stay hopeful whenever failure kicks in.
Nothing beats hard work & interest over natural ability
Like any other natural ability or talent, it can only get you so far. Talent or natural ability still requires that you keep working on it to learn how to control it and master or perfect it through continual practice. If you do not practice, you never really become as close to perfect and your abilities lie dormant. Mathematics is no different, so it can be said that, after all, practice makes perfect — with the right attitude, of course, to begin with. If you put in a lot of hard work and adopt an effective way to study Maths, you can improve in the subject over time.
Putting in hard work sometimes may not immediately produce good grades but try not to put yourself under the pressure to score big or quickly lose your confidence too early. Rather focus on developing an interest for the subject — that way, you may find that you will have a deeper understanding of the subject and develop the ability to relate different content within Mathematics. An interest will trigger you to want to learn more about the subject. In return over time, you will notice that your understanding improves, your problem solving skills mature and so does your logical and creative abilities, which will have a positive impact on your grades. Chasing good grades can easily demotivate you, especially if the progress seems to be too slow for your own liking.
Don’t try to memorize, learn how to strategise & not to forget
Unfortunately, there is not much theory involved in Mathematics, as far as theorems, for example — much of it is purely calculations. With this being said, students then rather try to memorize in this subject — the biggest mistake they can ever make. Although memorizing how a particular problem was solved, or the steps taken to get to an answer can help you with that particular problem, provided you encounter the same problem, which is highly unlikely, this is simply a waste of time. Rather learn how to tackle problems by their class of complexity and their approach, learn how to solve the problem in many ways, learn how to apply Mathematical Laws and theorems and develop an intuitive mind that can see how a particular problem will be solved.
Basically, in Mathematics, it is required that you know the laws, how they work and when to apply them. Know the do’s and don’t’s. Another strategy to tackle large problems is to split these large problems into smaller pieces — solve these smaller pieces then combine the bits of solutions to reach your final solutions. Another thing to stick to and understand is the language and symbols used in Mathematics and what they mean exactly. And finally, never ever forget what you learn and never allow yourself to be left behind too much. Mathematics is a continual subject from one grade to the other. What you learn now will be useful for later. Newer concepts are always built on the foundations of the previous work.
What if my teacher doesn’t cut it?
Like any other subject, unfortunately, some teachers do the job very well than others — according to individuals perspectives, of course. Some may understand the teacher, others may not. It’s a fact of life. If you struggle to understand your teacher, or simply just want additional resources to learn from, there’s plenty other options available to help you but most come at a cost. Using more than one source for educational purposes is quite helpful to giving you different perspectives and even newer knowledge but the possibility to become too confused are high. To prevent this confusion, find at least one reliable source, this could be your teacher or any other, that you feel you understand better and use it as a point of reference to validate and verify your knowledge gathered elsewhere and to help you structure that knowledge correctly. So here’s some options to go for:
Private tutor — Private tutors are a good and second best option, after your school teacher, as the sessions you have with a private tutor are interpersonal and more interactive. The environment allows for learning at the pace that you’re comfortable with, it becomes easier to ask questions and most of the time, private tutors assist you at the comfort of your own space and time. And, there’s plenty of private tutors, you can always change to another if you’re not happy. The only drawback is that private tutors are usually twice as expensive as your daytime school teachers. This is due to the additional interpersonal benefits and the convenience that you would usually not get from your school teacher.
Saturday School — There are plenty Saturday Schools, especially in developed cities in the country, that provide Mathematics classes. Many hire best teachers and usually try to tackle more advanced topics and problems but the time may be too limited and the pace may be too fast for you. But after all, a Saturday School can help to give you additional information and different perspectives. However, Saturday Schools are cheaper and you may also get good quality education, in a smaller crowd and because of this the teachers can provide a bit more attention to the students.
Academic TV programmes — On premium satellite television, some educational channels do provide good learning programmes that are quite basic and helpful. Some allow students to call in and ask questions, which can be solved on live TV. Perhaps some students may not be able to follow quickly due to the fact that, these programmes present content in a much more summarised manner and usually point out only what you really need to know, leaving out most of the information, that sometimes, could have helped to enhance your understanding. Also, learning through television is usually a very passive action, many students may not have familiarised themselves to learn from TV rather than to passively watch entertaining content from it. Prolonged concentration, as a result, may not be easily achieved too.
Online resources — As much as the Internet is still costly for an ordinary South African, social platforms like YouTube have dozens of videos for learning Mathematics, learning platforms like Khan Academy provide full courses from very basic to advanced Mathematics topics at International standards for free, online textbooks such as Everything Maths which provide students with free and complete curriculum aligned textbooks for Mathematics, and excellent graphing tools like Desmos Calculator to aid with studying and visualisation. To add on top, students can join online tutorials, live, but usually at an additional cost. The Internet provides great alternatives to learning resources but however, the costs for being connected in South Africa has limited the students vastly.
Inspired by an article from Business Insider. Additional Credits: (i) header image by Tom Brown from Flickr,
