Hey guys! Sorry it's a day late, some things came up last minute, and I wasn't able to get it up yesterday :(. But anyways, in this post, I'm going to be showing you my system of how I prep for a quiz, or big tournament. I thought that since we have the Bethany Invitational next week, and then the Washington/Oregon quiz a week after that, it would be a good time to write this one :P. So, bypassing the usual, half-hour talk I've been putting before the actual content lately, let's just go ahead and jump right into this one! I usually start this process by evaluating my knowledge of the quiz material. To do this, keep two simple questions in the back of your mind during a quiz practice, or a study session:
And you can answer these questions by observing three things:
Evaluating where you are is super important. On the one hand, you don't want to work yourself too hard and be stressed out for no reason, when you're actually doing really well, but on the other hand, you don't want to be wrongfully confident in your knowledge of the material, and end up getting disappointed with your performance at the next quiz or practice. It's safer to just do occasional, thorough evaluations on yourself, so that you can see clearly how to map out your studying. Also, when you can do this (map out your studying clearly), you are being very efficient with your energy, time, and brainpower. You want to make sure that you're strengthening your weakest areas, while still keeping up the ones you're strong in. You want to get to the place where you are fully toned (in keeping with the muscle analogy), throughout all of the quiz material. "Don't skip leg day" LOL. The point is, that being imbalanced is a really hard way to quiz. It slows your jumping speed A LOT, and your chances of getting the right answer, four times in a quiz round, plummet. Also, you'll want to take into consideration what you've memorized, and how well you still know what you've memorized. Questions to ask:
Re-memorizing things, on one hand, really sucks, because it can easily feel like you wasted your own time by not keeping up your reviewing (like I do, pretty much every season :P). But on the other hand, memorizing things for the second time is actually a lot easier, because you've already memorized it, of course. So if you do end up having to re-memorize something, just try to keep focused on the bright side. Studies show that your brain literally remembers/learns things better, if you're in a good mood, and are motivated, when you learn them. Pretty cool, huh? SO ANYWAY Once you've got your evaluation done, and you've written out what your weakest/strongest sections are, and evaluated your knowledge of what you've memorized, now you can start to paint out your preparation plan! There's basically four parts of a preparation plan:
So lets go through those four things real quick... Jumping Unfortunately, if you don't have immediate access to a set of jumpseat equipment, you'll have to settle for the old clap-jumping. And even though this doesn't help quite as much as practicing on jumpseats does, it still helps you to improve your jumping (and better hone your timing instincts). Timing is the big thing here. Hopefully you've been practicing already this season, but if you haven't, that's okay. The bottom line, is that you need to work towards the place where you can find the perfect jump, in your question type specialty (or whatever question type(s) you're planning on jumping on). Fine-tune your ability to jump at exactly the right time, in order to beat everyone else to the jump, but still get all of the information you need, in order to complete the question and give the answer. This technical "time" varies from quiz master to quiz master of course, so learning to adjust is also key (this comes with practice, but intentionally learning speeds it up). To prepare your jumping for a quiz, where there will probably be a lot of hard competition (which is the whole reason you're preparing, probably :P), just try to jump faster than you have been. It's always good to push yourself at a healthy tempo (and even better to get some quizzing rivals, who push you). Recall/Answering This is really important, because it can make or break every question that you'll ever jump on. To practice, and improve your recall time, you can use things like flash cards or QuizMaster (which has a built-in timer, which is awesome) to run questions. I know that most according to quizzers use these a lot, because recall time is huge for that type, since you have to come up with all the different question/answer combinations after you remember the verse. But it's important to all of the other types too, of course. In regard to answering, you'll want to research and practice the different strategies for each of the different question types - generals, according to's, and context for the most part. Different quizzers have different strategies, but for the most part they're similar. After you do your research, by asking different, accomplished quizzers that you know, try them out and see which ones work best for you. Everyone thinks differently, so don't be afraid to even make up your own answering strategy. Just choose and practice the one that is the most time-efficient, because in the end, you only have 30 seconds. Memorizing If, in your preparation, you're wanting to do some memorizing, you'll want to be wise in the way that you go about it. Don't overwhelm your brain, or your energy, by trying to memorize 50 verses in one day, on top of school work. That doesn't end well, typically. Instead, memorize what you can, in the time that you have. And the material that you can't memorize, settle for just learning it really well. Not having everything memorized that you want can be rough, especially if you're a memory verse or according to quizzer, because it slows down your pre-jumping and lowers your correct answer chances. But if you can, try to pick up some context or general questions to make up for it. Knowing the material well, as an overview kind of thing, will make these question types a breeze (if the pre-jumping isn't too crazy), and you will probably be able to make up for the material that you weren't able to memorize. The big thing is to not sweat it, if you don't have time. There's always another quiz, and this early in the season, you can still easily memorize even all of 1-2 Corinthians before Regionals, if you put your mind to it. Also, with the reviewing I mentioned earlier - If you can perfect the material that you already have memorized, make that a priority in your preparation studying! This doesn't take nearly as much time/energy to accomplish, and it's a way to check off a lot of the material as being ready to quiz over. If you can, try to make perfecting what you have memorized, and memorizing some new stuff, both part of your preparation plan. Learning I know this is a really vague word to use in regard to studying for quizzing, but what I mean, is getting a good, solid understanding of all of the material (or as much as you can). Knowing, for instance, how all the chapters are laid out, and what's in each chapter, will give you a ton of confidence going into the quiz (and confidence really helps you to perform better!). So if you don't have enough time to maybe memorize anything, try to do this. Do a lot of reading, and listening to the audio of the material (either with the CD's, or with a Bible app), and you'll be surprised how much your brain will pick up! Also, I've noticed that when I don't have enough energy or motivation to get down and do the dirty work (like memorizing, or practicing recall), it relieves any anxiety about procrastination, when I do some of this light studying. Because I know that I'm studying, and that I'm investing into my quizzing career, and into my performance at the quiz I'm preparing for, but it also doesn't cause me to become overly exhausted. So now, hopefully you've got a good idea about how to figure out what you can do, in order to prepare the best you can, for your next quiz meet.
All that's left to do now, is to divide up the preparation you want to do, by the number of days you have before the quiz/tournament, write out your plan, and then do your darn best to stick to it. I wish you all the very best, and I really hope that this post was able to help you! With that, Quiz-Journeyers, have a fantastic week, and I'll see you on Saturday for the TBQJ Vlog #11 - can't wait to see you there! Love you guys, and Jesus loves you too. Keep quizzing and living victoriously <3. Keep calm and quiz on (and out)! Your fellow quizzer, Mallory
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Trending Posts:Author:Mallory is a graduated Teen Bible Quizzer originally from the Southern region, moved to the Northwest, coaching quizzing over the book of Matthew. Check out our
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