Does being unable to catch up with classes make you worry? If so, this blog is for you to know how to attend classes with confidence. How I personally do each of the contents will be explained below.

List of Contents

• Pre-study
• Asking Classmates
• Post-study

Pre-study

As a student with English as a second language, studying beforehand helped me to understand the class properly and prepare questions to ask during classes. The main thing I do before a class is to check every single English word I do not know on lecture slides. The biggest reason I was not able to understand a lecture was often the academic language used in classes. Also, pre-study allows me to take lectures and seminars effectively. That is because sections that are complex or new become clear while doing pre-study and you can know when to concentrate fully (e.g. lecture slides you could not understand by yourself). By doing this, I found myself remembering the contents of lectures more naturally.

Asking Classmates

Not many people might bring asking classmates as a way to catch up with classes. However, this is one of the things I benefited from. There are people with different English skills, so some people miss important information even with full intention during lectures. I always try to pay full attention to a lecturer, but I also once realised that I had been missing one piece of information about an assignment. The way I noticed that was talking to my classmates about the assignment. Therefore, confirming what is told in a class with peers is one of the great ways to catch up with classes, and that can allow you to make new friends to help each other as well.

Post-study

One of the biggest benefits for me as a University of Surrey student is having access to recordings of lectures. Hence, I often use the recordings after class to understand the sections I could not understand even with pre-study. To do that, I highlight such sections/lecture slides and the time of the lecture when I do not understand clearly so that I can smoothly find what section to watch for review.

However, if such sections can be solved by asking the lecturer, doing so is recommended as you can ask follow-up questions. Additionally, the action of communicating will more likely let the information stay in your memory.

Thank you very much for reading this far. I hope you will have a lovely day.