EnglishINNY - reading practice and audio file for concentration

Daydreaming ? Distracted ? Can't study? Can't get your work done on time? My guess is you're too stimulated with the many things swimming around in your head or physical distractions in the room. Weak concentration can be a downfall when it comes to studying for exams, remembering tasks, birthdays and names. That is why it is vital to improve concentration. Imagine sitting in your exam and forgetting the answers because you weren't concentrating 100% the night before. Or your boss gives you a task to do over night but when you get home you forget!

Improving concentration is like improving short term memory, but requires a bit more focus. Stress can cause a lot of people to concentrate less and become less effective or efficient at there job. When you think about it, it's common sense. The more you stress, the more you can't focus true? If you're studying or working on a project for work, make sure you take breaks in between and elaborate with notes or other activities in order to remember. When you learn something new take a 5 minute break before you learn something else so the facts don't cross over and confuse you, many people take this for granted. Your brain remembers things by their meaning, so if you spend a little extra effort to create meanings you will need less effort to recall it.

How can you create meanings to improve concentration? Exercising the memory part of the brain has something to do with it. It's kind of like the saying "the older you get the more you forget." The older you get the less you concentrate. To exercise the memory part of the brain, you need to do stimulating activities that make you think, maybe Sudoku, a crossword puzzle, chess or the brain game on Nintendo DS. Even simple mental gymnastics such as simple arithmetic has been proven to be tremendously helpful.

Questions :

1) Have you been distracted lately ?  Do you know why you could not concentrate ?

Activity :Talk with a partner about this or write a small paragraph about this.

2) What are some things that you can think of which stimulate us, physically, and mentally ?

3) Use the word Downfall. For example : The downfall of the king was his intense greed.

4) What is the opposite of vital ?  If we say : food is vital for good photography - is that something which makes sense ? What is food vital for ? what is vital for good photography ?

5) Do you practice any special techniques to increase your recall ?