Job Listings for Teachers

Doing some more experimenting here at English Advantage Blog to see what you readers like. So I registered a page of job listings for Teaching and ESL jobs at SimplyHired.com. Feel free to check it out if you're looking for a job or to add job listings if you're looking to hire a teacher or ESL Professional. Job listings are posted all over the web on the Simply Hired network--including MySpace Jobs and LinkedIn. So it's a great deal if you're looking for talent. And if you're job hunting, you know that serious companies are using the network.

I always appreciate comments on how you like the service. Does anything need to be changed? More categories of jobs? Fewer categories? New color scheme?

You can also subscribe directly to the teaching jobs feed and get jobs delivered straight to your feedreader.

A clever way to learn vocab

Online Picture Dictionary is an awesome idea. He takes vocab words from GRE word lists (ie big hard words) and posts example sentences, synonyms and a picture to help you understand and remember. It's a great way to learn vocab because it gives a context and a visual clue that is stored in your memory. The sentences are pretty clever and often funny--which makes it easy to learn.

Check it out. I do have one reservation though if you want to learn English from the site. Srikant's grammar is not 100% perfect. His English is obviously near-fluent and it's only a couple of mistakes. I'm not criticizing. He's dealing with complicated concepts and mistakes and typos happen--even on my blog (Gasp!), but as a student for the GRE or for general English you might look out a bit.

I would definitely recomend subscribing to the feed

Entrecard Got Cooler

So once again I am doing a blog about blogging. I don't like to stray from ESL and student life too much, but this is too good an opportunity to pass up. If you're a blogger and you haven't checked out Entrecard yet, you really should. It's done wonders for building traffic to this humble little blog. I'm not an expert on marketing blogs and I don't have a lot of free time to worry about promoting this blog, joining communities, and entrecard gets me traffic without having to do too much. Plus I've met other education bloggers and we help each other out.

Now it's even cooler. They've added an linked blogs feature meaning now you can link more than one blog to one account. And pass Entrecard credits back and forth. It's also awesome to see what other blogs some of my favorite bloggers maintain.

Also for people like me who are new to blogging and promoting they've got a New Official EBook, a free pdf download to help you get started on Entrecard.

Plus if you post on these new features, you get 2000 credits. That'll buy me some advertising to build this blog up even more.

Check out the Entrecard blog for details and even more contests if you link more than one blog together.

Get Into Harvard? Or Don't Believe Everything You Read

What do Harvard students have that makes them better? What do they get out of their education that can make them rich? Make them future business leaders of America? According to Daniel Wallace, Class of 2008, the best thing a Harvard student has is the secret of how to get into Harvard. His website, GetIntoHarvard.net, sells a 56-page guide called Get into Harvard for $27.

Wallace claims that not only did he get into Harvard, but he has:

read over tons of books, over 1,000 blog posts, too many forum entries to count, and continued learning from my own hands-on admissions experience, all to keep Get Into Harvard cutting-edge with the latest information.

According to IvyGate, the book is pretty much just information copied from other sources. Like from the Harvard admission website (which also says that there is no formula to getting into Harvard). The rest of it is common sense: "Take an SAT Prep class" is his advice for how to improve your SAT score!

It also notes in the list of "10 Types of People Who Get into Harvard": Underrepresented Minorities, Smart Legacies (family of Harvard alumni), Extraordinary Musicians and Talented Writers! Which is sort of useless for people who don't already qualify. Unless you can get your ancestors to change their ethnicity, convince your father to get into Harvard first, or become extremely talented very quickly.

This booklet sounds pretty silly, but that doesn't mean there's a smarter book somewhere. The trick to getting into any university from Harvard to Oak Pines Community College, is to study hard, get good grades, score high on the TOEFL, do something well, follow all the instructions on the application, write good essays, get good recommendations and really want to go there.

What Do Americans Go Through to Get Into University?

College Intention lets you know what Americans go through to get into university. It's the blog of a high-school student on his journey to get into college. And it's a good resource for how the college admissions process works, what colleges look for, tips on getting in, and reassurance that someone else is going through the same things you are.

I especially liked the post, Dear college: Please Send Sleeping Pills In Your Guidebooks, Thanks on psychiatric counseling for families to deal with the stress of university admissions. I cannot imagine any other country in the world besides the US having or needing specialized counseling--for the whole family!

And another nice one I just left a giant comment on about Cleaning Up. One in a series of study tips--clean your room. It's really a good idea and effective. Personally I am obsessively organized in how my desk and bookshelves are organized, and my computer as well. The awesome thing about the computer is that I can cross-reference with shortcuts. So my conversation classes folder has shortcuts to reading lessons that have a big speaking component. My business English folder has links to TOEFL readings that are about economics. And so on.

So check out College Intentions: It's probably the most interesting and useful high school student blog I've read in a while.

Crazy English!

I just read a fascinating article about an ESL company in China, Crazy English run by a guy called Li Yang. His classrooms veer toward stadiums full of thousands of people. His techniques involve making people shout. For example, during a "class" with medical professionals who will work in the Olympics clinics during the Olympic games, he had them repeat, shouting, "I would like to take your temperature" word by word. Repeating it over and over, shouting. He claims that the technique builds confidence, energy and motivation and he links learning English to self-confidence, success and patriotism.

For example, some sentences taken from his website by a past student sound more like an Antony Robbins (for whom Li has worked as an interpreter) program than grammar exercises:

English is a piece of cake. I can totally conquer English. I will use English. I will learn English. I will live in English. I am no longer a slave to English. I am its master. I believe English will become my faithful servant and lifelong friend. . . .

Others say the cult-like atmosphere with frenzied followers is just a show, and doesn't really help people learn English. Still others claim the whole thing is a populist cult. During an impromptu lecture to his employees while the New Yorker reporter was present, Li said, "The secret of success is to have them continuously paying—that’s the conclusion I’ve reached," which makes one wonder what his real motivation is. Is he teaching English or is he inspiring Scientology-like devotion in order to make money? The article is full of stories of people who sell blood or spend one months wages just to go see him.

There are also indications that now that Crazy English is officially teaching workers for the Olympic Games, that Beijing is asking him to scale back some of his craziness:

When Li began to speak publicly again, Olympic officials told him to skip any signature Crazy English flourishes, like having students hold his books aloft, Mao style. The Olympic organizers were determined to avoid anything that might attract controversy...

On the other hand, there is something to be said for an energetic classroom and a certain amount of repetition and drilling. And any way you can make grammar or memorizing useful phrases more entertaining and motivating is always good. So check out the article and see what you think.

I want to also mention Teflspin.com which posted on this originally. It's a great blog by an ESL teacher in Asia. Unlike a lot of blogs, including mine from time to time, Ken writes long in-depth posts. And he covers a lot of ground from interesting phenomena to personal stories teaching ESL to resources. Well worth reading.

Teacher Tools

I occasionally get asked by my fellow teachers how I organize my teaching materials and what kinds of tools I use. I'm not sure I am the perfect organizer but for what it's worth, I'm putting down my method here.

First, I keep big folders of material sorted by kind of lesson. Every Xerox, every print-out, every article I clip from the newspaper is in a 3-hole punch binder and organized into the following categories:
Conversation Lesson
Vocab Lesson
Grammar
Listening
Reading
TOEFL
GRE
SAT

You may have your own categories or organizational system.

I also have seperators in with the name of the lesson on it so I can easily find my lesson on stereotypes or the describing people vocab sheet. Putting things in binders is good for being organized but it's also good as a way to store extra copies. If I make 8 copies of a worksheet and only 2 people show up, I put away those 6 extra copies to use next time. Saves time, paper, and ink.

I also have files saved on my computer, downloaded from the internet, or worksheets that I have typed up. Those are also organized into folders and for lessons that have a lot of files--like a lesson that has a teacher's guide, a worksheet, a role play sheet and a vocab quiz, I make a seperate file. I also rename files to things I remember. And if I see something on the Net I like, I save it. Even if I don't need it right away. I used to bookmark the page and try to remember to go back to it. That never happened. I prefer to have lessons I'll never use to forgetting to save a really good lesson.

And any worksheet I really like, or book pages I use a lot, I tend to scan and save away so the book binding doesn't get worn out from endless copying. For books, it's time consuming but I like to pick and choose what I scan. For example most TOEFL books have questions and then a lot of explanation. I scan the pages, and then use a snapshot program to pick and choose what I want to give my student. I can cut a 13 page lesson down to 5 pages. Saves paper. And obviously I tell them the explanations.

I also really think it's important to take time to rearrange worksheets you don't like or to modify things. I teach adults and children and there are some conversation books I really like, but the lessons aren't suitable for children so I retype them and save them. That way I always have the kids' version ready.

One huge help is a desktop search program like Yahoo Desktop Search. It's much better than the Windows search because it's extremely fast and I can easily find all my lessons that have the word "Christmas" in them. And you can easily refine the program to search only your lesson plan folder.

The other big thing I personally recommend is saving CD files to your computer and using iTunes or another music program to organize them. Working off the computer instead of a CD player you have more control about starting at a particular place and you can name the files so you don't have to keep checking the track list.

Those are my brillant tips. What do you use to stay organized? Any good programs or toys out there that a teacher, or a student, must have?

Study Smarter

Cal Newport at Study Hacks has a really nice blog up for students with strategies for everything from beating stress to public speaking to doing good work (God bless him for his post The Straight-A Gospels: Pseudo-Work Does Not Equal Work. As a teacher I agree fully with that subtitle!). His approaches may not work for everyone and there is no silver bullet to being a good student, but I like a lot of his strategies and ideas.

If you're really lazy, check out one post with all his
productivity tools and strategies.

Good website for ESL teachers

Just stumbled on TEFL Place, a blog for ESL teachers. It's got some really good lesson plan ideas on it--I'm not sure Water Balloon Volleyball is going to work in my classroom, but it's an interesting idea and it would be fun. I might save that one for a barbecue with friends.

I also shudder when I think about Hidden Ringtones designed not to be heard by the teacher because the pitch is too high for our old, inflexible ears. But then I discovered (googling to see if the science behind these things was real or not) that this idea is being used to drive kids away from places where kids tend to hang out--in front of cafes or 7-11's. The store plays a high pitched annoying tone that adults can't hear but kids find irritating. So next class I'm going to try using these sounds against my noisy and disruptive students--maybe to drive them away from the back of the class. It's an interesting idea I wouldn't have otherwise seen.

More seriousy, TEFL Place has some really good suggestions like a list of what to do before school starts to get organized and make your classroom ready. Some of them are obvious like buying classroom supplies, but it's good to have everything in one list you can check off. And some of them, like "9. prepare an inventory to find out student interests" and "10 review your resources to meet individual needs' are definitely overlooked by a lot of students.

Another good post is on lesson planning, something I just posted on here). So I was interested to see what additional advice was offered. This is a much more practical approach to how to make a workbook or student book page into a full-fledged lesson. It's good advice and it's good to be reminded that even if you have a textbook, you can't just show up, say "Turn to page 22 and do exercise one." You have to have a plan and you have to make it interesting for the students.

TEFL Placeis definitely going on my RSS feed list.

New Way to Make Friends

Much to the chagrin of their parents and professors, social sites like MySpace and Facebook are a part of university life in the US and worldwide. While you have to be careful not to let your internet surfing take away from your study time, and you also have to be careful what you put up on your sites. Remember your professors, university staff and employers (both present and future) can find you and you probably don't want them to see you shirtless with a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand and a bong in the other.

That being said, these social communities are a fact of life and a great way to keep in touch with friends back home, let them know what's going on without writing fifty emails every time you pass an exam or go to a fun party. It's also a great way to make new friends by searching for people in your area, at your school, or other people interested in Egyptian basket-weaving or whatever.

The newest site on the scene is 3GB. One of the cool things 3GB seems oriented towards is sharing photos and MP3's unlike the other sites which let you do that, but aren't really designed for it. They also have a really cool search feature that lets you search by not only name, email or address, but also birthday, yahoo! messenger, website, Facebook id, even street address. So if you go to a cool website, you can check out if the owner is on 3GB. Or if you're looking for your buddy John Smith, you can find the right one by searching for his exact address.

Obviously, 3GB has a privacy policy in place and you can make your profile private or exclude any information you want to. Which is also important for these sites. You don't want to put a sexy picture of yourself up in a bikini and then put your street address and phone number for all to see.

Even though it's new, there are already 602 members, 704 photos and 35 groups. I'm sure by the time you read this it will have grown even more!

Join 3gb community 3gb.biz today and start making new friends.

For Teachers: How to Make a Good Lesson Plan

I put up a new article on English Advantage for ESL teachers on
why and how to plan a lesson. As I say in the article, the most important reasons to have a plan are so that you have clear goals set out for your lesson. Otherwise you are just filling up time and/or entertaining students; both of these can be important too but without a goal, you aren't really educating. Also students don't respect teachers who try to improvise everything or aren't prepared to answer their basic questions about a topic or lesson.

The article has more details on this, but a good lesson should have three elements. Students should be Engaged, or interested in the lesson. This may mean choosing a topic they like, relating it to their personal experience, or playing a game. Students should also Study, or learn something in the lesson. Pretty obvious, right? It might be vocabulary, sentence structures, grammar, or functional language like giving an opinion, but there needs to be a learning component to the lesson. Finally students should Activate what they are learning. They need to not only Study but also use the new language. This might take the form of an open discussion, a guided dialogue, a role play, a writing assignment but simply doing a grammar exercise isn't enough. Students need to apply the grammar to realistic speech or writing.

I certainly would love to hear comments from teachers and students about your opinion, advice and experience on lesson planning or criticism of my article.

And check out the Lesson Plan page for a bunch of ESL lesson plans, which hopefully follow my own advice!

Printer Cartridges are Too Darn Expensive

I was shocked that in Kazakhstan even in the big cities, many university students still hand write their essays for class. Not to make Kazakhstan sound completely backwards--I see primary school kids handing in printed, formatted essays and projects. But it might come as a shock to foreign students that in the US, universities expect essays and written assignments to be produced on a computer or word processor and printed out. Even mathematics and science classes may expect you to print out an Excel spreadsheet for example.

Printers are cheap in the US. Why? Because the companies make their money on print cartridges! I use a HP Color Inkjet printer-scanner-copier which cost me around $200. Not too shabby. But both print cartridges, the black cartridge and the color cartridge cost $20 each in the stores. And with the number of copies I make, I replace each one once a month. In one year, I spend more than I paid for the printer itself!

What does a poor student do? One possibility is to order cartridges direct from the manufacturer. Prices tend to be much cheaper than in retail stores because you cut out the middleman.

You can also check out generic cartridges which are produced to match the brand names like Brother laser toner refills or HP or Canon, but are much cheaper--without any loss of quality. You can get great deals if you order via the Internet.

Another alternative is to be smart about how you save ink. For example, use the 'economy' mode for drafts or personal documents. For black and white documents, use black only mode (which most printers feature). Some printers mix color ink in to get a deep black or certain shades of grey. That wastes color ink. And something I didn't even know: printers use ink when they start up. So leave your printer on if you plan to use it soon.

One Year Ago: Happy Birthday to Me!

One year ago, this blog was just starting and at the time I was focused a lot more on universities, whereas I seem to have shifted more and more towards English language learning. It was very useful to go back and look at my first posts and be reminded that I planned this blog to serve both ESL learners and international students.

Three posts that really stand out, I think, are my first post on university rankings: Rankings Part One: General Problems where I discuss the problem with relying soley on rankings like US News and World Report or The Times of London. From that article you can move on to Part Two: Deconstructing the Methodology of College Ratings and Part Three: Alternatives to Rankings or Ratings.

I really enjoyed doing my post on University Trivia and Myths which talks about some fun rumors, jokes, and traditions in and about famous American universities.

Finally, a decent post on University Life in the US tries to help international students adapt to the unique academic culture of higher education in America.

As always I'm happy to get feedback on these articles and since I've been remiss in addressing university student needs, I'd love to hear what else you want to know about studying in the US, getting admitted to universities, find a good school, or anything else.

PowerPoint Presentations

Another blog I found online, University Scholar, run by a student in Indiana with tips and resources for being a better student. I particularly like the post on making good PowerPoint presentations which has some videos taken from experts so you can get a good idea of what works and what doesn't. There's also a recent useful post on getting a regular sleep method. I really don't recommend going for 2 hours a night as the University Scholar seems to recommend but the idea of tracking your sleep and knowing how much you need is really good.

Some New Lesson Plans on englishadvantage.info

If you want a quick online test to check your knowledge of Parts of the Car. Fill in the names of the parts of a car, check your answers as you work and get your final score. For teachers, the test is printable to use a worksheet in class.

Have You Ever, Would You Ever is a list of questions on what you have done and what you would do. Under what circumstances would you steal? Or live in another country? What do you do when you can't sleep? Great for practice alone or even works as a party game.

For an original and fun role play about faulty products, check out Beauty Inc. A cosmetics company sends free samples to the richest and most powerful women in the country, but the products are defective! Roles include a powerful businesswoman who wants to use the flaw to buy up the company, the President who has a secret, and a VP who feels bad but hates the snobby customers.

Or take a personality test and find your perfect career. Loosely based on the Myers-Brigg test it's fun and great practice for your English.

Ultimate Vacation

A lot of students come to the US and they never really get out of the region near their university. They might go to the biggest city nearby (New York, Chicago, Boston, LA) but most of your vacations are spent going home and studying takes up all your time.

If you want to have really amazing memories of your trip to the US, go to Hawaii. It's a lot cheaper and easier than you might think. And Hawaii is the most unusual state in the US with every climate from the tropic to tundra. Plus a mix of American, Asian, and Hawaiian cultures and people. The food, the surfing, the fabulous beaches are all famous and Hawaii is practically synonymous with vacation in the US.

Check out Big Island Vacation Rentals for villas. Check out the Kapoho villa on the ocean and houses 10! That's $36 a night which is much cheaper than a hotel. When you consider that you can buy food and cook it yourself, instead of having to go to a restaurant, renting a villa can save you a ton. And when you rent your own house, you're free from the crowds at hotels and you really get the local feel of the place. You don't have to put up with other tourists and guests, and you can do what you want. You can always find extra people who want to go to Hawaii! Having your own space is much more relaxing--Or it can even be romantic if you want to go with a special someone.

Hawaiian Beach Rentals can get you a place on any island: Check out Maui Vacation Rentals for example in addition to the Big Island. And if you want to do more than lounge around the house or go out to the beach (why would you?) they have Hawaii Vacation Info to help you plan your perfect vacation. The office is local so they have the real knowledge of what's going on and you can plan your perfect custom-built vacation.

Recommended Textbooks

A lot of students ask me for my recommendations on books to use to study English. Occasionally I get a supposedly interested client who just checks out my bookshelf and walks out, which is pretty rude! I hope the only reason I'm in business is not that I have access to amazon.com and a credit card!

In truth, studying with a tutor is ten times better than just studying with a book because you have someone to correct you, to ask about difficult words or grammar points you don't understand. You also hear someone speaking English and you have a chance to converse in a personal and spontaneous setting. Learning a language is about more than memorizing words or phrases--it's about being able to communicate in a wide variety of situations. Having another person in front of you means having to USE your language.

That being said, not everyone has access to a teacher, and even if you do, working on your own with a textbook isn't the worst idea either. So here's a list of the books I recommend:

For the American standardized tests such as TOEFL, GRE, SAT, and GMAT, I recommend Kaplan. I worked for them for 2 years as both tutor and textbook writer and they have a good methodology of teaching. They are also very strict about the material in their books looking like real test questions. The new Kaplan TOEFL iBT with CD-ROM textbook is great. It breaks the test down into different question types, has good tips and tricks for strategy and it gives you good exercises to get the skills you need to pass the test. At the same time, it is very useful to look at the resources that ETS offers on the new iBT. Because the test is so new, it's hard to say what a typical iBT question looks like so looking at official materials is the best way to get accurate practice.

I would definitely recommend the Kaplan GRE Exam book for the same reasons I would recommend the TOEFL book--it's accurate, has good strategies, and provides lots of practice.

The SAT book by Kaplan is likewise solid, but I also recommend the CollegeBoard The Official SAT Study Guide. College Board is secretly ETS, the people who created and administer all these standardized tests. The book has lots of practice questions that obviously feel like real questions, and a nice breakdown of what they are trying to test you on.

I would not recommend Barron's books. Barrons is a well-known publisher of guides for students, but the test prep books I have seen don't give detailed information or strategy; they just present practice tests, and in my opinion, their questions don't necessarily look like real test questions.

For general grammar or English learning, I have found that the Cambridge University Press books are quite good, especially their Grammar in Use series, which provides simple explanations, examples of real language the way it is actually used, and good exercises to get you to learn. Similarly the Vocabulary in Use series is good for learning vocab. The books are easy to use, provide real examples of speech, and are fun.

Hope that helps those of you who prefer to learn on your own.
You can purchase those books from Amazon.com who will deliver it to your mailbox. Just click on the links below to make your purchase!

Some books for teachers with great lesson plans and ideas that I also use regularly:

A Good Rap

So one great source for learning English is rap. Rap tends to be highly creative and the best rappers play with the meanings and sounds of words. It can open your mind to new ways of listening to the language. It's also a never-ending source of slang, though you have to be careful since rappers also invent words--my friend Chris is constantly annoyed at Akon's song Smack That where he invents a Lamborghini Delgado just for the rhyme. Rap can encourage you to invent your own slang, to be creative with the language. Rap is also often fast and difficult to catch so it makes a good listening exercise. Finally rap, like any art form, is an insight into the culture. Of course, the rap that gets popularized is often about gang wars, crime, or sex making some people think African American culture is limited. But rap spans a whole spectrum from humor to jazz to dance to ballads to heavy metal.

One site I stumbled on that can be great for getting into rap is Rapartists.com. Finding your favorite rap artist or someone new to listen to is easy. In fact, I couldn't remember who did Smack That so I searched the artists page till I recognized the name. The search function on the page didn't pick it up so that needs a little work but fortunately I remembered it was Ak-something.

The site has a nice New Releases page so you can keep up with what's coming out, or buy the album straight from the page via Amazon or iTunes. One thing that's really cool for language learners (or anyone else) is that you can get the lyrics to songs, so you can read along as you listen. Or if you just want to know what the heck Eminem is talking about

So check it out if you want a fun way to learn English or if you just want to be up on the latest hits.

Necessary Student Accesory!

Video game consoles are absolutely required for a normal student life. It's a major topic of conversation--which games are the best, how to beat the last boss on the 5th level. We teachers hate that most students can memorize hundreds of cheat codes, secret tricks, and the exact layout of every level of computer games but can't remember the Pythagorean theorem, but it's the truth. Students these days spend way more time and attention worrying about games than doing their homework. Or at least so it seems.

Regardless of my bias, the fact is, if you have a good console, you will be very popular. On every hall in every dormitory in every university in America, there's always the game room, i.e. the room with the kid that has the awesome game set up. That's where the parties are. That's where people congregate after class. So if you want a chance to win a Nintendo Wii Console, complete with a stand, 5 games, a controller, a nunchuk controller (how cool is that?) and everything else you need to play, you should click here. You might know Wii as the new console that you control with a handheld bar that you actually move in time with the game. So if you're playing tennis, you swing the controller as if you are actually swinging. It's supposed to be very cool. I don't know anything about the nunchuck controller--but that sounds very awesome.

And if you aren't living in the dorm, where you probably have free ethernet, you can get a chance to bid for lifetime High-speed internet. In the US high-speed internet usually costs $30-$50 a month, so this could be a great chance to save some serious money. Bidding starts at $10.

Obviously, if you were to win a Wii set-up, you'd have to balance game time with your study time. And you wouldn't really want people to be over 24/7. But with a little management and maturity, you can balance schoolwork and Nintendo Tennis with the Wii controller. I promise.

Click Here for a Chance to Win a Nintendo® Wii™!

Preparing for Final Exams

An awesome post on Casting Out Nines, the blog of a math professor, about how to prepare for final exams that I have been meaning to share with you. It's all pretty much common sense, but it's always worth hearing common sense again. Also, while he has in mind a math exam, the advice holds for an exam in any subject. Casting Out Nines recommends:

1. Start studying a week or so before the exam and at first focus only on things you really don't remember. Don't jump right in and try to relearn everything.
   
2. As the exam gets closer, study more and for longer.
   
3. Make sure you understand material by not just memorizing, but by trying to apply the information to a likely test question:

   For example, it’s not enough in a calculus class to say “Understand the Chain Rule”. Rephrase this as “Calculate derivatives of a function using the Chain Rule”. If you can do that task repeatedly, with confidence and correctness and not a lot of effort, you’re ready.

   This may be the most important point for foreigners who are not used to the American system that (by-in-large) tests you on application not memorization. Most US teachers and professors don't care what you know as much as they care about what you can do with what you know. On a literature test you probably won't be asked, "What is deconstructionism?" You will be asked, 'Deconstruct Hamlet in terms of feminist theory.' So don't waste your time just memorizing dates, figures, and sentences from the book. Think about what the professor might ask you on the exam and try to answer those questions.
   
4. Don't study the night before the exam. Another piece of awesome advice. Don't get stressed out by trying to cram a lot in the last minute and don't lose sleep studying. Sleep will help you process better and a tired brain doesn't function well. Eat a good breakfast too because a hungry brain is useless as well.
   
5. Finally, something I wish I had done in school. Set up multiple alarms. Make sure you aren't relying on just one alarm clock. Just in case something goes wrong you want to make sure you get up on time. Personally I recommend getting up 2 hours before an exam--it takes about 2 hours for your body and brain to get to normal functioning after sleep.
   

Hope that helps. Also check out his post on How to Take a Final Exam!