5 | Preliminaries

Study Questions

Peter Kun Frary

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Hopefully you've been faithfully doing all the reading and listening, and are ready for the test. Not doing as well as you'd like? Maybe you need to improve your study habits? Herein are a few study tips.

How to Study

The technique of studying for this course is simple:

Do the assigned reading and listening according to the schedule.

Take detailed notes on your reading and listening.

Why take notes? Because the act of writing down significant points reinforces that information. Writing it down also causes you to ponder what you studied and, thus, remember concepts and details better than a simple read through. Plus, you'll have detailed notes you can review as you study for the test.

However, if your study life has been less than regular, you may find my Study Questions helpful. Basically I paraphrased many of the test questions and converted them into PDF study questions. These study questions are a partial simulation of a possible test with short answer, multiple choice and true and false formats. Look up the answers before taking the test and you’ll know most of the test material—save for the listening portion.

Why don't I just give you the answers? That would defeat the educational benefits of you thinking, struggling and figuring out the answers! "Seek, and ye shall find" (Matthew 7:7). All the answers are in the textbook.

Raindrops on Taro | Peter Kun Frary

Listening Tips

There is no magic pill for the listening parts of the tests, but plain old fashion study and practice still work great! With that said, I have a few suggestions to help you improve listening your skills in my three levels of music listening article.

Here's a few quick listening tips for test preparation. My listening questions revolve around recognition and identification:

Before taking a test, listen to the assigned music multiple times or until it's in your head. You can't identify anything if you don't recognize the music.

After listening, write down and/or recite the composer, title, era and significant stylistic traits. Speaking aloud or writing this information repeatedly helps you associate these facts with a particular piece.

Finally, take a mock listening test: have a friend play random tracks for you and see if you can recognize the piece and identify the composer, title, era and notable stylistic traits. If you miss anything, go back and study some more.