At the beginning of the term, we all go through our course syllabus to check our mark breakdown. Are there assignments, midterms, and finals and how much are they worth? Some of us wish for our finals to be lower and our assignments to be higher in grade weight. In some classes, there is participation added to the mark breakdown. Usually it’s between 5-10%, sometimes it’s even worth 20%!
In every class there are the pros at participation, even when there’s no marks given. Raising their hands, giving their opinions, and answering questions from the professor. There’s also some of us who dread class participation. Putting up our hands to give an answer that might be wrong stresses us out. Heck we would rather do a final exam than participate.
But of course, we need the grade! Below are some ways to gain the confidence to participate in class and get the marks you need.
1. Participate in the first few classes.
It gives you the opportunity to get a feel for the class and start early. If you tell yourself that you’ll start in later weeks, you’ll find yourself having a harder time to participate later on and may have a low participation mark at the end of the semester
2. Read the topics before class.
If there are readings for the class, read and prepare some notes you can look at during the class. Try to also find articles or videos related to the topics to gain further understanding in the topics.
3. Talk to people in your class.
You will feel more comfortable speaking in front of people that you’ve spoken to before.
4. Have confidence and believe that you can do it.
Most of the time we hold ourselves back when we have the correct answer! You can do it!