I am studying and studying for my 701 yet on the practice test I am getting 63%. Can anyone provide any guidance please?

Does the practice test break down the areas where you do well and those you do poorly?

The main areas are: hardware, networking, and operating systems. It could be that you are doing great in two of the three -- in which case, you know where to focus your future study.

My other thought is your test engine might have a "instant gratification" mode where it tells you instantly whether you answered the question correctly or not. Write down the questions you got wrong then later go back and study the related material more carefully. Be careful not to just memorize the correct answer just to get a better result on the practice test. The question may be phrased different on the real test, and you may not be familiar enough with the material to selected the best answer.

Those are my first thoughts. Stepping back, you might also ask yourself if your current method of studying suits you. Some people learn best by hearing. Others learn best by reading. Yet others learn best by doing.

I struggled trying to learn Japanese as a foreign exchange student there. I thought of myself as intelligent and a hard worker. Yet, I was doing awful in my Japanese language classes. I could not even repeat back what my teacher slowly said to me! I felt stupid, and I began thinking I could drop the program (or worse ... be dropped!). The harder I tried, the more frustrated I became.

At some point in in time, rather than repeating a lesson's dialog to myself again and again, pretended I was teaching someone else. To do so, I visually memorized the dialogs -- it was the only way I could remember it well enough. Soon it became easier to remember the dialogs by focusing on the Japanese characters themselves -- not relying on English pronunciations like my classmates did. I was on a tear after that. Even today, when I hear an unfamiliar Japanese word, I visually break it down into the most likely Japanese character(s) and can remember the word by visual associations in my minds-eye. Without visualizing the word, I'll forget it almost instantaneously. Using it (i.e. the "doing" aspect) reinforces the learning.

The lesson for you is maybe the way you are learning is not best for you.

Thats the same way I had to learn Hangul. I tried hanging around with native speakers - tried to learn the phonetics of the language, but it didn't work. I got lost in the spoken word, 'could never quite get which were pauses and which were the begining of the next word. So I had to change my method of study. I found that I was better at studying the written characters than listening to conversations. Once I picked that up, I started reading signs, newspapers, ads on the street - then matched that to conversations, directions and soon was actually be understood. I still was told that many of my sentences were framed at the level of a child. But at least I was rewarded by something better than being thought of as the dullard child the family kept locked in the basement.

Each of us has sense which absorbes learning better than the others - find yours and you found the key to unlock that subject.

The best teachers already know that - which is why ... when faced with a student not "getting it" the mix up techniques until they find the one you respond to. Thats the big problem with self-study, you have to figure this out on your own.

Unlike tube socks and baseball caps ... one size rarely fits all

Speaking like a child ... a dullard child the family keeps locked in the basement ... I know that feeling so well !!!!!!!!!! Argh !!!!!!! Awful memories.

Still, being 6'2" blond-haired and blue-eyed gaijin had its good points. All the time having to fight off the local women ... ah, those are good memories. (And I married one too -- Japanese ceremony and all!)

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