<p>Quick background: I'm a political science major (hesitant accounting minor; hesitant partially for reasons stated below) at a pretty good school. I'm also studying intermediate Korean language. I've always tried hard and done pretty good at academic work. However, I struggle with two major problems that tend to rear their ugly head in classes involving creative problem solving and/or math. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>I oftentimes switch numbers or symbols without thinking (i.e. I will think a 4 but write a 7 or I will shift a curve such as the demand curve left not right); I know the concepts inside and out but I sometimes I can't translate that knowledge in the correct way to the paper. I also do a similar thing in foreign language (though less so compared to math) where I do things such as misplacing a word or writing the wrong verb form without noticing it. Going over my work only sometimes helps as I oftentimes still miss my mistakes. </p></li>
<li><p>I am quite good at understanding concepts, even abstract ones, in mathematical terms (i.e. understanding political science papers written using game theory). However, I oftentimes struggle greatly in formulating word problems into the correct mathematical equations. On a similar note, I also struggle greatly with applying knowledge of a foreign language to knew situation. For example, I will oftentimes learn new words in a way that prevents practical usage (i.e. if I know the word for "much (i.e. years) later" I will be unable to translate a sentence such as "I will become a senior citizen in a long time" because I don't correlate "much later" to "in a long time") Also, my use of grammar in a foreign language is oftentimes limited to those situations that involve only simple sentences and when reading a paragraph, I will have trouble applying the grammar rules to more complex sentences even though I have seen the grammar patterns many times before.</p></li>
<li><p>I struggle to understand foreign language (both Korean and my earlier language Spanish) when I hear it; I will understand it if I read it, yet even if its spoken abnormally slowly, I oftentimes struggle to comprehend the words. This is partially related to my above problem of not being able to adapt my foreign language skills to new sentences well. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>In terms of practice Ive done the following:</p>
<ol>
<li>get a math tutor (doesn't help much because its not a conceptual understanding problem)</li>
<li>I tried a foreign language tutor but feel its best to just stay with one teacher as learning a foreign language is oftentimes different depending on the perspective of the teacher. </li>
<li>practicing many math problems over and over in timed settings (has somewhat helped)</li>
</ol>
<p>As for my other problem (the one related to taking word problems and making equations) I am confused as how to proceed as it just seems like my mind isn't able to transfer a real-life situation to math even though Im quite good at doing the opposite. </p>
<p>If anyone could give me some advice, Id really appreciate it!</p>