And finally, as if you haven’t heard it enough times before – get an early night! Have a nice dinner, watch some T.V or whatever you do to relax for an hour and then go to bed! Staying up cramming till the wee hours isn’t going to help you pass your exam, not that you will need to cram if you have read and worked with this mini-series of posts!

Brain Dump
You might not be allowed to take books and notes into your exam with you, but no rule was ever made that says you can’t reproduce your notes once the exam has started! So as soon as the words “You May Start” have been uttered, set about reproducing your review sheet, it should only take a few minutes and you can refer to it all through the exam. This is especially important if you are someone who tends to get a bit flustered if you can’t remember something – don’t panic and look back at your notes!

How To Get The Right Answer
If you have a choice about which question you answer, pick the one that is best covered by your brain dump, that way you have most of the answer written down anyway, you just need to organise it. Pace yourself – make time limits for each question or section of questions and stick to them. If you run out of time for a question leave it and go back to it at the end if you have time left over. When you read through a question (twice, to make sure you read what is there, not what you think is there!), see if you can identify which part of the syllabus it came from because you will have a better idea what the examiner will be looking for in an answer. If it helps, you could underline the key words and phrases in the question, this will help you focus on the important stuff.

Tricks for Written Responses
1. Target 5-10 key items per answer
2. Be concise and focus on the detail. 1 sentence per key idea…
3. Give examples where you can and put in as much detail as possible, examples could hold a fair proportion of the marks.
4. Focus on the facts, not on opinions. If the question asks you to agree or disagree, present the facts for both sides, and conclude with your opinion preferably with a strong argument. (BTW, very often it doesn’t matter which one you choose, the examiner is looking at your knowledge of the facts and your ability to present an argument).
5. The conclusion shouldn’t be too long, you have made your points in the main text, a quick conclusion is all that is needed.
6. You could help the examiner by underlining the key points in your text, that will show the examiner that you know what you are doing and he will appreciate the time he saves by reading your paper.

TASK: I’m not going to give you a task on this one, but instead, I’m going to tell you to trust in yourself. Believe that you are able to do great in this exam, even if your parents/friends/teacher says that you cant do it. If you put time and effort into something, then there is nothing you can’t do.

There is still one more part in this series to go, so make sure you read it – it’s about dealing with the wording of the exam question.

The Course Syllabus
This should be given to you when you start your course, but if not I’m sure there will be copy you can get from your teacher/lecturer if you ask nicely.
I find the syllabus very useful to work with; if you copy it out into a word processor, then using the textbook and any other sources of information you have, you can slowly build up each section until you have a very comprehensive document for the whole syllabus, and the beauty of this is that you can do it as you go, so that by the time you get to exam time, it is all there ready for you to use. The other way of doing it is by building up a page or two of information sheets for each section of the syllabus, then you have a little more space to add pictures in and make it more colourful!

Mnemonics for key ideas
Create mnemonics for key ideas, or for remembering the sequence of information. You know the sort; Richard Of York Gained Battle In Vain…Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet – the colours of the rainbow. You can also make up songs as ways of remembering things – depends how musically inclined you are really!

Audio Study Guide
Some people like to use audio as a good way of revising, the more times you hear something, the more likely you are to remember it! When I was working for my mum, the amount of information that I picked up from her talking to people on the phone was incredible – especially when I wasn’t actually listening – well I was getting on with my own work!
So plug your microphone into the computer and start recording things, I actually put my revision files into a revision folder on my iPod so that I could listen whenever, where ever I was!

Questions from the Examiner’s Own Brain!
You might think that this is a bit of a dumb thing to say, how can you get inside the Examiners head and get the questions? Well, I don’t mean physically get inside his/her head, imagine that you were an examiner, what sort of questions would you ask? How would you ask them? What would you expect to see in the answer? Sit down and put yourself in the shoes of an examiner. Write out a few questions that you would put on the exam paper if you were writing it. Then answer them! You could wait a month before answering them if you want, so that the answers are not fresh in your head!

Past Exam Papers
These are usually available off the internet, either from your college/university website, or if you are doing GCSEs or A Levels, they will be on your exam boards’ site. Note down the subject areas that each question covers. Is there one subject that comes up every single year? Or a subject that hasn’t come up for the last 3 or 4 years? You can bet that those subjects will show up on your exam paper, so make sure you revise them well!

Multi Choice Question Bank
If you are at university, there may be a question bank available for use, but if not, don’t panic – we will create our own! You could do it by starting a word document and start writing multi choice questions. If you make a decision to write maybe 20 questions per subject area (depends on the size of the subject really – but make sure there are plenty, just keep writing till there is no aspect of the subject left uncovered) then by the time it comes to revision, you could have hundreds of questions to practice with. Don’t forget to write the answers in a different document as you go; you don’t want to be spending time going through the material again looking for the correct answer!

Mock Exams
Use some of the past exam papers, or any mock papers that might be given out to practice doing the exam. I suggest doing these about a week before the exam, then you have time to go over any weak areas there might be. Do some where you just write out bullet points of what you would cover for a given question, and on other papers, do a full timed mock, where you pretend you are actually in the exam.

Tutors feedback on Mocks
If you have answers, you can mark your mock papers yourself, but if not ask your tutor if they would mind casting their eye over it, to see if you have missed any crucial points out. Even if you mark it yourself, but can’t understand why you might include something, and not something else, ask your tutor. Don’t forget your tutors are there to help you pass your exams so use them! Just don’t forget to thank them for their time when they do help you!

Final Review Sheet
One of the most useful things you can do in preparation for the last 24 hours before the exam is preparing a review sheet. This might have formulae, key facts, mnemonics, and examples for essays – whatever you might need when you get into the exam. Keep it to one page that you can keep with you until you go into the exam hall.

Visualisation
This is a trick that top students use to achieve peak performance in an exam. There are three times that you should do it:
Before – imagine yourself sitting in the exam hall, think of the smells, the sounds, really put yourself there. Be calm, you can feel all that you have learnt just flooding into your head when you ask for it. You are able to answer every question with no problems.
During – think back to when you were revising, when you were making notes on the subject you are writing about now, what music was on? Which pen where you writing with? Can you see the page of notes in your minds eye?
When in trouble – don’t panic when you can’t remember something, that will just release adrenaline, then you won’t be able to remember a thing above the buzzing in your ears! Just relax and think back to writing the notes, just like in the point above. Just make sure you are CALM!!

I’m not going to give you a summary today, but each numbered point is in bold, so you can go back and pick out the 10 points.

TASK: I want you to collect as much of these things together as you possibly can, if they don’t exist, like the multi choice question bank, set up your document in preparation for adding questions later.

Next time we will look at the day of the exam.

First we will look at how to turn “reading” into “studying”. It is all very well sitting down and reading a textbook, but how much of it is actually going in? The trick is to prime your brain for the information you are about to read, so your brain can put what you are reading into context and you file the information you are reading.

The best way of doing that is by reading the “What you will learn” sections and also the summary sections at the end. All these emails have summaries at the end so you can remind yourself of what you have just read about and I put a short intro passage at the beginning so you know what we will be covering.

When you are reading through the text pay special attention to the bits that are in bold/in a box/in a chart or diagram, these bits of information have been put in this form for a reason, so it is bound to be important!

If you need to write notes on what you have just read, make them short and easy to read. The chances are that you will go back to these notes when you are revising for your exam. Use the summary and “What you will learn” as a guide for your notes. For example, you could make each bullet point into a subheading on your piece of paper and just write a couple of sentences after each heading.

As I have said before, the human brain works by association, so if you keep crucial bits of data separate with its own line or its own note card, you are preventing these mental associations from taking place. A good way of encouraging these associations would be mind-mapping.

Mind-mapping is an amazing tol for organizing concepts and putting ideas in visual forms. It was invented by Tony Buzan in the 1960’s (if you want to know more about the history have a look on Wikipedia!). Basically, the idea of it is that you put the core idea of a subject area into the centre of the page, then in a spider like fashion, add concepts of that idea around the outside. You should focus on relationships between ideas more than definitions and explanations etc. Images, spatial relationships and colours will really help the brain in remembering and making sense of what you have put down on paper.

4 step plan in creating a mind-map:
Gather equipment (paper, pens, colours)
Identify and write down your focus point
Indentify main concepts that flow from your focus point
Keep branching out until you have covered all your bases.

There are loads of uses that you can use mind-mapping for;
During lectures
Brainstorming for essays or presentations
Writing essays or articles
Time management – divide time into chunks, sub-chunks etc.

A few things to mention on saving time when you are studying;

Focus on topics that have come up again and again in old exam papers. These are usually available online, or you could ask your teacher if there are any old papers you could have. Also topics that teachers have hinted are important. If you listen carefully during lessons or lectures, they will often give a lot away, especially if they are involved in writing the paper.

If there is a topic that you don’t understand, don’t neglect it – focus like a laser beam on it. I know it is tempting to spend loads of time revising subjects you know and enjoy, and it is not so enjoyable studying subjects that don’t make a huge amount of sense to you, but imagine how good you will feel when you crack a topic that you have had difficulty with. That good feeling will stay with you a while and you will find it easier to carry on revising. If you stick with subjects you know, chances are that you will get bored after a while and not want to study any longer.

When you are reading through the textbooks, learn to differentiate between the meat and the fluff. Many text books will just bulk out the book by explaining things that aren’t really important. You could use a highlighter to do that, highlight important words and phrases – no more than 4 or 5 words in one go if you can, as that will help focus you. Also if you are doing a lot of reading of textbooks and articles etc, you might want to consider learning how to photo-read. Do a search on Amazon – there’s quite a few products on there (look for the name Paul Scheele). Speed reading is slightly different, and I would not suggest that one, from what I understand there is a lot less uptake by the brain when you speed read compared to photo-reading.

The last thing I would say is consider working in study groups with friends, you can each work on a revision document for different subjects and share them round, or teach each other subjects. This can be very helpful in getting to grips with the material and can also be quite fun!

SUMMARY
What you’ll learn and summary boxes are very useful for priming you brain.
Brain works by association, the more associations; the stronger the memory.
Mind-mapping is very good for mental associations.
Concentrate on common topics as well as the ones you find hard.

TASK: Today’s task is look into mind-mapping and some other visual ways of putting information down onto paper. (you may already have done this when you looked into revision techniques, if so – you can take a break!

In the next part I will be telling you what should be in your studying toolkit!

The big thing to remember here is that is not the amount of time that you spend doing something that counts; it is the quality of the work you do. I know this sounds like a bit of a contradiction from what I said before about timetabling hours to work and actually working them, but I have also said that if you are not being productive with your work – stop! There is no point sitting and paining yourself, all it will do is make you more resentful towards sitting down and doing your work next time.

So I have six steps towards good time management:

1. Decide when to study.
We have already thought about when you are going to study when we did the timetable in the first post. It is said that you should read and write notes during the day when you are most alert, but do your memorizing before you go to sleep. So a good plan might be to read through the notes that you made about a lecture that morning before you go to sleep, that way your brain can be working on your notes while you are asleep.

2. Decide where to study
Again I have given you hints on your study area before, but I will just add to that here:
Try to pick a place that you can study in all the time, if you are constantly moving study areas you will find new things to look at that will be distracting. If you work in the library, try to head for the same area each time, preferably in a corner somewhere, because people watching is a good game of mine when I’m in the library!

Make sure the room is a comfortable temperature and is well lit, you should work in low light levels. Make sure you are comfortable, but not so comfortable it is relaxing – and DON’T work in bed!! Beds are for sleeping…and other things…but NOT working!! Also be aware of the noise levels – do you like it silent? White noise? Music? Make it a place that is right for you.

3. Decide what to study
Always begin your study session with planning. For example when I sat down to write this course, I have set myself an hour to plan the course, then half an hour to write each post, and an hour to go through the whole course to proof-read and check it all makes sense. I need to be sure that I am not spending too much time writing it, but still making sure it is quality. You need to be doing the same, giving yourself deadlines to finish a particular type of work. Say you had an essay to write, you might plan it out like:

30 mins – plan the outline, jot notes on what each section will cover
15 mins – write the introduction
60 mins – write the main part
15 mins – write the conclusion
Next day – 30 mins reading through and checking.

And voila, and essay that you thought would take 3 days to write – 3 hours of concerted effort – done! Now you can treat yourself to a trip to the movies with your friends!
So like what we have done above, divide the large essay into easily digestible chunks, if you want take a 10 minute break between each section! Write down your plan so that you are not tempted to cheat – treat it like an exam.

4. Minimise potential for distraction
This is where it can be a good thing working in the library – people go there to work and have to be quiet, you are also generally not allowed mobile phones on. But not every one likes working in the library, so make sure the people around you are aware that you are working and ask them if they would please not disturb you , or hang a sign on your door.

Turn off your phone, telly, radio whatever might distract you, although I know some people do like to have the television on quietly while they are working – down to personal preference I suppose, I find it very distracting!

Unless you are using it for research, I would highly recommend disconnecting the computer from the internet, it is very distracting hearing the “ping” telling you an email has just arrived! I find my self surfing aimlessly when I am bored of doing what I am supposed to be doing too.

If you start looking for a distraction, I would suggest taking a break, get some fresh air and make yourself a drink.

5. Stick to your schedule
Very important point this – if you have scheduled to do your essay plan at 2.45 til 3.15 – do your essay plan! If you procrastinate about it, you will only make it harder to do, and if it really something you don’t want to do, think of something you do want to do or have and tell your self you can do or have it afterwards. Reward yourself for being good! But don’t punish yourself if you don’t do it, the thought that you still have to do it later will be punishment enough!

6. Stop when you are no longer productive
This is the hardest thing for people to realise – when they are no longer being productive. Remember that you brain is like a sponge – it can only take up a certain amount of information in one sitting. It is not about how long you are working, but how hard you are working and how new the information is. Think about it:

Piece of information:
Reading from the text book – sponge saturated after 15 minutes
Listening to the lecture – already read about info, so sponge does not saturate as quickly – 30 minutes
Writing up lecture notes – been over info twice now, so sponge takes 50 minutes to saturate.

Learning to recognise when you are no longer productive does take a bit of practice. So learn to listen to your body and mind and realise when it is begging you for a break!

SUMMARY
Decide when to study
Decide where to study
Decide what to study – planning!
Minimize potential for distraction
Stick to your schedule
Stop when you are no longer productive

TASK: Thought I’d forgotten huh?! No, today I want you do sort out your study area, make it a nice place to be, or if you like to work in the library, sort out your bag so that you have everything you will need to hand.

Next time we will look at how you can get the most out of your studying time.

When you are learning something new, you are building a connection in your brain. The more senses you use, the stronger the connection will be. So if you are sitting in a lecture listening to what the lecturer is saying take in his visual cues too, don’t just sit there listening and staring at a piece of paper, you will be more involved in what he is saying and more inclined to remember it if you watch.

When you are working on your own, you maybe using colour on your page, but talk out loud to yourself while you are doing it, or work with friends. Teach each other the subjects – have fun with it, you are much more likely to remember the material if there was a good joke about it with your friends!

Obviously it is a bit hard to taste, smell or touch your work, unless it was a practical element, but have some fun with sight and hearing the work.

When you are in the lecture, don’t take down everything that the teacher says. Listen, digest and question what you are being told, try to make links with other information you have stored away in your head, even if it just to confirm what you are being told. When you cross link memories like this it makes it much easier to access them again next time. You could also record the lecture on a dictaphone so you can listen to it again later and make more comprehensive notes from it. But make sure you ask permission from your lecturer if you want to do that – most won’t have a problem with it, but it is polite to get their permission.

Keep going over the material. There is a saying that goes something like – “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. This is very true of memories, each time you go over a piece of work, you reinforce the memory connection, and as I said before, confirm why something might be true with knowledge you have already. Cross linking memories will make it harder for you to lose those connections.

An important point to raise is about taking an active role in your education. I have always felt that vocabulary associated with school and higher education is a bit too passive. You are educated – this implies something is being done to you; you have no choice in the matter. When you study something, you are doing the studying; you are taking the initiative to learn something. Students who are passive learners will never get top grades. Take responsibility for your education – it is up to you to get good grades.

Place faith in your intelligence, everybody is capable of a lot more than they think they are. Learning is hard for everyone, but some take up the challenge of learning something new, others don’t – make sure you are one of those who do take up the challenge!

Don’t get frustrated with a subject if you find it hard, frustration is an inhibitor of creativity and you ability to remember things. If you do find yourself getting frustrated, stop what you are doing and phone a friend to talk about it, or go for a walk to clear your head. When you go back to it, something may have fallen into place and you are able to proceed.

As I have said before, there are many ways of learning, from mind-maps to audio learning – there is information on it all out there. Ask you tutor if they have a technique that works. I had a teacher in school who said that he has a little picture or symbol in the corner of the page of each page of notes he wrote. He then related all the information on the page to that symbol. So when he wanted to remember something he knew was attached to a certain symbol, he would flip through his pages of notes in his head until he go to the page he was after and would then read the information he needed. Of course I think he had a photographic memory, so it was easy for him, but ask around – some one will tell you of a good technique that will work for you!

I could sit and go through every learning technique ever invented, but then I would have enough material to write a book and you would just get bored! So I am going to set that as your task for today:

TASK: Do a search on “revision techniques” or “learning techniques” and put together a document of about 5 techniques that you can try when you start learning. You may find very quickly that one or two of them just do not work for you, in which case drop them. If you get through all of them and none have helped, talk to a tutor or do another search and find another five techniques.

Remember, part of becoming a great student is learning to identify where your strengths and weaknesses are, and working on those weaknesses to make yourself a better student.

SUMMARY
Use multiple senses.
Stay in the moment – if you are in a lecture, focus on the lecture, not what you are having for tea.
Take an active role in your education
Place faith in your intelligence
Identify and utilize your particular learning preferences.

Next we will be looking at the top secret tool of all top students…

So now onto the good bit….

PART 1 – PREPARATION

Doing well in exams starts on the day you decide to take a course; not a few weeks before you take an exam, not on the day you start your course, not half way through the course when you decide that it is time to start working. Of course any of these other times aren’t too late to do reasonably in an exam if you suddenly realise you want to do well, but you won’t perform to your max if you leave it much later than the day you start your course.

The underlying issue to studying and doing well is motivation:

Why are you doing this course?
Why do you want to do well?
Where will it get you in the future?
Is it important that you do well?
And the most important…Do you want to do this course?

You need to know the answer to all the questions when you decide to do take a course, whether it is when you are going to university for the first time, or whether it is subjects you are choosing for your GSCEs or A-Levels. Obviously while you are at school you don’t have any choice about some of the subjects you study, they are part of your core curriculum. However, you still have to do well in them if you want to go on to study at university, and that should be your motivation for doing well.

My guess is that you are reading this course for one of two reasons – either you are about to start a course, in which case you are obviously motivated, but are a little unsure as to what to do to do well. The other reason you might be here is because you have exams coming up and are starting to panic that you haven’t prepared enough to pass it. The good news is that I can help you, whichever reason you are here for, although if you are the latter, you are going to have to be prepared to work very hard!

The underlying theme that connects these two reasons is misdirected or undirected energy. Over this course we will look at both and try to put your energy to use in the right direction.

Preparing yourself for study ranges from making sure you have the right equipment – book, pens, pencils, paper – the obvious stuff you’ll need for study, to mental preparation.

TASK: Print out a piece of paper that you can stick on your wall with answers to the questions I mentioned before. Make it look pretty, be creative with it – the more energy you put into it and the more you feel the answers to those questions, the more likely you are to succeed. When ever you feel yourself loosing motivation to work, see those answers and remember why you are doing this!

If you know what your timetable will be when you start your course, you can start organising your day. First place the times of any lectures, seminars or lab sessions that are compulsory to attend; then fill in any extra curricular activities you do – sport, music etc – these are very important for giving your brain a break from work, they also get you up and moving about allowing your blood to get around your body better!

Lastly you need to work out how much learning you need to be doing on your own. Some courses might say, for example, that the compulsory contact hours only equal about 25% of the time that you should be spending working. So if you have 3 two hour lectures, 1 one hour seminar and 1 three hour lab session a week, you have 10 hours contact a week, so you should be spending another 30 hours on top of those contact hours learning on your own. That might include essays that you have to write, reading you have to do or just reading and learning around the subjects so you have a greater understanding. (This is just a guide so ask your tutor to find out how much time you should be spending in addition to your contact hours).

You have your hours, lets pretend it is 30, divide it by seven to find out how long you should be working each day (in our calculations that is 4 hours each day). If your number sounds like a lot of time to be working each day look at your piece of paper again – why are you at school/college/uni?

Break your {4 hours] up into manageable chunks. Personally I work best in the morning and evening, so I am going to put ½ hour from 6.30 til 7, then break for breakfast for 15 minutes, then an hour from 7.15 til 8.15. Then time to shower before heading out for my 9 o’clock lecture. You get the picture, build up your own plan that you can live with.

A few other points I ought to make:
Make sure your study area is well lit, tidy, not too hot or cold and away from distractions like housemates, siblings etc.
Don’t keep changing your study schedule, try to keep it consistent, that way when it is time to work, your body will accept it and you will just sit down and work without even thinking about it.
Use dirty motivation if you have to; Mum said I’d never do it; well I just have to prove her wrong.
Rewarding yourself when you do something right will also help keep motivation and enthusiasm levels high.

SUMMARY
Motivation is the key word – work out how to motivate yourself.
Identify why you are studying in the first place.
Prepare yourself mentally and physically for work.
Timetable your working, it will help to stop you putting things off – when it is time to work, do some work.
Use dirty motivation if you have to – anything to keep you focused!

Don’t forget to do the task I set, and in the next chapter we will look at strategies for better learning.