Jun 10
22
What 10 things should you have when you are studying and revising?
PART 5 – STUDYING TOOLKIT
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.
