How do you EFFECTIVELY study for your subjects? (excluding Maths)?

My current revision techniques are OK but I don't feel like I retain the information for a long time after studying. I'm looking to make the things I revise memorable so that it doesn't feel random, just natural I guess.

Things I have already tried and why they don't work for me:

- past papers - the notes I make from the past papers are hard to align in the order of the specification so I don't like revising from them because it feels too random

- typing up my notes from class and from textbooks - takes too long and I lose focus, don't understand a thing, and end up revising from the textbook I got the notes from (yes, even if I make the notes my own words)

- passively reading textbooks - I lose focus when I read in my head, I get a headache hearing my own voice read out loud

So.........

IS THERE ANYTHING THAT WORKS?

Like, actually works

One thing I find very helpful is writing down say two pages of your revision guide, but leaving gaps for a lot of the words. For example, 'Electrons are a type of L_____' etc. This forces recall of the information, meaning you are more likely to retain it. It's not good to write down a sentence and fill in the gaps straight away; it's important that you write enough down so that you're not just using your short term memory. Like I said, two revision guide pages should be enough before you start filling in the gaps. If you don't remember which word goes in the gap, you can always look the word up again and repeat the sentence with the word in your head.


Hope this helps a little

Thank you for the advice(:
I'm worried about how practical that is though... Could I keep this up for every topic? Would this not also be slightly time-consuming or is there a more efficient way of doing this same method?

No problem

Well, the CGP revision guide takes up around 60 pages for AQA A2 Physics (and I should imagine it's the same for other exam boards)

If you do 2 pages a day, which honestly doesn't take that long, you will be done in 30 days. That is like 1/10 of your school year! Then you can do loads of exam questions and be fully prepared way before the exam! It's not like you'll be doing all the notes the day before the exam haha! But if you spread out your time like I said, you won't be doing too much each day, and everything will be covered before you know it. If you space out your time well, then this method can be really effective