The Student Room Group

Straight A* study techniques?

Hey everyone!

I've just started my second year of A levels and am determined to get straight A*'s at the end of the year. The subjects I am taking are English Literature, History and Classical Civilisation. At English Lit I have an A at AS but I am sitting both history and class civ at AS and A2 over one year. I'm really enjoying studying and devote a lot of time to it. However, I don't feel that my current studying style, while I'm working hard, is effective enough. Does anyone have any revision techniques or study tips that they feel could help me stay motivated and get up to the top grades?

Thanks :smile:
Sorry you've not had any responses about this. :frown: Are you sure you’ve posted in the right place? Posting in the specific Study Help forum should help get responses. :redface:

I'm going to quote in Tank Girl now so she can move your thread to the right place if it's needed. :h: :yy:

Spoiler

A friend of mine just got 5 A* at A-Level and she said honestly you just need to love your subjects - you will remember things if you are more interested in them, so read widely outside of your subject so you know how your classwork applies. This will make your exam answers more mature as well, as you'll have a wider net of sources to draw information from. Also, it's never too early to start revising :smile:
Reply 3
Original post by rgwx
Hey everyone!

I've just started my second year of A levels and am determined to get straight A*'s at the end of the year. The subjects I am taking are English Literature, History and Classical Civilisation. At English Lit I have an A at AS but I am sitting both history and class civ at AS and A2 over one year. I'm really enjoying studying and devote a lot of time to it. However, I don't feel that my current studying style, while I'm working hard, is effective enough. Does anyone have any revision techniques or study tips that they feel could help me stay motivated and get up to the top grades?

Thanks :smile:


In general you probably need to do a lot of independent work and ideally try to make sure you're keeping up with everything and understanding everything - you can cut the amount of actual full-on revision necessary by just going over what you did in class every day, and thinking about key ideas/facts, maybe writing some or your thoughts and some of the more specific information down, to try and embed them in your mind.

For English Literature if possible you want to be redrafting coursework and going for full marks to give yourself a little more room to manoeuvre in the exam; you need to know your assessment objectives extremely well and ideally have practice essays marked by the teacher to see where you're at. If the exam is closed book, you want to build up a ton of quotes; you want to be able to provide evidence for any idea you may have. And speaking of ideas, I found it helpful to write all mine up in word and have a big network of thematic analysis with the quotes from the text; it builds up a sort of cohesive, layered understanding that is required for higher grades.

For History I dunno about coursework but I reckon this is the subject that requires most hardcore revision; you want to just drill the important facts and dates into your mind, along with practising essays and hopefully getting feedback on them.

Credentials: I got 4 A*s at A Level with A* in English Lit and I also got an A at AS (slightly below 90%, but that was due to a very anomalous exam result) History.
Use more than one source of textbook + wider reading

Quick Reply

Latest