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

I think it would be better to understand and go over a whole topic, then make questions and answer them to the best of your ability and then look at the answers afterwards

Wow, thanks again for taking time out to respond. I reckon the attention and retrieval stages are the most challenging but with practice I guess it will become less of a daunting experience, right?

And when you say 2 attempts of the same question do you mean literally working it out again but differently? Do you recommend doing so in the real exam or merely in practice papers?

It's hard to comment on which stage is hardest, but I'd imagine the attention/encoding steps are and the retrieval step just comes naturally with completing the ridiculous amounts of practice papers.

I think most people struggle with being able to switch off from Netflix/Facebook and such in general so it's hard to pay attention/revise. I personally found that I feel a lot more motivated to revise in Starbucks than I do at home, I've struggled to keep off my laptop when I am.

Two attempts thing - I do mean doing two workings differently, I think my teacher explained it as an examiner that the mark schemes permit a second answer to be marked if it's clear that it's a second attempt at the answer. There are some situations where it's easy to be unsure between two methods but crossed out answers can't be marked.

I personally avoid doing it until nearer the end of the exam, it's a waste of time to stay on a question that you find confusing than to move on and come back to it at another point.

Your advice has been really helpful, honestly.

So in essence if I can get rid of distractions in my workplace - or find a workplace free from distractions to begin with - I'll have a much better time with attention, and so the encoding process will likely be made easier.

Last thing I wanted to ask you though (even though not what I originally wanted to find out) is if there is like a formula to getting an A* in maths? By that I mean a really effective way (or ways) of learning maths and knowing exactly how to apply it where appropriate


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I think it's easier to find workplaces free from distractions, self-imposed limits are as effective as you're able to convince yourself that you should have them.

I think it's better to aim for the A-grade first, then focus purely on learning how to approach and recognise "harder/trickier" questions that are non-standard. In C3, some questions involving trigonometry can be quite difficult and in C4 some questions involving Integration/Vectors can be difficult.

I try to supplement my learning of those two modules as much as I can by finding extremely difficult C3/4 questions using Gold papers and looking through the worked solution to see how they're approached. Solomon papers are quite good since they give less clues in the question.

PS - I notice other people have mentioned teaching friends/family, which I've mentioned at some point. That's really helpful for the encoding part of learning.

So I'm doing:
- maths
- further maths
- physics
- economics

And the subjects I'm most worried about are physics and economics only because I'm worried that my interest in the subjects won't be enough to actually make me remember the things I'm learning long-term

I plan to look at past papers in the period closer to the exams (so next year) but as for now I just want to know how to actually learn the content

Oh okay, thanks!

Understand, make good notes and regular recapping ... got it!

Thank you for your advice hun

What helped you apply what you had learned?

For physics derive anything and everything. As an example, if I need to know that v^2=u^2 +2as, there are two options here. Option one is that I just learn the formula and then I use it to answer the question, i.e. I understand how to use it but not the formula itself, so as a result it's relatively unlikely ti stay in your head for long periods of time. The second method is I derive the formula myself. I now have an understanding of both where the formula comes from and what the assumptions that go into that formula are which gives me a good idea of when it can and cant be used as I understand the limits of the formula (e.g. in that example I need a to be constant when I solve the differential equation or the acceleration will also be integrated with respect to x rather than being output as a constant). This also means that if i cant remember the exact form, I should be able to work it out from my understanding of what it going on. Lastly, don't view a subject or even different subjects as completely separate entities - yes you can probably learn the points needed for each sub section of the spec but often things make a lot more sense using context from other parts of the spec, techniques you learn in further maths that isn't covered in physics etc etc

I used this strategy of writing things out
And out again for psychology as it was just one bit memory test and my other subjects were English Lang and maths so I didn't really have to do much actual ' application ' in a sense

Oh okay, thanks

So writing things out helped you apply the things you learned in the exam (for psychology) - I suppose that could work perhaps for the essays that come up in Economics right

Ifit depends what the essay is because for psychology the essay questions can only be asked in a certain way ' outline and evaluate X' buy if the subject requires you to use some data or a text then this method isn't going to help that much as this method helped me to learn essays word- for - word which I just regurgitated in the exam

NB - you mentioned that past papers seem "too random" and unstructured.

I remember somewhere in the thread that you mentioned doing Maths/Physics/Economics and a fourth subject (I believe it was Chemistry?) I'm not sure about Economics, but for the other three sciences Physics and Maths Tutor breaks it down into topics to learn. Under the various units, you can select "by topic"

http://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/chemistry-revision/
http://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/physics-revision/
http://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/maths-revision/

If you manage to go through ALL subjects in a module, as well as all past papers, it shouldn't be hard to get a strong grade.

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

Thanks again! Do they have anything for Further Maths?

Just a general study tip but always study with a pen. I find I never learn unless I'm writing the stuff down.

Looks like they do, http://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/maths-revision/
ExamSolutions unfortunately hasn't completed too many of the M3-5 ones, but FP1-3 and the Statistics modules seem okay.
http://www.furthermaths.org.uk/ has good resources last I've checked
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLgsizECNudgvFOmxEn_UBg/videos for Further Maths in general
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNLPiqzhf5AtQsvd94cf1sg/videos for M3-5