A level revision: Am I cooked?

It's roughly 5 weeks until my A levels start, I'm taking Econ, Politics and RS. Currently on Easter holidays and am doing 5 hours a day mainly making notes from text books, its very slow progress and it feels like nothing is going in. At the rate I'm working (5 topics a week) I won't finish all the courses in time as there are 54 topics all together. I've seen advice that I should be doing past papers at this point but I simply don't know the topics well enough to be doing past papers as I slacked off in lower sixth, I got CCD in my mocks recently and am hoping to get ABB in the real things. How should I be revising as I need to cover lots of content fast and simply rewriting the text book out is painfully inefficient

Reply 1

vanyaaaaaaaa

6

Original post by TheoIngram_

It's roughly 5 weeks until my A levels start, I'm taking Econ, Politics and RS. Currently on Easter holidays and am doing 5 hours a day mainly making notes from text books, its very slow progress and it feels like nothing is going in. At the rate I'm working (5 topics a week) I won't finish all the courses in time as there are 54 topics all together. I've seen advice that I should be doing past papers at this point but I simply don't know the topics well enough to be doing past papers as I slacked off in lower sixth, I got CCD in my mocks recently and am hoping to get ABB in the real things. How should I be revising as I need to cover lots of content fast and simply rewriting the text book out is painfully inefficient

hey, i'm not sure about econ and rs but i do politics and i think the best revision method for you rn would be to make essay plans and memorise them and examples as there's only a limited number of questions that can come up and contemporary examples is what gets you high marks

Reply 2

Bilbocat24

5

Original post by TheoIngram_

It's roughly 5 weeks until my A levels start, I'm taking Econ, Politics and RS. Currently on Easter holidays and am doing 5 hours a day mainly making notes from text books, its very slow progress and it feels like nothing is going in. At the rate I'm working (5 topics a week) I won't finish all the courses in time as there are 54 topics all together. I've seen advice that I should be doing past papers at this point but I simply don't know the topics well enough to be doing past papers as I slacked off in lower sixth, I got CCD in my mocks recently and am hoping to get ABB in the real things. How should I be revising as I need to cover lots of content fast and simply rewriting the text book out is painfully inefficient

Hi! I didn't take any of the topics that you did at A-level but I did a mix of STEM and humanities so hopefully I can help.
Unfortunately, reading and rewriting the textbook is not going to help you memorise. I understand that you may not feel able to attempt any practice papers right now and that's understandable.

To memorise the content you need to test yourself, even if you feel like right now you know nothing! Write out the name of a topic, if you need some prompts to begin, add some subheadings, and then without looking at your notes write down anything and everything you can remember. This is called blurting. I find that a mind map format is the best way. It does not have to be neat either! It's just practising recall. Then in a different coloured pen add anything you missed.

I would also highly recommend you have a look at retrsopective revision (search it up). It basically just means keeping track of topics you have covered and how confident you are feeling about them. That way you can prioritise the topics that you find particularly difficult (ie. every few days/weeks revisit a past topic by blurting it again and adding anything you missed - quite often you will see a pattern emerging of little bits of info that you keep forgetting, but this will improve over time) and spend less time on easier or shorter topics.

Once you feel like you have some sort of grasp of the main content try a few exam questions. It doesn't have to be a whole paper because this can be quite daunting and, in my case, lead to procrastination. Pick a topic you haven't looked at in a while and force yourself to do the questions/essay/essay plan WITHOUT your notes and then go back, mark it and see what you might have forgotten to include.

If you do this you should see your grades improve 🙂 Good luck and let me know if you have any other questions!

Reply 3

TomGray05

Original post by TheoIngram_

It's roughly 5 weeks until my A levels start, I'm taking Econ, Politics and RS. Currently on Easter holidays and am doing 5 hours a day mainly making notes from text books, its very slow progress and it feels like nothing is going in. At the rate I'm working (5 topics a week) I won't finish all the courses in time as there are 54 topics all together. I've seen advice that I should be doing past papers at this point but I simply don't know the topics well enough to be doing past papers as I slacked off in lower sixth, I got CCD in my mocks recently and am hoping to get ABB in the real things. How should I be revising as I need to cover lots of content fast and simply rewriting the text book out is painfully inefficient

For Econ work through the past papers but use textbooks, the mark scheme and YouTube (Econplusdal). Means you can work on your structure whilst still learning the content. Took me from an E at xmas mocks to a B in my recent mocks. Im not there yet but i feel confident with my structure I can now pick up marks even if my knowledge on the topic is shaky!

Reply 4

notyaaverage

4

What board do you do for RS?

Reply 5

CharlieWx

5

For Econ, it depends on which exam board that you use. If you have access to all past papers and mark schemes, then just do all of the papers and check with the mark schemes. Essay questions in Econ are not too different as they are only focusing on that few topics, memorizing the answers in the mark schemes after you’ve done the papers would definitely help you a lot in the short term.