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A and A* students... Share your revision tips

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Original post by amber109
hahahhaha lool your a joker! But its truee, almonds increase concentration!



Original post by Raj K
:P LOL which is why i eat them everyday ahaaa!


Kiwis are where it's at lol
Reply 981
Original post by thetobbit
Kiwis are where it's at lol


lol thankyouu :biggrin: so now my diet will be: almonds, kiwis, and bananas hahaha
A huge tip I wished I knew for my first set if as exams was to make my revision more active and tout provoking. Instead of righting out a passage of text, create a question which will test you on the information. This way revision becomes much simpler and it's so close to the style of an exam.
Worked like a dime for me in Physics, economics and business.

Oh and with maths make a booklet with a collection of the questions you found difficult. Write out an explanation on why you went wrong and what you've learnt from that question. After a while you'll stop having to add so many questions and retreading the booklet the last few nights before the exam really helps you stay calm and realise how easy the exam could be.

Best of luck and I hope some of this works for any of you guys.
Reply 983
1) Start revising as soon as you can (the earlier the better)

2) Just before revision, make a plan of what you're going to do on each day so you work efficiently

3) Make sure you're revising the right specification and get the right revision book for your syllabus

4) Rely on yourself as well as your school to do work (but rely on yourself the most)

5) Take regular breaks, but not too often, only when you feel like you're not taking in anything

6) Do past papers and see what answers the mark scheme expects and what working out (if any)

7) Stop using social networking sites to prevent you getting distracted (not a must, but I do personally recommend it)

8) If you play any video games, it's better to stop until you've finished revising (prevents you rushing to complete your work so you can take a break) - Also not a must, but I recommend it

9) Take a whole day off every fortnight, to calm yourself down

10) There's no point in trying to make your notes look pretty, it's content, not presentation when it comes to revision

11) The more sleep you get the more easier it is to stay concentrated
Don't over work yourself. I have a friend who worked her butt off for her final AS exams and she didn't come out with the grades she wanted.

Also, a lot of it is exam technique. I took an economics module in January and got U. When I got my score back, I knew everything but my exam technique was so appalling (according to my head of economics who doesn't teach me) that they were stricter.

A lot of the time it is all about figuring out what the examiner is looking for, not how much you know.
Reply 985
anyone actually proper scared about their exams?????? i am );
Mnemonics help a lot. Some of the good ones I will always remember:

DIMOV - density is mass over volume

MIFTD (pronounced "mifted") - moment is force times distance

MIIGAR - mitosis is growth and repair

PIFOA - pressure is force over area

And so on and so forth. Learning formulas is always nice if you can make it into a made-up word. :smile:
Reply 987
I am not a A or A* student by any means, I am that average student who the teachers do not care for, I am that student who instead of being improved I have been put down on lower tiers, I am that student who has been called a 'loser' and laughed at by two teachers.
Getting these results for me will let me DEFINE my self in front of those teachers and make my dead parents PROUD; something they never were before.

I have had to self teach my self the specs because of how bad the teaching is at my school and by reading the exam board specific text book, making flash cards occasionally, york notes and Philip Allan for English lit & lang, doing past papers and fueled by my self hatred I am confident that I will get the good grades.

Just by reading the text books and making occasional notes and just being MOTIVATED for the past month I have scored high on past papers so I feel this method has worked.

So my tips:

1) Go on Amazon and get your exam board specific textbook, york notes/philip allan (for english)
2) Read them from front to back & make flash cards
3) Past papers

[video="youtube;G1GWBB7qrBA"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1GWBB7qrBA[/video]
Breakdown your exams into small topics. Revise each topic independently an hour or two at a time then write some questions on what you have just looked at then take a break. When you come back attempt to answer the questions you made. Repeat this over a few days and progress onto past paper questions when you feel confident. When you've exhausted each topic tackle the exam papers in their entirety, make sure to time yourself to ensure you can actually do them in the time allotted for the real thing.
Any tips how to revise everything in a few days before the exam... without panicking ?
Original post by aysha.19
Any tips how to revise everything in a few days before the exam... without panicking ?


Im in a similar situation, I just started yesterday so I am hitting it fast and hitting it hard, first exam on the 22nd and I am revising around 4-6 hours a day at the moment, just think of it this way, after the exams that's it you can chill the f*** out of the next 3 months.

But for how to revise I personally use flash cards and my notes, I condense my notes for example my 15 page history booklet on Kennedy was condensed to around 3-4 pages by cutting out the crap and then after condensation has taken place I write out my flash cards an example being on one side "How many hamlets were there by the end of 1963" and the other side having the answer on. I then use those little paper shaped things that stop your paper from like creasing as easily. Whack my stapled together booklet of condensed notes in there with my flash cards. Then when I need to revise I use my flash cards, if I find one I can't do I quickly skim over it in my notes and then try again.
Make sure you have plenty of revision guides and occasionally, old text books. For example A-levels and AQA Biology. The textbook doesn't fully explain about the body's immune system and its mechanism. So, I had to resort to revision guides, old textbooks and the internet to find my answer. So, use a wide source of knowledge.

Eat healthy - apple works better than caffeine, for instance. And drink plenty of water.

Sleep well before the exam. Don't do an all-nighter before the exam day cause that's usually plain daft!

Work hard and rest well.

Good luck though =)
Reply 992
Teach others! I've found this really helps. Because to teach a fellow classmate something they don't understand, it requires you to know it inside out. This helped me a lot, especially with Psychology and English Lit :smile:
Original post by Vanny17
I worked very hard for my As level exams but came out with very bad grades. I read during every break/ lunch and sometimes 4 hours straight. I worked through EVERY past papers, made revision notes, cut out on social life and always read before every new chapter. My teachers and students said I had potential to get AAAB grades. How come I messed up? Please tell me what I did wrong. Share your revision tips as well! Please. My subjects are biology, chemistry, Religious Studies and sociology. Thanks.


I read over all my notes and write them up, getting simpler and simpler every time :smile: I also did every past paper possible. Finally I didn't work for longer than an hour. Every hour I would have a half hour break :smile:
Well, I guess everyone's different and I don't know about religious studies or sociology BUT I am doing biology and chemistry and managed (could have been fluke though) to come out with 2 A's
I didn't do any past paper's for them, but that was a BAD IDEA. I really should have done to get a good idea of what the style of question would be like.

What I did was try to tackle about 3 double page spreads of my text book a day and just work on them until they were completely understood and I knew them off by heart.
If I could answer all the set questions on them then I considered myself done, put a sticky note on the page to mark it, and then I'd move on. At the end of the three, I'd go back to the one's from a few days ago and make sure I still understood. It's a bit tiring and definitely long-winded but it really worked for me last year!

It may not be the best way for you to revise though, and I've decided not to do it for this module of biology as it's too content heavy, this time I've decided to make little videos, put key words to barbara steisen (don't laugh, it actually works! Although now I can't even say 'cytochrome oxidase' without singing it in my head anymore) and make a hugely long powerpoint. I guess we'll see in august if it's worked out xD

Oh! I almost forgot! Get a friend (NOT A DISTRACTING ONE) around and get all your ideas onto a wipe-board or lots of sugar paper. Do stupid anecdotes (like for enzyme inhibitors I thought of a couple that NEED to get together (substrate and enzyme) being cockblocked (inhibited) by the girl's boyfriend. Ridiculous, but it worked)

I hate to say it, but 4 hours straight might have been a little heavy. I usually do about an hour and when I feel my concentration slipping I'll go and chill out for about 15 minutes before getting focused again. Set yourself time limits and goals to achieve and DON'T OVER DO IT!!

I really hope you do well in this next set of exams and hopefully this might have helped a little bit :smile:
If you want to learn something, and I mean really learn it so that you can recite it at will then use this site: quizlet.com

It's amazing for vocabulary for languages, for dates and quotations for History, or learning set texts/ speeches or anything. Basically you put in the list of things you want it to test you on then keep going at it until you get them all right. Then repeat.

It's basically tapping in to that video game ability our generation has. I found it ridiculously useful and hope everyone else does as well.
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 996
i hate alevels, just saying
Reply 997
Something you could do is to use a memory journey if you have to remember certain things in an order. You should pick a journey you do every day, perhaps going to school or from the point you wake up to the point you're eating your breakfast. At each part of that journey, pick an object, for example, you bed, and associate part of what you need to learn with that bed and keep doing that with other objects in your journey, you should then be able to learn quite a lot of facts in the correct order
Reply 998
Firstly, make sure you're not mucking up your routine by revising late at night or anything - confusing your body will only make you exhausted and moody. Sleep when you're tired, eat when you're hungry.
Secondly, recall. Learning information is okay but getting people to test you on it means you remember it better and can detect any areas of weakness faster.
Also, not entirely sure how much this helped, but i've tried remembering stuff in other stressful or distracting situations such as under time pressure or when listening to loud radio programmes - theory being that if i've learned it well enough to remember then, it'll probably stay during the exam.
Lastly, during the exam, remember to breathe. Helps to combat the adrenaline which will otherwise just make your head spin.
Sorry I haven't read the whole thread but.
Science: Learn the mark scheme, particularly some boards repeat the same questions every single year to a ridiculous extent, and exam technique can be more important than course content. Learn it till you can get over 90% on past papers.

Humanities: study and then condense your notes onto one word document or notebook or something. It helps you remember. Also, any subjects with long written questions make essay plans to revise - you learn what you need to and it saves planning time.

And here's a good and humourous cracked article about what not to do: http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-dumbest-things-students-do-when-cramming-exams/

(Read the above article even if you ignore my post)

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