Subjects that are the hardest to revise?

Any opinions?

For me it is English/English Lit. I can do Science, Maths, History etc but the thing that I haven't even started revising yet is dun-dun-dunn the poems.

It's partly because we only skimmed over them in class the first time round, in fact although we'e meant to be doing 'revision' in our english class, we are in fact seeing some of these poems for the very first time. Our teacher has said that you should know which themes etc each poem shares with al the others and how you should compare them... and I'm finding that a lot harder than it sounds.

In essays I usually just make up some crap on the spot, and as long as you can back it up with a quote, it passes.

Funnily enough, I have no problem revising the novel e.g. themes characters references

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What has anyone else found hardest to revise? Perhaps we can exchange tips :smile:

Reply 1

Purple

18

I only revised Biology for my GCSEs

Reply 2

kellywood_5

17

I found English, English lit, maths and French the hardest to revise, English, English lit and French because there's not a lot you can do and maths because I kept getting frustrated at how rubbish I was and gave up!

Reply 3

Dilute

15

English English English! All areas, Lang and Lit.

Argh! I hate the way you have to have "natural flair" or spend hours over "possible essays" that might not even help anyway.

Reply 4

GerardT

english and english lit. It's not the style of learning thats the problem, it's that there is so much more to remember. Our teachers are basically telling us to memorize example essays, and it's very thick revision. If that makes any sense.

Reply 5

Inflation

19

GerardT

english and english lit. It's not the style of learning thats the problem, it's that there is so much more to remember. Our teachers are basically telling us to memorize example essays, and it's very thick revision. If that makes any sense.

Biology!!!

For English I would reccomend doing practice questions, my teacher gave me a list of tons of past questions. What board are you doing, I can give you some if you want.

Reply 6

GerardT

ashmufc

Biology!!!

For English I would reccomend doing practice questions, my teacher gave me a list of tons of past questions. What board are you doing, I can give you some if you want.

CCEA aka the one no-one else does :redface:

Reply 7

Frapps

oh please if you have edexcel, please send me questions!! please tell me you do edexcel! please! please! i'm desperate. without a doubt, english will be my worst - therefore i REALLY need to prepare well and in advance!

even if your board isn't edexcel, can you still send me those papers? please??

Reply 8

Excalibur

15

I do edexcel. Which areas of poetry are you doing? We do Identity, and for the English Craft of the Writer we're doing the non-fiction texts.

I hate English & English Lit with a passion and find them really difficult to revise. The others I am struggling with are German and Spanish (man I am so depressed about the speaking exam...).

Reply 9

brimstone

7

Eng Lit - due to the large amount of poems we have to revise. Excalibur - I'm on Edexcel too, we're doing the first set of poems. What texts are you looking at?

Languages - because learning vocab is so long and slow...

Reply 10

Babylon By Bus

I do Edexcel too. If you have any past papers pleeease send them to me.

This must be a first three people in a row who do Edexcel English GCSEs, everyone seems to do AQA. Miraculous.

Edit: Make that four. Astounded!

Reply 11

Excalibur

15

I know! AQA seems to be the most popular exam board though, by far. All the web resources seem to be centred on them :frown:

For the non fic texts we do "Mongolian Wedding", "Other Side of the Dale", "Lady in the Van", "Don't leave me here to die" and the newspaper article collections, "Parents & children" and "Sport for all?". I hate them!! My teacher has given us minimal help on them and I don't see how I could write one whole essay on their use of language and whatnot.... the Identity poems by itself are nice enough and I quite like the Seamus Heaney poems; it's just I hate it when English Lit teachers overanalyse and make out that every single word has a connotation.

There may be some specimen papers on the Edexcel website:

http://www.edexcel.org.uk/quals/gcse/english/gcse/1203/

And for Lit

http://www.edexcel.org.uk/quals/gcse/english/gcse/1213/

But you've probably already tried it already...

Reply 12

brimstone

7

I'm doing the same non-fiction texts. Lady in the Van is bloody ridiculous. Other Side of the Dale is incredibly boring. Mongolian wedding is randomly dull. The articles are just crap. And to top it off, I've left my anthology in school over the holidays, so I can't revise them :eek:

. Hopefully, i can bluff my way through the exam, if not failure here I come :frown:

Reply 13

Excalibur

15

brimstone

I'm doing the same non-fiction texts. Lady in the Van is bloody ridiculous. Other Side of the Dale is incredibly boring. Mongolian wedding is randomly dull. The articles are just crap. And to top it off, I've left my anthology in school over the holidays, so I can't revise them :eek:

. Hopefully, i can bluff my way through the exam, if not failure here I come :frown:

I see exactly what you mean. But the Other Side of the Dale and Lady in the Van appeared in the 2004 and 2005 papers, so I have a feeling that those two might not be in our exam. But that means we'll be stuck with those ridiculous articles :rolleyes:

Reply 14

brimstone

7

We haven't even covered the hardest article in the Sports one. Our teacher set it for us to do for cover work last year, noone did it , and she refused to teach it to us. :frown:

More failure

Reply 15

henryt

17

Don't try and bluff your way through English Lit!! I did OCR, and I got a B on my Post-1914 poetry and a D on my Post-1914 Drama!! I still came out with a middling A though, due to full marks on my coursework :p:

Reply 16

*Tears and Butterflies*

2

I find English the hardest, even though i haven't even started any yet. i just keep on avoiding it because i don't know how to start. Now i think about it you have scared me cos i have done no revision for it at all! I also find geography a bit difficult cos i feel like i know what i am trying to learn already even though i know i dont, i am just getting the hang of revising for Spanish now.

Reply 17

Inflation

19

I do AQA

I find it quite easy, only Lord of The Flies is the hard bit.

Reply 18

Frapps

definitely, the most difficult has to be english. it's my worst subject and i guess that unless you're an ace at it, you won't get very far, no matter how much you revise. i mean to get an A* or whatever, they say that 'the candidate must demonstrate flair...' WTF? screw them!
i don't have flair
i'm not good at english (i was, once.....)
but i'll try!
good luck to everyone who's in the same boat! "i feel your pain!" :wink:

lol

Reply 19

lil groovy dude

14

I'm not doing GCSE's at the moment (will start next year!) but I would think English Lang & Lit would be the hardest to revise for! :redface:

Subjects that are the hardest to revise?

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