I hate history revision

Anyone else think history is one of the most difficult subjects to revise??

Trying to do flash cards and spider diagrams but I don't think anything is really going in :frown:

A quiz would be good but I can't find anything for the unit I am doing (AQA A2 international relations 1945-2004)

GRRRRRRR

Reply 1

TheonlyMrsHolmes

Yes, it's difficult :frown:

Reply 2

evalilyXOX

I used to love studying for history as it was like remembering stories of peoples lives and I found that so fascinating ! Maybe i'm just boring haha ! - that's probably why I study law ! :biggrin:

I always loved the Teacher method (or thats what they called it at my school anyway).

i would take a topic/ period of time. Then I would revise via flashcards, spider diagrams basically whatever I felt like. Then I had this mini whiteboard and i would take a particular topic and I would pretend to teach it to imaginary students.
So you would be explaining this topic as if to others who had not studied the course and I would write up things on my whiteboard as part of the fake lesson.

it sounds crazy and it can look really funny if someone catches you revising in this way but I found that it really worked ! if you don't have a whiteboard/blackboard then that doesn't matter as you can just use a notepad instead. You can also make your own power points as a form of note taking and then use these as your fake teaching tool. I found that by describing what I had been studying out loud, really helped to cement it into my brain and actually helped me understand it a bit more.

I still use the same technique now at uni and it is the best way for me to study. My professors use power points in my lectures, so i usually modify them slightly and then use them for revision.

Hope this helps and good luck with your exam ! :smile:

Reply 3

Abzz789

Original post by evalilyXOX

I used to love studying for history as it was like remembering stories of peoples lives and I found that so fascinating ! Maybe i'm just boring haha ! - that's probably why I study law ! :biggrin:

How long do you spend on each bit?
I understand everything it's just remembering the specific evidence (e.g. how many ICBMs the USA was limited to under SALT 1)

Reply 4

evalilyXOX

Original post by Abzz789

How long do you spend on each bit?
I understand everything it's just remembering the specific evidence (e.g. how many ICBMs the USA was limited to under SALT 1)

Well it depended on the length of my topics and their difficulty.

For example for my higher History exam (I am from Scotland), we had several different topics to learn i.e. female suffrage movement, scottish wars of independence, american civil wars etc

I would take for example female enfranchisement and then i would make my notes for this. this usually took me a full day starting at 6am - 9pm (with breaks). Then the next day i would start to learn the information, as I had been taking notes on it the day before it was fresh in my mind so it was easier to learn. then on the same day i would start my fake teaching and by the end of that day I would know the info inside out by that night.
I had 3 topics to learn for my Higher history exam, and not every topic took me a whole day to write notes on (some only took up a whole morning etc).

i am unfamiliar with how the english exams work, but here in scotland we had prelims (mocks) in the January and then our actual SQA exams were in the May.

Therefore, over the christmas break, i would make all of my notes so that after new year I would start learning each topic and using the teaching method. our prelims usually started mid january so I had about 2 weeks starting on new years day to learn all of the information.

then come easter time, i could still roughly remember a lot of what i had learnt in the january so it wasn't as time consuming to re-learn the topics again.

That worked for me but obviously other people prefer to split up their day and focus on other subjects at the same time. this is completely fine to do it that way as well - there is no correct way to study/prepare.

i did have 4 other exams to prep for, but I found that history and modern studies contained the most info to learn so I spent more time preparing for those subjects.

Again hope this helps and hasn't just further confused you haha !

Reply 5

Abzz789

Got mocks next week haha, only need to know a few chapters but there's so much :frown:

Reply 6

thehistorybore

History revision lends itself well to reading! You've all got a long time to prepare in advance for your actual exam, so read a book on the subject while you can. Shouldn't be too much of a labour (if you read the right books - when I'm back at home I'll give you some reccomendations) to do in the meantime and having an actual historians perspective on matters will make your answers far more sophisticated (it really does help understanding - trust me). In the meantime for mocks, I always like to summarise each section onto one sheet of paper; it's your interpretation of the events that's more important in your exam; no one really cares if you've memorised all of the facts and dates (of course you still need them!)

@Abzz789

Thanks

Original post by Abzz789

Anyone else think history is one of the most difficult subjects to revise??

Trying to do flash cards and spider diagrams but I don't think anything is really going in :frown: