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Revision

sinead_x2005x

Is it normal, to not know how to revise?

What I find helps is making flashcards with short questions on, testing yourself, and putting any you get right at the back, and any you get wrong in the middle. Also, you can look at past paper questions, try to answer them in your head, then look at the mark scheme to see how many you would get right. Hope this helps.

Reply 2

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

Yep. However, it also depends on how you learn and what works best for you.

The blanket advice people give is to do past paper questions, and lots of them. This I advocate because it's one thing to memorise what you know, and quite another to recall the information necessary under stressful and timed conditions e.g. I don't really trust people to know how to drive a car just because they memorised everything in a theory book.

Other suggestions include:
Flash cards
Mind maps
Mneumonics
Diagrams
Putting the material through a funny story
Labelling parts of a room or house with post-it notes with ideas you should remember
Teaching others - Feyman technique; works well if you are studying in a group
Review material
Regurgitate material on paper, often word for word - how a lot of people in Asia and South America do it. Not particularly recommended because you're being tested on what you understand more than what you remember
Active recall - watch YouTube videos on this

I'd recommend looking into mark schemes to understand how they mark your paper. It's one thing to know your material, but it's quite abother knowing what people are looking for. If you want the high marks (or even average marks), you will need to know which hoops to jump through. If you can get your hands on model answers for these past papers, so much the better - you can compare the A grade answers vs C grade answers vs mark scheme and analyse why certain marks are awarded, since mark schemes tend to be vague.

Exam technique and strategy are also important as poor technique and strategy can work against you more than knowing the material e.g. spending 30 minutes on 8 mark question when it's a 1 hour paper and there are 50 marks to obtain. Not writing concisely and quickly is also bad, as well as not seeing what you need to do to answer the question.
People make the mistake of writing prepared answers instead of answering the question they are presented. Do not do this.

They also say it's not productive of your time and effort to focus on everything (do it once in a while, but not all the time). You would want to work on your weakest areas first, then review all the material again.
Memory tends to lag the further things are in the past, so recalling the earliest material first is ideal.

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 3

Jolie1565

Original post by sinead_x2005x

Is it normal, to not know how to revise?

Definitely I was in the same situation for GCSEs.
I think a good place to start is with past exam papers

Reply 4

tinygirl96

past papers
flashcards

Reply 5

sinead_x2005x

Original post by Jolie1565

Definitely I was in the same situation for GCSEs.
I think a good place to start is with past exam papers

Thanks, I just got stressed out when it came to revisit for the mocks and hen in the end I didn't even get to do them. But now I'm going to have to settle wih 2s and 3s but a 7 in science. I rlly don't know what to do.
Thanks again xx