I took sociology and got an A, although content heavy, a lot of the content you don’t NEED to learn by heart, a lot of it comes down to common sense, inference and good critical thinking skills. You obviously are required to know the names of theorists, the relevant quotes , and what perspective they belong to, but the bulk of your arguments can very easily be made up on the spot. For example, you get an essay on retribution vs rehabilitation, whilst you will need your relevant theorists and key quotes, the rest of your argument can be based on your own opinions, and current affairs. As long as you apply good evaluative skills, you will still gain marks. I really didn’t use the textbooks all that much asides from learning the theorists. The best method I found to revise those was to create a Mindmap with the topic in the middle e.g nationality, education, class etc, then creating branches for each theorist and what they say, I’d colour them in based on their perspective such as green for functionalism, red for Marxism, pink for feminism etc. I’d then try and learn this Mindmap off by heart until eventually I could draw the whole thing from memory. In terms of your essay structure, I used Point, theorist, explanation, evaluation (including the reverse argument and theorist) for each paragraph, at the end of your essay you would then do your conclusion.