How to get my grades up fast?
I have just finished my AS exams in June, but I am not confident that I'll get good grades. In my mocks I got CCE, I did Economics, Biology and English Lit. For my A-levels I'll be doing English litrature, Economics and Drama and theatre studies. I need tips and advice to get my act together and I want to be predicted all As or A*s. Please give me any advice to get my grades up and how to with A-levels because I am lazy and procrastinate a lot.
Reply 1
Hi @geotriaa,
There are some different study techniques that we would recommend trying to see if they work for you.
The Eisenhower Matrix - This is where you split tasks that you have to complete into different areas in order to prioritize your workload.
The areas are:
DO-These tasks come first and are priorities
You may want to try online to do lists like Trello. You can create individual boards for your different subjects or boards with coursemates/classmates for any group projects.
Pomodoro technique may be a technique that helps you to reduce procrastination.
To do this you structures work into 30-minute sections within this time you have 25 minutes of completely focused, uninterrupted work and 5 minutes break doing something away from your desk and repeat this process.
I hope some of these techniques you may find useful.
Laura
Edge Hill University Education Liaison team
There are some different study techniques that we would recommend trying to see if they work for you.
The Eisenhower Matrix - This is where you split tasks that you have to complete into different areas in order to prioritize your workload.
The areas are:
DO-These tasks come first and are priorities
DECIDE-These tasks need to be done but can be scheduled for a later date
DELEGATE-These tasks are important but we can ask other to do it instead
DELETE-These tasks are not worth doing, even if they make you feel like you are ticking things off your list
DELEGATE-These tasks are important but we can ask other to do it instead
DELETE-These tasks are not worth doing, even if they make you feel like you are ticking things off your list
You may want to try online to do lists like Trello. You can create individual boards for your different subjects or boards with coursemates/classmates for any group projects.
Pomodoro technique may be a technique that helps you to reduce procrastination.
To do this you structures work into 30-minute sections within this time you have 25 minutes of completely focused, uninterrupted work and 5 minutes break doing something away from your desk and repeat this process.
I hope some of these techniques you may find useful.
Laura
Edge Hill University Education Liaison team
Reply 2
10
hi!!
first of all, don’t panic at all - it’s not too late to get your grades up and it’s more than likely they will go up by the time you do your a level exams (esp bc you seem to be switching a subject?) i do eng lit so i can give you some more specialised tips for that but more general tips for economics and drama.
general tips:
• don’t bother writing out extensive notes. notes should only be a small part of your actual REVISION. they should really be done way before you start a level revision (about march) and you should really be making them as you go along. there’s overwhelming scientific evidence to suggest that just writing stuff out isn’t really helpful for it sticking in long term memory.
• use active recall. active recall gets a really good rep for good reason lol. it basically just means anything that involves recalling information over and over again. the more you practise recalling it, the more readily it comes to mind. it can take the form of flashcards, doing lots of past papers (even if you think you don’t “know enough” to start using those yet!) or blurting (writing everything you know about a specific subject on a whiteboard or piece of paper, then cross comparing notes). now you might be able to see how notes or mindmaps might help you here - you can use them to make flashcards or help correct blurts - but they definitely shouldn’t be the only method you use for revision.
• mark out specific time for revision. don’t arrange anything else during that time. eliminate all distractions possible so you can totally focus on your work (next steps will be helpful with that)
• turn off your phone and any electronics that aren’t strictly necessary while revising. just an absolute necessity.
• go somewhere QUIET. i can’t stress how important this is. don’t try to revise in a super busy household or right in the middle of your college dining hall - go to a library, whether that be at school or elsewhere. some people like to revise in coffee shops - this can be helpful but make sure you bring headphones or earphones because they can get noisy!
• music can be good for revision. HOWEVER, definitely not for doing active recall. i personally like listening to music while im making my revision materials - e.g. flashcards - bc it helps stave away the boredom of just copying material out. but when you’re actually trying to get information into your brain? music needs to go off and you need to focus entirely on that work.
• don’t be afraid to sacrifice some stuff to work. it’s rlly not uncommon for people to turn down invitations to go out because they have to work - it’s completely normal! if it gets to exam time and you’re feeling the pressure to go out with friends (but you really need to revise), don’t feel as though you have to do it. save the going out for a less busy time period lol.
• do a little bit of revision every day. don’t try to cram it in right before exams - it just doesn’t work. you HAVE to start properly focusing on revision early - around march or even feb. but even before that you should be doing little things to try to aid your revision - like i mentioned earlier, making notes on a weekly basis is a really good idea. maybe even making flashcards, or going over flashcards that you’ve already made.
now eng lit specific tips
:
• READ THE TEXTS. honest to god it doesn’t matter if you don’t like them (and tbh if you’re doing eng lit there’s gotta be very few texts that you’ll read that you won’t like). if you don’t read them, you’re never going to get into that A* band and you probs won’t even get into the A. it sounds harsh, but you’re gonna be competing for this grade with people who have lived and breathed these texts. you need to show that you deserve it. aim to read them three or four times over the course of your revision.
• during your revision, highlight and annotate extracts you think are interesting or memorable (or which have important linguistic or structural features). you can supplement this with teacher guidance or youtube analyses (these can both be great resources) but ultimately you have to also engage with the text and pick out bits that appeal to you specifically.
• read essays and critiques of the books. if your school has access to jstor this can rlly help with this, but if not just go wild!! read stuff on reddit, wordpress, or any other lit-based website you can find. if you’re studying a play, watch a youtube or irl performance of either that play or a play by the same author. read reviews of the play online, written by theatre-goers - they often act as critics without realising!
• speaking of critics, the above point can be helpful for FINDING CRITICAL QUOTATIONS. this absolutely isn’t a necessity, but it will definitely help you hit that A*. an example of a critical quotation could be that a. c. bradley (an eminent shakespeare scholar) referred to othello as ‘purely kind, noble and generous’. you can use critical quotations to support points you make or to provide alternative perspectives on them (e.g. you could write out that quotation and talk about why othello ISN’T what bradley says he is). you don’t need many AT ALL - think three or four for each text, and they can be as short as the one above - but they can be so helpful in essays to demonstrate a more in-depth understanding of the text.
• learn a little about literary theory. assuming that you will have done your NEA, so you might know a bit about this already? if not, don’t panic! a good starting point is ‘a very short introduction to literary theory’. you don’t need a massive knowledge of this to get good marks but having some will definitely help to elevate your answers. practise viewing your texts through lenses - e.g. othello through a postcolonial or feminist lens, atonement looking at narrative theory, or death of a salesman through an ecocritical lens. using these phrases in your exam essays (‘this could be viewed through an ecocritical/marxist/feminist/postcolonial/queer theory lens…’) shows a really good understanding of the text and also indicates that you are engaging with it on a personal level (something examiners love to see!).
• i find for actually learning english lit content that it can be picked up quite well just by reading and annotating loads. but i do find flashcards helpful for specific language or structure devices, very fiddly quotes and critical quotations. for devices, i like to put the quote on the front and use that to recall the back. or something like ‘keats uses ______ form in la belle dame sans merci’, and then ‘ballad form’ is on the other side. for long fiddly quotes, i put key words on the front and then use those words to recall the full quote (e.g. ‘heaven, make, world, entire, perfect, chryslolite, sold, it’ -> ‘if heaven would make me such another world/ of one entire and perfect chrysolite/ id not have sold her for it’).
• once you’ve learnt a solid amount of quotes, practise PLANNING essays in timed conditions. it can be really hard, when you start revision, to immediately begin bashing out essay after essay. this is why one of my favourite things to do is create about 40 potential essay titles and just practise planning some of them, under a five minute timer. this is what you’ll actually have to do in the exam and being able to create a good plan in that time will inevitably result in exam success.
• now, once you’ve got the planning down, practise writing them. focus on writing a good amount of quality material (anywhere from 2-4 a4 pages for each question) in around 50 minutes. introductions must outline your entire essay in very brief points. use specific language throughout (e.g. if you’re studying tragedy, talk a LOT about tragedy as a genre, hamartia, peripeteia, and what aristotle’s beliefs about tragedy were) to demonstrate understanding of the wider genre of the text. ao2 (language and structure) is KEY - analyse language and linguistic features, and, especially for poetry, ANALYSE STRUCTURE. this will elevate your answer to the top marking band. talk about metre if you’re studying someone like keats - i.e. iambic pentameter - couplets, number of lines in stanzas, rhyme schemes etc., and link these to the overall theme of the poem (e.g. keats uses rhyming couplets to express the intensity of isabella and lorenzo’s love). come down hard on one side of the question - you get marks for showing some sense of a debate - but don’t be afraid to explore the alternative side (as long as you indicate that you don’t necessarily agree with it). round off with a short but firm conclusion to reiterate your main point.
that’s all my tips lol! i hope they help. if you have any questions lmk
first of all, don’t panic at all - it’s not too late to get your grades up and it’s more than likely they will go up by the time you do your a level exams (esp bc you seem to be switching a subject?) i do eng lit so i can give you some more specialised tips for that but more general tips for economics and drama.
general tips:
• don’t bother writing out extensive notes. notes should only be a small part of your actual REVISION. they should really be done way before you start a level revision (about march) and you should really be making them as you go along. there’s overwhelming scientific evidence to suggest that just writing stuff out isn’t really helpful for it sticking in long term memory.
• use active recall. active recall gets a really good rep for good reason lol. it basically just means anything that involves recalling information over and over again. the more you practise recalling it, the more readily it comes to mind. it can take the form of flashcards, doing lots of past papers (even if you think you don’t “know enough” to start using those yet!) or blurting (writing everything you know about a specific subject on a whiteboard or piece of paper, then cross comparing notes). now you might be able to see how notes or mindmaps might help you here - you can use them to make flashcards or help correct blurts - but they definitely shouldn’t be the only method you use for revision.
• mark out specific time for revision. don’t arrange anything else during that time. eliminate all distractions possible so you can totally focus on your work (next steps will be helpful with that)
• turn off your phone and any electronics that aren’t strictly necessary while revising. just an absolute necessity.
• go somewhere QUIET. i can’t stress how important this is. don’t try to revise in a super busy household or right in the middle of your college dining hall - go to a library, whether that be at school or elsewhere. some people like to revise in coffee shops - this can be helpful but make sure you bring headphones or earphones because they can get noisy!
• music can be good for revision. HOWEVER, definitely not for doing active recall. i personally like listening to music while im making my revision materials - e.g. flashcards - bc it helps stave away the boredom of just copying material out. but when you’re actually trying to get information into your brain? music needs to go off and you need to focus entirely on that work.
• don’t be afraid to sacrifice some stuff to work. it’s rlly not uncommon for people to turn down invitations to go out because they have to work - it’s completely normal! if it gets to exam time and you’re feeling the pressure to go out with friends (but you really need to revise), don’t feel as though you have to do it. save the going out for a less busy time period lol.
• do a little bit of revision every day. don’t try to cram it in right before exams - it just doesn’t work. you HAVE to start properly focusing on revision early - around march or even feb. but even before that you should be doing little things to try to aid your revision - like i mentioned earlier, making notes on a weekly basis is a really good idea. maybe even making flashcards, or going over flashcards that you’ve already made.
now eng lit specific tips
:• READ THE TEXTS. honest to god it doesn’t matter if you don’t like them (and tbh if you’re doing eng lit there’s gotta be very few texts that you’ll read that you won’t like). if you don’t read them, you’re never going to get into that A* band and you probs won’t even get into the A. it sounds harsh, but you’re gonna be competing for this grade with people who have lived and breathed these texts. you need to show that you deserve it. aim to read them three or four times over the course of your revision.
• during your revision, highlight and annotate extracts you think are interesting or memorable (or which have important linguistic or structural features). you can supplement this with teacher guidance or youtube analyses (these can both be great resources) but ultimately you have to also engage with the text and pick out bits that appeal to you specifically.
• read essays and critiques of the books. if your school has access to jstor this can rlly help with this, but if not just go wild!! read stuff on reddit, wordpress, or any other lit-based website you can find. if you’re studying a play, watch a youtube or irl performance of either that play or a play by the same author. read reviews of the play online, written by theatre-goers - they often act as critics without realising!
• speaking of critics, the above point can be helpful for FINDING CRITICAL QUOTATIONS. this absolutely isn’t a necessity, but it will definitely help you hit that A*. an example of a critical quotation could be that a. c. bradley (an eminent shakespeare scholar) referred to othello as ‘purely kind, noble and generous’. you can use critical quotations to support points you make or to provide alternative perspectives on them (e.g. you could write out that quotation and talk about why othello ISN’T what bradley says he is). you don’t need many AT ALL - think three or four for each text, and they can be as short as the one above - but they can be so helpful in essays to demonstrate a more in-depth understanding of the text.
• learn a little about literary theory. assuming that you will have done your NEA, so you might know a bit about this already? if not, don’t panic! a good starting point is ‘a very short introduction to literary theory’. you don’t need a massive knowledge of this to get good marks but having some will definitely help to elevate your answers. practise viewing your texts through lenses - e.g. othello through a postcolonial or feminist lens, atonement looking at narrative theory, or death of a salesman through an ecocritical lens. using these phrases in your exam essays (‘this could be viewed through an ecocritical/marxist/feminist/postcolonial/queer theory lens…’) shows a really good understanding of the text and also indicates that you are engaging with it on a personal level (something examiners love to see!).
• i find for actually learning english lit content that it can be picked up quite well just by reading and annotating loads. but i do find flashcards helpful for specific language or structure devices, very fiddly quotes and critical quotations. for devices, i like to put the quote on the front and use that to recall the back. or something like ‘keats uses ______ form in la belle dame sans merci’, and then ‘ballad form’ is on the other side. for long fiddly quotes, i put key words on the front and then use those words to recall the full quote (e.g. ‘heaven, make, world, entire, perfect, chryslolite, sold, it’ -> ‘if heaven would make me such another world/ of one entire and perfect chrysolite/ id not have sold her for it’).
• once you’ve learnt a solid amount of quotes, practise PLANNING essays in timed conditions. it can be really hard, when you start revision, to immediately begin bashing out essay after essay. this is why one of my favourite things to do is create about 40 potential essay titles and just practise planning some of them, under a five minute timer. this is what you’ll actually have to do in the exam and being able to create a good plan in that time will inevitably result in exam success.
• now, once you’ve got the planning down, practise writing them. focus on writing a good amount of quality material (anywhere from 2-4 a4 pages for each question) in around 50 minutes. introductions must outline your entire essay in very brief points. use specific language throughout (e.g. if you’re studying tragedy, talk a LOT about tragedy as a genre, hamartia, peripeteia, and what aristotle’s beliefs about tragedy were) to demonstrate understanding of the wider genre of the text. ao2 (language and structure) is KEY - analyse language and linguistic features, and, especially for poetry, ANALYSE STRUCTURE. this will elevate your answer to the top marking band. talk about metre if you’re studying someone like keats - i.e. iambic pentameter - couplets, number of lines in stanzas, rhyme schemes etc., and link these to the overall theme of the poem (e.g. keats uses rhyming couplets to express the intensity of isabella and lorenzo’s love). come down hard on one side of the question - you get marks for showing some sense of a debate - but don’t be afraid to explore the alternative side (as long as you indicate that you don’t necessarily agree with it). round off with a short but firm conclusion to reiterate your main point.
that’s all my tips lol! i hope they help. if you have any questions lmk
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