Hello everyone! I’m so sorry it has been so long, but I have
been living holed up in my room and the library for the last month! However I
have now broken out of the stress of exams, the monotony of revision and can
once again turn my attentions to more fun endeavours. From now I will be
blogging regularly (aiming for once a week, to be published on Saturdays).
So, exams. Exams are hard, and everyone knows it. Having now
been taking official exams every summer for the last 8 years (goodness me
that’s a lot of exams!) I can now say that I think I’ve got my revision
strategies worked out. Now of course everyone has different methods for
revision, but this blog post just aims to give some ideas about what works for
me, and what may work for others if they want some ideas.
First off: Revising for different subjects really does necessitate revising in different ways. I mean, different subjects obviously have different content, but that content is also applied very differently in exams. I studied Physics, Maths, English Literature and Music at A level and even then it was obvious that each subject needed to be approached in a different way. But it was approaching my first year university exams that it became clearer I needed to hone my revision techniques to be most efficient for revising Physics. At school many hours were spent doing (slightly weird) workshops that were meant to tell you what kind of learner you were, and therefore how you should revise. Everyone was encouraged to produce many different resources in order to revise, but many subjects didn’t actually give any hints about how to revise specifically for their subject.
First off: Revising for different subjects really does necessitate revising in different ways. I mean, different subjects obviously have different content, but that content is also applied very differently in exams. I studied Physics, Maths, English Literature and Music at A level and even then it was obvious that each subject needed to be approached in a different way. But it was approaching my first year university exams that it became clearer I needed to hone my revision techniques to be most efficient for revising Physics. At school many hours were spent doing (slightly weird) workshops that were meant to tell you what kind of learner you were, and therefore how you should revise. Everyone was encouraged to produce many different resources in order to revise, but many subjects didn’t actually give any hints about how to revise specifically for their subject.
Physics, at least at university level, is hard. The exams
are tough. There is a lot of content to know (formula sheets are a vague memory
from the past), but it isn’t enough to just know what you’ve been told in
lectures. You have to be able to use this knowledge to do things that you may
never have seen before, so you really have to understand it all too (and where
it all comes from and how it all links together). You then also need to have
the maths skills to do some pretty complicated mathematical tasks, where a
small error will completely ruin your final answer. So what would I recommend?
· Make
your notes for the content in a way that works for you - People learn the
content in different ways. I used to make colourful posters, as my memory works
in such a way that I can usually visualise particular pages of revision and
particular sections of that page and the colour can help me recall the image.
However as the amount of content has increased, I have just found that often I
don’t have enough time to cover all of the content in this way. Instead, I go
through and make notes for the entire course, but making sure I understand
every single part before I write it down as I will only have time to do this
step once. I try and structure my notes such that content is presented in a
logical order, and cross reference different parts so I understand how it all
fits together and refer back to this resource whilst practicing.
· Go
back over everything regularly using the syllabus as a guide – when going back
over your notes, use the syllabus (which should define what you need to know)
to check your knowledge. You can write yourself a list of questions that you
should be able to answer, and then go through it. (My boyfriend Adam came up with this one and it really works! :)) If you can’t write down the
correct answer, go back through your notes and try again (sometimes writing it
out a few times again helps). And do this regularly, starting a long time
before the exams actually happen.
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· PRACTICE
– the most important part of Physics revision is practice. Not only does it let
you practice your maths skills properly, it can give you clues as to what sort
of questions might come up and how these questions might be phrased. If you get
sample solutions it can also give you good tips of how to answer questions and
what to write down to gain the maximum number of marks.
· In
the exam – don’t panic. Many exams at university follow a different format to
exams at school such that you can choose a certain number of questions to
answer and leave the rest. Some people like to read the whole exam paper at the
start, some people find that may panic them and prefer to answer some questions
first, particularly if they are compulsory. But anyway – keeping calm is the
most important thing. Even if you think you can’t do a question, write down
what things you know about the topic. These might help you start to come up
with a solution, as they can help you focus more on the topic but even if not
may gain you some marks.
· Make
sure you write down your working. You’ll get told this constantly whilst at
school and you know what – they’re right. It means if you make a mistake during
a calculation they can see where you went wrong and then give you marks for the
bits you did right. This is way more important as calculations get longer and
harder.
And remember – at university the bar changes. 70% or more is
excellent, gone are the days when less than 90% meant you missed out on the top
grade. They are meant to be hard so don’t necessarily panic if you can’t do
everything, just make sure you are especially careful when answering questions
on things you can do.
All of the above may seem like common sense, but I’ve come across many people who really do find it hard to revise and are looking for a bit of help. So if that is you, best of luck! Hopefully something I’ve said might help but remember it’s all about what works for you!
All of the above may seem like common sense, but I’ve come across many people who really do find it hard to revise and are looking for a bit of help. So if that is you, best of luck! Hopefully something I’ve said might help but remember it’s all about what works for you!
To anyone else – do you have any revision tips that you
think might help someone? What works for you?
