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Asked by jazz520maes on 11 Mar 2025.
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Matthew Wadge answered on 11 Mar 2025:
Great question! A lot of people I know struggled with revision, and it can be tricky to get it right in a way that works for you. Everyone learns differently, so try and work out what kind of learning works best for you to remember the information. For me, I work best by both practical and written learning, but others prefer visual (videos). When I was at school, and then at University, I would go back through my lessons/lectures, and write notes about all of it. I would then go over the notes, and working out which bits I know well and which bits I am not so sure on. I would then focus my efforts on the bits I didn’t know, and once I felt comfortable with the content, I would then practice papers; as many as I could get my hands on! Practice makes perfect, and knowing the type of questions you are going to get asked will help a lot! Finally, the most important thing about learning is it’s not just memorisation. The key thing is applying what you know, so taking all those notes and seeing how those concepts and ideas work in reality. Good luck with your exams!
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Olivia Williams answered on 11 Mar 2025:
This is a great question. I used to break things down into very little tasks making it much more manageable. I then used a range of techniques such as flashcards for quick fact recall and then when it got closer to exams i used example questions and papers lots and lots. I would then mark these and find my areas of weakness and know what to focus on more.
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Simon Webster answered on 13 Mar 2025:
That’s a really good question, it’s not easy to revise – there can be so much information to look at and how do you know how much time to spend on it? I found a successful way to do it was to break down each subject into chunks and depending on how much information there was, and how much I understood it, I worked out how much time I should set aside to do a chunk or whole subject. I then wrote brief summaries of the key information I revised which I could use as quick reminders. I also allowed time to do a paper question or two on the chunk or subject so when I did the exam I could feel I had done the question already – great for reducing worries and anxieties. Practice is the main thing, especially with questions from old papers, and to know what is required in an answer – your teacher can help with that.
Comments
Alana M commented on :
I’m a really visual person so I found drawings and diagrams to be really helpful to get things to stick in my head. Coloured pens and flashcards were also really useful. What can be a really good tool is trying to teach someone else the concepts too – by having to think of a way to explain it to someone else, you’re really embedding it in your brain!
Edward commented on :
There are a lot of ways to do this and I think it really depends on what works for you and you might have to try several approaches to see what works for you.
Some people like to have detailed timetables and structured plans about what they will revise and when. I didn’t find that too helpful myself. For me, it felt like a lot of pressure.
I did a lot of reading of my notes. It is always good to read through every so often, just to remind yourself that these are possible topics for exams. Sometimes, youtube videos can be helpful but make sure they are trusted content providers (e,g. BBC byte size).
Writing things out helped me as I would remember what I had written.
Past exam papers are often helpful, especially for things like GCSEs and A Levels and other formal exams.
Also, take regular breaks and remember to do some fun things every so often. When I was revising, we didn’t have smart phones and easy distractions. I have a lot of sympathy for students today trying to revise with all these distractions. Certainly finding a quiet place to revise is really important.