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HOW
TO REVISE - A personal account
By Marianne Kavanagh
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"The
best place to start your revision is by being organised".
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As
exams approach and the sun starts to shine, anyone facing
the daunting prospect of revising for their GCSEs is bound
to feel pulled in opposite directions. Here you are about
to take the "most important exams you've ever taken",
and yet you just want to escape the pressure and get out
into the sunshine!
I
remember it well. Not only do I remember it, but find
myself at the age of 28 having to retake my GCSE maths
because I got a D the first time around. Oh how I kick
myself now for not having studied enough at the time!
Now I have a degree and have been teaching abroad for
years and think that I have got the hang of the revision
thing, yet to be honest I still feel that dread and
fear which conversely seems to render me incapable of
remembering anything!
The
best place to start your revision is by being organised.
Starting in March ensure you have all the notes from
any lessons you may have missed, draw up a timetable
aiming to do 2 hours per day, ensuring you cover all
your subjects in a week and resolve to stick to it as
rigidly as possible. However don't attempt to revise
for 2 hours straight, we learn better by revising for
20 to 40 minutes and then taking a break. In the weeks
approaching your exams increase your revision period
to 3 hours per day. How and when you revise is up to
you. Some people are better in the mornings, others
in the evenings. After you've done your revision quota,
treat yourself! Go and see a friend, have a favorite
meal, go shopping Environment is also very important.
Ideally you can sit at a desk in a peaceful tidy room,
if not you may have to consider going to the library
to revise.
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"simply
reading through your notes and understanding them
is just not enough to make it stick in your memory"
"Of
course different people have different ways of learning
and making things stick in their memory. However researchers
have found that most people learn best through visual
aids".
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Once
you have your timetable, notes and environment sorted
you are ready to go. However this is the part where I
felt all at sea when I first had to do it. You see simply
reading through your notes and understanding them is just
not enough to make it stick in your memory and sadly this
is exactly what most of your exams require you to do;
be able to remember!
Of course different people have different ways of learning
and making things stick in their memory. However researchers
have found that most people learn best through visual
aids. Your first mission is to identify the most important
aspects of the subject in question, so you really need
to look at past papers. (You can order them from your
exam board) Here you will see a definite pattern arising
as the boards set similar questions in different formats
every year. It is at this point that you need to start
condensing your notes and start cross referencing the
past papers with the notes from lessons. Even attempt
to answer some of the questions using the notes from the
course This process will help you to see the bigger picture.
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"when
revising history, geography, English and sciences spider-grams
are very useful because these subjects require you to
examine cause and effect".
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Once
you have the most important aspects clear in your mind
and down on paper it is time to start preparing your
visual aids. These will differ greatly depending on
the subject. For example, when revising history, geography,
English and sciences spider-grams are very useful because
these subjects require you to examine cause and effect.
Using bright colours (preferably with a strict colour
combination code for each subject) write in a box in
the centre of the page (in history this might be) The
Second World War and then find all the aspects covered
by your exam board that occurred as a result of the
war and draw arrows to boxes detailing these events,
then another box coming from each of these boxes detailing
the results and conclusions of the event. You can make
these spider grams as big as you like, a good idea is
once you have a small one successfully constructed to
make a big one to go on the wall. You can make these
wall chart spider-grams creative using colour and shape
to stimulate yourself visually, then when you need to
recall important facts in your exam and why they happen
you'll be able to actually see it all in your mind!
Of
course not all subjects lend themselves to this method.
When it comes to revising languages you need to try
different tactics. When revising vocabulary its a good
idea to get together with a friend and test each other,
also don't just learn the words with their translations,
learn them in context. So for example test each other
by making up sentences or better still, short stories
using the vocab. You can be as creative and silly as
you like! Grammar is a word that makes us all groan,
but it is the foundation of language and we do need
to learn it. Suprisingly you can find fun ways to revise
it. See "How to revise French grammar".
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"Organise
French, German or Spanish parties with your classmates
and armed with a dictionary try having a chat in the
language"!
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Other
aspects of language revision are easier to get to grips
with. Listening to radio, watching films in whichever
language you're learning and even cable TV will help enormously.
You won't understand everything but you will grasp some
of it! Whilst you watch a film or a TV programme note
down the words you know, pause and rewind and check that
you understood it properly. DVDs are great for this as
you can listen in the language and then in English. Organise
French, German or Spanish parties with your classmates
and armed with a dictionary try having a chat in the language!
Even practising the French accent by speaking English
in "ze" French accent can help you to transfer
it when actually speaking French. Also reading simple
books will help. A good French one is "Le Petit Prince"
because it has pictures and like Harry Potter it works
on two levels, children and adults alike enjoy it.
Being
a language teacher myself, I actually found acquiring
languages less like work and more like fun, especially
when I went out to France and Spain and was able to
make friends in another language. Discovering another
culture and identifying the things that were similar,
the things I liked and disliked about another culture
and finding ways to express this was like an interactive
game for me growing up. However Maths was a very weak
point for me.
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"I
drew all the formulae I needed on sheets of paper in
bright colours and posted them up on the walls in my
room. But learning formulae is never enough, like with
language just to learn the grammar and vocab without
putting them into context and practising them is never
enough. It simply doesn't stick"!
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Everyone
is different and I never learned to enjoy maths until
recently. Now if you hadn't already noticed, I believe
that the best way to learn and revise is to find ways
to make it as fun as possible. This for me was quite a
challenge when it came to Maths. I started by applying
the principles I learned when studying for my degree.
I drew all the formulae I needed on sheets of paper in
bright colours and posted them up on the walls in my room.
But learning formulae is never enough, like with language
just to learn the grammar and vocab without putting them
into context and practising them is never enough. It simply
doesn't stick! Similarly if I didn't have someone there
to correct me meant that I kept getting stuck! Even if
I had the answers there to look at I couldn't see why
I had got a quadratic equation wrong! So what I did was
get all the past maths papers I could lay my hands on
along with the corresponding "passmyexams" answer
booklets. These answer booklets not only gave the answers
but also gave hints and explained every step of the solution
to the problem, this way I was able to go back and see
exactly where I had gone wrong. Working through past papers
and exercising your maths muscle is the key to success
in maths.
As
I got progressively better I was able to do the exam
papers without looking at the answers as I went along
and to time myself and lo and behold I actually started
to enjoy my timed maths papers! Timing is an important
aspect of an exam. Its no good getting every answer
to half the paper right if you haven't had time to attempt
the second half of the paper. With this in mind it's
a good idea to attempt a couple of past papers for all
your subjects but when considering your weak subjects
I would recommend that you attempt as many as possible,
starting off by checking answers and then moving on
to doing them alone.
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"if
you possibly can, start revising as soon as the September
at the start of year 11. This way most of your notes
will be ready by March".
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Well,
with all this in mind I wish you luck in your revision.
Of course it may be a little late to mention that if you
possibly can, start revising as soon as the September
at the start of year 11. This way most of your notes will
be ready by March and you will have consolidated most
of the material as you went along. Of course none of us
is super-human and if we can help ourselves by being a
little disciplined from the start, then things won't seem
so stressful at exam time. |
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