Revision Tips by Council Member 1 – Dominic Stewart

You should understand that revision does not mean learning something for the first time, but instead re-visiting topics you have already studied throughout your course.

Right, if you’re going to get anywhere with your exams and revision it is key to plan! I suggest you start off by doing the following:

1. Work out how much time you have left to revise... hopefully this will not be the night before!

2. Draw the plan... maybe one sheet of paper per week.

3. It is important not to devote all of your time to revision, any fixed activities you have during the week such as Football, Dance or Saturday Job you should take the time for.

4. Make sure during revision that you take frequent breaks, breaking your work up will make it more manageable and will also give you an incentive i.e. 40 mins revision and 20 mins break.

5. On a separate sheet of paper make a list of all your subject topics and the order them in difficulty!

Ok, so now you have a plan for your time, now a question often asked is How Do I Revise? Well this is entirely down to you! It is important to notice, that revising is NOT a synonym for reading, it is scientifically proven that passive learning (reading) is not as effective as active learning.

Before starting revising make sure your environment is comfortable, this does not mean in front of the television watching the Simpson’s but instead at a desk in a quiet area!

Here are some handy hints on how you can start:

• Bullet points.
• Highlighting.
• Underlining.
• Colour coding work.
• Put important terms on Post-It notes and stick them around the house!
• Make up a rhyme, mnemonic, song or rhyme, these are really useful for equations.
• Tape record information onto your PC etc this can really help for when learning a language!