Revision Techniques

MrsManda

I was wondering anyone can tell me how they revise for exams? This is money saving for me as I am in my second year and have missed over a 1/3 of my lectures and labs this year due to illness plus failed to hand in quite a few pieces of work for the same reason. This means that a) I have vast amounts of work to learn from stratch in the next five weeks and b) my exams are worth even more than usual because in lieu of my missing assessed work they're weighting my exams to compensate.

I'm on my second chance as I dropped out of a degree programe 5 years ago due to illness so not sure about my likelihood of getting student funding for another year and to be entirely honest I'm not sure I could cope with repeating the year as there is no guarntee I won't get ill again. So, I'm looking for suggestions and ideas to increase my productivity whilst revising to improve my chances of passing the year, so I don't end up in more debt and nothing to show for it.

I know everyone revises differently but ideas would be welcome

Indie_Kid

A hallmate advised me to use pieces of card and stick them on my bedroom walls.

You may find that doing quiz-type revision with friends helps - one writes a list of question & answer, and the others take it in turns answering the questions.

khublaikhan

You need to find out what works for you:

Mind Maps
visual learner;
auditory learner;
reading/writing-preference learner
kinesthetic learner or tactile learner
Keywords + Notes

Plan and organise your revision according to what works for you
Make notes
Re-read your notes

Ask for help if you don't understand something - find out who you can go to - preferably before you start

butterfly72

I revise by reading what i need to know, making rough notes and rereading. I then write the knowledge/information in full from the top of my head and then try and teach it to an imaginary student!! Works for me!

I once had an exam from hell which was 2.5 hours of pure writing. I prepared myself in the 2 weeks prior to the exam by doing mock exams at home using old exam papers. Exam conditions and all!! This really helped because on the day I felt prepared (knowing my stuff) and well practised in writing.(2.5 hrs of just writing is like a marathon for the hand!)

Good luck.

Indie_Kid

Do the lecturers / tutors put up any online quizzes? As part of assessment for a module, I have to have 4 tests. We have a mock test to do the week before.

The_One_Who

Do you have access to past questions? That can really help, especially if it's obvious that there are patterns to what topics come up and what sorts of questions there are. Have you any indication of what sort of things will be asked? Any idea of what you are asked to do? Essay writing is very different to solving set problems, for example.

If it's essays then I suggest doing some reading. Going over lecture notes as well as key readings. Then moving on to further reading. Don't read everything, be selective. Quality over quantity, since too much information will just lead to overload.

I find talking things out with a friend can really help cement ideas in my head, and can also work out where I'm struggling. Also, trying practice exams can be useful. Even though the practice won't be marked, it's good to find out how easy/hard you are finding it to write an essay in the alloted time.

melancholly

for me, lists and mneumoics. knowing there were, for example, 10 key points to remember about something let me list everything remotely relevant before i started to write an essay. then i could pick through the facts and decide which was most important to answer the specific question and which to present briefly in an overview or a passing comment.

it's tricky to give advice - for me, mind maps go off in too many directions and a straight list or hierarchical diagram helps. it also gives me a visual impression of the data (e.g. 2 main braches with 3 sub branches) that helps prompt me if i've missed something - but other people swear by mind maps and hate straight lists!

also, remember that style counts as well as content in essays. a list of lots of facts with no evidence of critical thinking will not score as well as a more constrained list where everything is discussed and constrasted against eachother.

it depends on your exam structure, but if you've missed a lot of lectures, it may be worth seeing if it is possible to ignore some sections as you will have guaranteed options to write about - this can be very risky! however, i had exams where we were going to have a single question on one of about 6 topics and had to answer 3 altogether. i revised 4 really well and still had a choice - i wouldn't have managed to learn all 6 as well as i managed the 4. but do this with caution - with a different exam structure you can leave yourself at risk of knowing nothing about compulsary questions!

kaspar

depends on what your subject is.

for me I read and type notes in word.

then i keep shortening it down until only have a few pages to learn.

i also write things out on a4 paper, over and over and over. you can do it really really fast because you don't need to be able to read it. scrawling it out just helps it go into my brain.

if you have been ill they should be lenient. thats the case at newcastle uni anyway.

The_One_Who

melancholly wrote: »

it's tricky to give advice - for me, mind maps go off in too many directions and a straight list or hierarchical diagram helps. it also gives me a visual impression of the data (e.g. 2 main braches with 3 sub branches) that helps prompt me if i've missed something - but other people swear by mind maps and hate straight lists!

also, remember that style counts as well as content in essays. a list of lots of facts with no evidence of critical thinking will not score as well as a more constrained list where everything is discussed and constrasted against eachother.

Yep, this is pretty much me too. Mind maps mean nothing to me apart from coloured splodges on paper. I think some people can spend longer colouring it in than doing any revision from it!

For a second year exam they really are looking for more than just mind vomit on to the page. I never really plan essays, but in exam answers I do write a little plan of what I'm going to cover and how things link together. It can be great to have six pages of notes for one question, but not only are you never going to remember all those six pages, you'll never be able to write about them in the time given.