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Help with AS Revision
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74jax
Posts: 7,930 Forumite


I posted this in Families - but was pointed to this Student Board, can anyone help please?
Can anyone help me in how to revise? It's been almost 30 years since I was at school, so I am not even sure we did revision then......
My DD has her AS exams this year and is trying to revise. She sailed through he GCSEs without really doing any work for them as she just had a nack of being able to 'get by' with good grades.
Fast forward to A Levels.......
She didn't attend revision classes for GCSE as didn't need to, so has never been taught the whole how-to-revise theory.
She is very good at using you-tube to find ideas, getting lots of folders, wonderful colored pens, lost of post-its etc etc but ACTUAL revision part I'm not so sure is happening. Although she can spend 4 hours on a Wednesday 'revising' so I guess she is doing something....
She's just asked me 'how do you revise?' and to be honest i'm stumped. She does read through her work and make notes, she does this mainly every evening after the the day at college and then on a weekend files them in the subject folder. I've told her to read her notes, she then said 'but do what with them'....... is the idea you keep condensing your notes?
Her subjects are (in case it makes a difference) Sociology, psychology, english lit and communication & culture. I know her psychology is based a lot of case studies so she needs to know dates, topics names etc.
Does anyone know how best to revise? Without meaning to sound stupid, is the reason to revise to come out with key words that then trigger a whole passage of writing (rather than learn the whole passage of writing)?
Any help would be great. Thanks you
Can anyone help me in how to revise? It's been almost 30 years since I was at school, so I am not even sure we did revision then......
My DD has her AS exams this year and is trying to revise. She sailed through he GCSEs without really doing any work for them as she just had a nack of being able to 'get by' with good grades.
Fast forward to A Levels.......
She didn't attend revision classes for GCSE as didn't need to, so has never been taught the whole how-to-revise theory.
She is very good at using you-tube to find ideas, getting lots of folders, wonderful colored pens, lost of post-its etc etc but ACTUAL revision part I'm not so sure is happening. Although she can spend 4 hours on a Wednesday 'revising' so I guess she is doing something....
She's just asked me 'how do you revise?' and to be honest i'm stumped. She does read through her work and make notes, she does this mainly every evening after the the day at college and then on a weekend files them in the subject folder. I've told her to read her notes, she then said 'but do what with them'....... is the idea you keep condensing your notes?
Her subjects are (in case it makes a difference) Sociology, psychology, english lit and communication & culture. I know her psychology is based a lot of case studies so she needs to know dates, topics names etc.
Does anyone know how best to revise? Without meaning to sound stupid, is the reason to revise to come out with key words that then trigger a whole passage of writing (rather than learn the whole passage of writing)?
Any help would be great. Thanks you
Forty and fabulous, well that's what my cards say....
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Comments
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I think revision styles are very personal and it's a shame she didn't use GCSEs as a time to discover her own style.
I never revised for GCSEs either and not much for A-Levels (also did Sociology and Psychology and did all right but those case studies are ridiculous). Now I'm at uni so I only need to revise for exams which works well for me. I do leave it quite late as it doesn't help to try any earlier and then I write out some main points and try to remember them.
I have friends who will read and re-read, write and re-write notes etc and my sister finds it much easier to make an audio recording which she then listens to.
The point of revision is to help you remember things and whatever helps you to remember is the best way to revise. Unfortunately your daughter will have to experiment and figure that out for herself. Luckily, A-Levels aren't much more difficult than GCSEs (depending on the GCSEs she did) and it's still relatively easy to 'sail through' compared to uni. Good luck to her!Apologies for any typos, my phone can't handle the forums.0 -
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I'd suggest for those subjects she gets old exam papers and answers the questions and then reads the mark schemes. That's how she'll do well. Without knowing the exam material there's no way she can learn everything in AS. You need to structure your learning towards how exam questions are asked and what will be expected for her to know to get good marks.0
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Hi 74 jax
Sorry to hear your DD is struggling. There are loads of things she can do. She needs to know what she struggles with. Learning,understanding, memorising, writing clearly and concisely, structure of essays etc. it may be different for each subject, or a common problem. Initially she needs to establish where issues are, then she can start to address them. There are revision courses ( online or face to face) private tutoring, Revision days, could study with friends doing same subject, practice writing essays, rote learning etc etc. I work in education but science not your daughters subjects. Hope she finds some help.
Good luck
Bexster0 -
My DD did psychology, the only way she could do the studies was to make lists, read them then write them from memory over and over again. Gradually she could list ten, twenty, thirty and eventually over 100 studies for any topic. It is just hard slog. She found it easier if she did them in order, say alphabetical order by the first name in the order, doing it randomly it was harder.
She is a teacher now and tells her students to do past papers over and over again. She also stays late after school and will always go through things with students, does your daughters school do this?Sell £1500
2831.00/£15000 -
it is very personal, and she needs to think both about how she persoanlly learns and remembers things, and what she neds to be able to do for the exams. Past papers are great practice, and if she can do these on a timed basis it will help her to feel more confident about answering the right kind of quiestions in the right time scales.
There is, I believe, some evidence that people tend to find it easier to remember stuff if they are doing so in a similar environment - so if you are going to be taking the exams sitting at a desk in a quiet exam room, revising at a desk in a quiet room may be better than revising lying on your bed with loud music playing, for instance.
Making notes is helpful as to do it you have to read your material (so you refresh your memory) but you also have to think about it, in order to summarise, as you have to think about what to keep, so you are having to decide what the most important facts / ideas / themes are. And you may need to go over the subject several times to make that choice.
What subjects is she taking? Are her exams open book or not?All posts are my personal opinion, not formal advice Always get proper, professional advice (particularly about anything legal!)0 -
Haha, your post made me chuckle. I am 23 and as well as working full-time I am studying for an accountancy qualification. I did 2 x Business A Levels, Biology and Chemistry. It probably took me until Year 13 (aged 18) to figure out that whilst I had good intentions, rewriting text books, filing things prettily and using fancy highlighters didn't count as revision
I personally feel that a lot of people don't know how to make good notes and waste time rewriting text books. Often, things like CGP revision guides for your syllabus and your subject have everything you need in them. And I think the real key is doing practise questions, discursive or numerical, questions questions questions.
I would encourage her to write a revision plan and stick to it. Chapter one. Practise questions. Chapter two. Practise questions. That kind of break up, not, read the whole text book, make some notes, do a couple of questions.
The notes you daughter is learning, she needs to be able to remember them! Not word for word, but the gist. So if presented with a title like 'The Risk of Material Misstatement' (got an audit book open and all I can think of!) she knows what the bullets underneath are without looking, or can at the very least fumble through. The good thing with practise questions is these coax the notes from your mind and highlight your weak points. People need to find out what works for them and even now during lectures I'm not sure I make the most of my time but I'm way better at it than I was.
I revised a bit at GCSE but not a lot. I'm pretty much a straight A student but did have to get my !!! in gear during A Levels. For my brother, it took him failing his AS year to get his backside in gear really. He got DDEU I think and his friend who got the same wasn't allowed back. In the end at A Level he got BBD. He since did a masters in mechanical engineering at a very good uni and is now doing a PhD in the same sort of area.
What I'm getting at is that your daughter needs to try and come to the conclusion of what she needs to do herself, and, sometimes, a bit of failure isn't always a bad thing if nothing else gets through.
Well done you for being engaged and trying to help though. My parents kind of expected us to do it ourselves and, as there were three of us, it wasn't that easy to monitor who was doing what!0
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