Revision tips and techniques

Content

01 Disorganised? Create a flexible revision timetable
02 Create a study zone
03 Make recordings of yourself
04 Poor memory retention? Try listening to music, especially soundtracks
05 Slow writer? Try a word-constrained rather than time-constrained approach
06 Investigate your learning style or learning profile
07 Try positive-thinking

01 Disorganised? Create a flexible revision timetable

If you are struggling to organise your revision, or worry that you aren't quite doing enough, try creating a flexible timetable:

First of all, get some squared paper or use Microsoft Excel to produce a basic grid.
Divide the page into three columns.
Label the first column either 'Subject', 'Module', or 'Topic', whichever is most relevant.
Label the second column 'Exam Date'.
Label the third column 'Revision' (also make sure it is the widest).
Write all of your modular exams in the first column, referring all the while to the second column in to order list them chronologically. Alternatively, you could do this by topic.
In the third column, colour in a square every time you do an agreed period of revision, perhaps half an hour or an hour. To cover the necessary revision, you should commit yourself to a set number of hours per week. In this way you can get the volume of work done in time, whilst allowing yourself the flexibility to do it as and when you are in the mood, and have the required concentration and motivation.

Adapted from the article 'Coffee and no TV' in Education Guardian, 25 April 2006.

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02 Create a study zone

Try organising a set place to study and revise. This may be extremely beneficial to you, as it can help to delineate work and play. As well, some adherents to this method find that when they are outside of their 'study zone', they are able to remember a lot more of what they have learnt by simply visualising their special place.

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03 Make recordings of yourself

Try recording your notes and playing them back to yourself. If you have access to a microphone and a computer, or even a digital dictaphone, you can convert the recordings into MP3 and download them onto your iPod, so that you can revise wherever you are, and even play yourself to sleep.

The act of speaking your revision notes aloud should, in itself, be fairly memorable, but you should also benefit from listening to your own voice, as people tend to be very attentive to their own voice (be it through vanity, embarrassment, or the desire for self-improve and better articulation).

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04 Poor memory retention? Try listening to music, especially soundtracks

Music can be a very powerful memory aid, especially if you are an auditory learner and hearing is your dominant sense. Indeed, listening to music that enables you to concentrate and get into a 'zone' (a mental state of focus and concentration) can be very productive, and has the added bonus of providing a ready-made memory 'hook'. In the same way that visualising your study place can sometimes help you to remember, recalling the music to a 'study song' can often confer the same benefit.

Music can also help you to immerse yourself in an area of study; can help you to create the proper atmosphere, for example. An obvious discipline is History, for which students might play soundtracks from historical drama and watch Hollywood epics during revision breaks in order to capture the atmosphere of the time and become more actively involved in the material. This is achievable for any discipline, it's just a case of being creative and enthusiastic.

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05 Slow writer? Try a word-constrained rather than time-constrained approach

Regardless of how well you might feel you know your subject, if you are a particularly slow writer, exams probably fill you with dread. Besides practising under timed conditions and doing exercises that force you to write for a sustained period of time in order to build up your hand muscles and your writing speed, you could prepare for exams by taking a 'word-constrained' instead of a 'time-constrained' approach.

This involves working out the maximum you can write within a given period, using this to calculate your word length for whichever exam, and then planning information-packed answers in accordance with how much you feel you will be able to realistically write.

Remember, although examiners are looking for quality rather than quantity, if your answers are concise, they must still be well-supported and well-argued. While it is good practice to communicate something as precisely - and in as fewer words - as possible, don't sell yourself short in the process; plan intelligently, and build up your writing speed.

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06 Investigate your learning style or learning profile

Unless you have a tried and tested method of studying and revising, which is the result of a long process of self-discovery, you may question whether you are learning in the way that is best suited to you, taking into account all your strengths, preferences, and natural biases.

There are numerous systems of learning styles and learning profiles that may interest you, each offering something slightly different; some of these systems are examined in detail elsewhere on this website, just follow the link.

VAKT and VKT

One of the most basic but revealing systems is called VAKT, which is an acronym for Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic, and Tactile; sometimes this system is shortened to just VAK. Each of the four words represents a learning type or 'preference': visual learners respond best to visual stimuli; auditory learners, to stimuli that involves the act of listening and hearing; kinaesthetic learners, to movement and action; tactile learners, to touch. The underlying idea is that every person has a 'dominant sense' (or two or three pronounced senses). The VAKT system explores the link between the senses, our intelligence, and or unique personalities; if you think about our senses as information processors, the relationship is obvious.

There are numerous self-assessment tests that you can take in order to find out which of your senses dominate(s) (click here for one such test). You may, however, find that you are resistant to a system that pigeon-holes you into an apparent 'type'. This is understandable, and sensible: it would undermine the whole ethos of higher education if you were to accept something that claims to categorise everyone into three or four classifications in such a simplistic way. But the vast majority of these systems do not claim to sort everyone into neat, mutually exclusive groups: everyone is different, therefore everyone is a unique composite of their own sensory strengths and weaknesses. Systems such as VAKT just help you to consider one of the many factors (e.g. the senses) that have a significant impact on your particular way of working.

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07 Try positive-thinking

As important as anything is your attitude to exams, especially on the day. Rather than thinking 'I'm terrible at exams', 'I don't know anything', and 'I'm dreading this', turn those thoughts around and think to yourself, 'I CAN do exams, 'I have revised everything that seems relevant' (of course, you need to have done sufficient revision to think this), and 'I'm looking forward to my exam'. Although this last thought may seem unrealistic, even ridiculous, there are definite reasons to look forward to exams. For one, they give you the opportunity to show what you know. Moreover, the fear and consequent adrenalin that the fear produces will enable you to 'think on your feet' - in order to be at your sharpest mentally it is, in a way, necessary to go through the motions of being anxious and scared, so try to enjoy the fear and see it as a 'necessary evil'.

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If you have an effective revision strategy or technique that you would like to share, whether you are a member of staff or a student, please send us an email.