Revision and exam success. Step one-

I am assuming that you are reading this because you have an interest in exam success? If not you may have stumbled upon the wrong blog! Still, it may be worth reading on anyway. You never know when secrets of exam success could come in handy!

So, whether it is GCSE's, AS, A levels, Highers, Diploma, Certificate NVQ, High School, Undergraduate or Postgraduate exams of any kind, ther eis a common factor, they have something in common.... you need to know stuff and be able to write about it in ways that the examiners want you to!! Both are crucial for success.

Basically there are several steps that are important.

1. Learn about and understand something.

2. File it in that amazing brain of yours.

3. Be able to retrieve it when you need to :-)

4. Be able to shine as you show the examiner that you know the stuff they are asking you about!

It is also crucial to have the right mindset to do all of the above. Now that is so so so important that it will have a blog all of it's own!!

Somewhere in the above steps comes the activity that is often referred to as revision or revising.

The four steps are important and everyone has their own particular ways of going about them. In this blog we will cover some points relevant to step one!

Step one. Learn about and understand something.

This is something that probably happened some time ago. Or not!?

Having said that the whole process of revision is built upon the assumption that step one has happened.

Maybe it did and maybe it didn't.

If you have exams on the horizon. Look through the whole syllabus, your notes, text books, revision guides, past papers etc and check out what looks familiar, even if vaguely so. This may seem obvious yet lots of students launch in without doing this and get unstuck later! Better to be prepared.

If you are still at school,it may help to draft your Mum or Dad in at this stage so that they can help you get started. If you are at college you will be doing this more independently or with a student who is on your course maybe.

Checking you have the information you will be tested on

The content that looks familiar, does so because it is already filed somewhere in your brain's system, even though the filing cabinet may seem to be dusty and even padlocked, the familiarity tells you it exists and is there! (now, that is worth celebrating as a success step!)

If you come across something that looks totally new. You could panic, OR you could think " Great!!!". After all, you have discovered it in time! Better now than in the exams. So, lets go with the second response! It works better.

Read through the new content, check it out with other students and then book some time with your tutor/teacher to ask any questions that you need to.

If there are other students who also have a gap, it will be worth asking for a group tutorial on the content.

Yes, you are right, if it is in the syllabus it should have been covered. You may have missed it or it may, for some reason, have been left out. Maybe it wasn't taught. You now have a choice, you can get angry about it and stew about it or......take control, get your detective hat on and find out what you need to know.

So, step one involves making sure that you have all the information that you will need. Some of it will be very familiar and some less so.

Organise your resources and information as you prepare for step two, which is checking out and refining your brain's filing system!

Find out more about mindset next time. There are some clues above. Then we can move on to how to file it on the inside, in ways that make it easier to retrieve!

Bridget
Keeping your success in mind

Copyright Bridget Clapham May 2010