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Revising
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Well I have just well and truly fucked up an exam! Gona drag my average right down i expect
Anyway to the point... Almost every 'revision guide' you can find mentions how effective taking notes on the subject matieral is to help you remember it.. but I find with a lot of my course its so hard to summarise (i have pretty good note taking skills from doing a level history). So i've ended up just sitting copying SHITLOADS of stuff from lectures, and I just find myself doing it mundanely and not actually taking it in, I only take it in when I read it at a later stage, or if i do take it in i forget it. So basically i'm putting in loads of hours of revision and getting so little from it...
Theres insane amounts of stuff to cover from each module and I know you're sposed to select topics to cover but that has fucked me over by none of them coming up sometimes because there's so much material in each module, even doing 1 topic for each question + 2 more sometimes leaves you in the dark.
Err yeah im digressing a lot - I just need some advice on how to effectively take stuff in...note taking is supposed to be 'active' revision, but I seem to have a capability of copying a page and remembering nothing about the content later on. I obviously remember some stuff, but I feel like im not getting out anywhere near as much as im putting in, had 3 exams in the past 3 days, been revising like 6 hours a day since friday and the only time I properly took a lot in was in the morning just before the exams when i was reading through all the notes I took (i think i've gone through over 150 a sides since exams started lol, and only done 5 so far:/).
Anyone got some decent techniques?
Anyway to the point... Almost every 'revision guide' you can find mentions how effective taking notes on the subject matieral is to help you remember it.. but I find with a lot of my course its so hard to summarise (i have pretty good note taking skills from doing a level history). So i've ended up just sitting copying SHITLOADS of stuff from lectures, and I just find myself doing it mundanely and not actually taking it in, I only take it in when I read it at a later stage, or if i do take it in i forget it. So basically i'm putting in loads of hours of revision and getting so little from it...
Theres insane amounts of stuff to cover from each module and I know you're sposed to select topics to cover but that has fucked me over by none of them coming up sometimes because there's so much material in each module, even doing 1 topic for each question + 2 more sometimes leaves you in the dark.
Err yeah im digressing a lot - I just need some advice on how to effectively take stuff in...note taking is supposed to be 'active' revision, but I seem to have a capability of copying a page and remembering nothing about the content later on. I obviously remember some stuff, but I feel like im not getting out anywhere near as much as im putting in, had 3 exams in the past 3 days, been revising like 6 hours a day since friday and the only time I properly took a lot in was in the morning just before the exams when i was reading through all the notes I took (i think i've gone through over 150 a sides since exams started lol, and only done 5 so far:/).
Anyone got some decent techniques?
Post edited by JustV on
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Comments
I find going through past papers is good, what about just writing down the key points on flash cards and then writing a page from the flash card, only using promts...
theres a great study skills guide which i´ve been told i should get by my teacher who´s helping me with my various (as it now seems learning "differences") stella something...i´ll send you a PM when i remember the name...
I've had to do both of these things for different lessons and think they work quite well.
Another thing that works well (I think so anyway) is to write questions down on flash cards with the answers on the back and try to guess them.
Ig you have questions that have a few parts (questions that ask you do to more than one thing) then break them down and answer them as different questions. (this is hard to explain but I know what I'm trying to say)
Using past papers and following up on questions put forward to u in the lectures might be helpful. If I was to just sit and read lecture notes and books while making notes I wouldn't have a clue where to start in the exam because sometimes the way questions are worded, despite having read the answer, you still can't answer it because you haven't had that practice or you've forgotten.
HTH
Steve
@box - i do use past papers, just there seems such a massive range of stuff that can come up you really need to take everything in on my course Cant do a topic per question cos more than one comes up per question sometimes :x