By the end of this study skills guide, I hope you will be better-able to:

(1)       Abandon any unproductive revision methods you may have suffered from in the past.

(2)       Make a sensible decision about when you will start systematic revision.

(3)       Use “revision notes” in conjunction with question banks, to turn revision into an active process.

(4)       Timetable the later stages of your revision programme sensibly and flexibly.

(5)       Organise the time you spend revising to give you the best possible efficiency.

I guess you’d say “No!”. Well it’s certainly not fun if its a hard slog, and you have the feeling of getting nowhere.

How often in the past have you sat for hours at a desk, turning a page every now and then - with very little “going in”? Has your brain felt as if it simply couldn’t hold one more fact? Actually, our brains have enormous storage capacity for information - if only we can use them properly.

That’s a question students often ask. If you ask this question, what you probably want the reply to be is:

“No, don’t bother starting yet, there’s plenty of time. If you start too soon you’ll just forget it all again.”

Lets assume you've already started your university course. If you haven't, imagine yourself a couple of months into the course. Have you started systematic revision? If you can honestly say 'yes' read on. If 'no', write down your reasons for not yet starting revision, then look at my response by clicking on 'next' and see if I agree with your reasons.

Reasons why I haven't started revision yet:

As you can guess, ask me when you should start revising, and I’ll give a very short answer: “Now.” My reasons for this answer include the following.

•       Most people asking the question already have nagging consciences about not having started.

•       If revision becomes a normal part of your life at an early stage, you avoid having to make marathon efforts later as exams loom up.

•       It’s much easier to revise things when there isn’t the threat of an impending exam.

•       True, we forget things we’ve learned, but when we’ve learned something once, it takes far less time to re-learn it next time, less time still the time after, and so on.

We are all different, so there’s no perfect strategy that will suit everyone. However, there are some ingredients that need to be in any effective strategy.

•       Practice at answering questions.

•       Practice at recalling things.

•       Practice at assessing your answers.

•       Ways of finding the bits that tend to “slip”.

Have a look at the flowchart below, representing a way of making revision efficient.



Note particularly that bit in the middle: the practice with your question bank. We explored how to make ‘Question Banks’ in my study skills guide “Making Learning Tools”. The more time you spend practising answering questions, the better you get at it. All you have to do in an exam is answer questions. If you can answer all the little ones in your question bank, you soon become able to answer bigger ones. Big questions are made up of lots of little ones anyway.

Effective revision is by definition an active process, very different from passive reading through your notes or books. When you’re doing real revision, you’re constantly doing the following:

•       formulating questions

•       summarising

•       testing yourself on questions

•       checking how right your answers are

•       going back again to questions which catch you out

If you’ve been using my ideas regarding making summaries of your lectures, you’re well on the way to making useful revision notes. The same principles can be used to incorporate into your revision notes summaries of things from text books, research papers, laboratory or field work, and so on.

The key thing is to drastically reduce the bulk of the material you’re going to be working with as you revise. This means getting down all the key ideas, and leaving out all sorts of stuff (however interesting) that you know you wouldn’t be expected to remember in detail.
Remember the question: “What am I expected to become able to do?”Let’s explore some characteristics of good revision notes.

•       Much shorter and punchier than original material

•       Attractive to use

•       Well laid out on the paper

•       Sufficient to prompt you towards the answers to most of the questions in your question bank, without giving the answers directly all the time.

•       Portable enough to carry around with you for use in odd little bits of time, and odd places!

Let’s think ahead to the more intensive stages of revision, say during the final few weeks before your exams come along. Have you made a sort of “diary” of your revision plans before? Did you actually stick to it?

If you haven't made any plans, which if the following is closest to your reason for not making such a plan:

- I work better by revising spontaneously, rather than to a schedule

- I couldn't afford the time to make a schedule

- I left it too late to plan any sort of schedule.

How did your reasons for not having a strategy stand up to my comments in the response to Activity 2? Of course, if you do have such a plan, you can be feeling rather pleased with yourself.

Let’s take the case that you may have made plans in the past, but not managed to stick to them. Is this you? It seems to apply to about 9 out of 10 of us.

Try the next activity now: be honest!

If you haven't managed to stick to your revision plans in the past, type the things that stopped you.

Let’s suppose for sake of argument, that you’ve got five subjects, with five exams coming up in a few weeks time. Suppose we already know the dates and times of the five exams.

Let’s simply call the subjects A, B, C, D and E.

Each of these subjects will contain a number of different “bits” or topics. Again, for sake of argument, let’s suppose that on average each subject has half-a-dozen main “bits”: call them A1, A2, ...A6; B1 .. B6, and so on. Look now at the “calendar” of the last few weeks shown in Figure 1. The exams are already marked in. Now I want you to imagine that you’ve already done quite a bit of revision, and you’re about to plan the more intensive phase, leading up to your exams. So really, in this plan, it’s “polishing”, rather than starting from scratch. Try the activity below, then compare your answer to my response.

In the calendar of Figure 1 below fill in letters such as A1-4, B2, E6 and so on, to plan a sensible way of using the last few weeks for systematic, intensive, 'polishing' revision. Don't worry yet about exactly how this intensive revision can be done, we'll soon go on to explore this in detail.

We’ve now explored “global” planning of the last few weeks before exams. Let’s now go on to look at how best to use this time - let’s look at the minute-by-minute processes you can use.

As exams loom up, you probably feel you should be working a lot. However, it’s not how long you work that counts, it’s how efficient your work is that matters.

What are the “enemies” ?

•       turning the pages with nothing happening!

•       boredom

•       resentment that you’re not doing something else

•       fatigue

•       panic!


Next we’ll explore ways of removing these “enemies”.

First though, remembering that real revision is an active process, how long can you do it for?

How long can you sit at your desk or table, and actively revise? In other words, how long can you sustain the active process of revision before you need a break? Choose the option that fits you best, on average.

(a) 15 minutes or less

(b) 30 minutes or so

(c) 1 hour

(d) 2 hours

(e) 3 hours or more

Suppose it were possible to plug some electrodes into your brain as you were revising. Imagine the electrodes could be connected to a computer which measured how much of what you revised you retained as you sat working. First, let’s see what might happen if you sat at your desk or table, working as continuously as you could for a spell of some hours.

Draw a line to show how you think your retention may vary as a function of time you sit trying to revise.

Imagine, now, that your revision strategy had the following features built into it:

•       Shortish spells of work of no more than about three-quarters of an hour - many spells being less than this maximum.

•       Distinct “breaks” of a quarter of an hour or more between each spell of revision. These breaks could be used for a cup of coffee, a short TV programme, a walk around, a meal, anything where you get away from the work for a short period (as long as you remember to come back to it, of course!)

•       Variety. When you come back after a break, you press on revising a different topic than the one you were revising in the previous spell.

•       Rapid recaps: for the first minutes or so of your second spell of revision, you sit, perhaps eyes closed, and gently let the ideas you revised during your first spell filter back through your mind. Then, press on with revising the new topic. If we were to draw a graph of retention against time, it could look something like Figure 3 below.

The last figure looks a bit complex! However, each time you return to something fresh, your retention will tend to go back up again. “A change is as good as a rest”. Also, you’ll not get so tired, because you’re having breaks in between spells of work. Furthermore, you’re less likely to get bored or fed-up, because even when revising your least-favourite topic, “the end is in sight” - you’ll soon be moving on to something else.

A lot of short spells of revision adds up to more than a few long ones. Are you now wondering “will not this chopping and changing of topics leave my brain in a whirl?” Well, I suggest that our brains’ natural way of taking in information is in little bits and pieces, rather than “solid lumps”.

Think about the following analogy. Think of some television serial you’ve enjoyed. Remember the sort of serial where this week’s episode ends at some highly dramatic point? You’re dying to know what happens next, but you’ve got to wait till next week’s episode. Next week, when you see the opening seconds of the programme, you very quickly recall the dramatic circumstances in which this week’s story ended. The “sudden stop” left loose ends in your mind; unresolved questions floating around, and so on. These remained in your subconscious, ready to surface again as soon as the serial resumed. It’s very similar if you stop revising right in the middle of something. When next you pick up the threads, your mind quickly latches on, because of those loose ends that have been left floating around. It’s better in fact, than waiting for a “tidy” stopping place: if all the loose ends are resolved before you leave your topic, your mind does not hold on to the ideas in the same way.

If you’re just starting your university course, you’re probably optimistic, and think that given time, you’ll manage to learn all of the various subjects you need to. However, time goes very quickly when exams are getting closer, and you may find that you haven’t quite time to learn all your topics. You may know that your exams give you some choice, maybe any five questions from eight, or some similar choice.

(a) What's the advantage of trying to cover the whole of the syllabus?

(b) What can sometimes be advantageous of learning most but not all of your syllabus? (Obviously, you may have to make a compromise! Be careful to minimise any dangers involved.)

Was your analysis of the pros and cons of learning all or part of your syllabus similar to mine? In practice, the decision you’ll make is often guided by the topics themselves. Now and then, there’ll be a small topic you really don’t like at all. If you are quite sure that:

•       this topic isn’t particularly important, and

•       that only one question is likely to involve it, and

•       that it would take you a lot of time and effort to master the topic, then you may be justified in skipping it, and spending the time on learning other things.

Almost everything I’ve said in this section has been to do with work you do “privately”. Revision has usually been regarded as “private”. At school, many pupils are afraid to admit that they’ve been doing a lot of revision - that would make them unpopular. However, everything I’ve said can easily be extended to “sociable” revision, working with university friends. I’d like you to glance back through the section, before going on to your action plan, and think how you can use other people in many of the stages we’ve explored. Include help from other people in your action plan.

Write below your personal plans regarding the various facets of revision we’ve discussed. Then if you’re brave enough, get someone else to look at your plan. Choose someone who will help to keep you to it!

When I’m going to start

My plans regarding revision notes

My intentions regarding a “revision timetable”

Things I’m going to try regarding “breaks and changes”

Any other plans

What I’m going to avoid in future!

I’d like you to look again at the objectives we set out with at the start of this section:

(1)       Abandon any unproductive revision methods you may have suffered from in the past.

(2)       Make a sensible decision about when you will start systematic revision.

(3)       Use “revision notes” in conjunction with question banks, to turn revision into an active process.

(4)       Timetable the later stages of your revision programme sensibly and flexibly.

(5)       Organise the time you spend revising to give you the best possible efficiency.

I hope by now you’re feeling much more in control of your revision. It’s all quite logical really, revision is “rehearsal” for the tasks such as exams that face you. it is something that you can systematically tackle, a bit at a time. It isn’t something which will take care of itself. It doesn’t happen overnight as if by magic.

I hope also, that you now can go about the task of revising, in a way that is “kinder” to yourself than the old-fashioned hard slog. Learning should be fun, and it certainly is more enjoyable when you have the feeling that, for every bit of time you spend, you’re getting tangible results. You aren’t looking for massive sudden increases in your abilities or skills, simply a systematic, well-organised, gradual build-up, till you’re well able to meet any standards expected of you.