The Art of Active Revision

How does an athlete prepare for a championship? Do they sit around reading stretching manuals, watching Chariots of Fire and then break periodically for a quick cup of tea. No, they get out at there and train by practicing what they will have to do on the day. Why is this relevant? Because too many students see revision as process of taking in information and leaving it at that.

Come the exam, you will be required not to “take in” fresh information but to “put out” information. So your revision should be structured and planned with “output” at its centre. To break this down still further, your revision programme should have three essential components: learn, recall and utilize.

The first part of this process is knowing what you will have to do for your exam. Get your hands on past papers, read the marking guides given out to examiners and find out whether any changes are planned in terms of exam structures for the papers you will be sitting. Much of this information is now freely available from the major examination boards on the website – use it.

Break down your revision into manageable portions. Again, using our athletics analogy, an athlete does not prepare for a 1500 metre race by slogging it out on the roads for three hours, they break their training down into small portions, each with a particular objective in mind – endurance, speed, improving gate etc. Do the same with your revision. The ideal portion size to maintain optimum recall is about half an hour. After that amount of time, our minds are more likely to wander off course. Breaking revision down into smaller more manageable units, also helps motivation because an hour of a difficult subject seems less of a bore than an entire afternoon.

Incorporate regular “output” portions into your revision. Do a test paper, discuss topics with friends, write down everything you know about a particular subject area etc. By putting what you are learning to use is easily the best way of revising because, like our imaginary athlete, you are then training rather than merely revising.