Fintan’s GCSE Revision Tips

By Fintan Darragh

Revising isn’t something that should be challenging or difficult at all. What revising is, unfortunately, is time consuming. It takes a while. That’s why you might like to start early (nothing to do on a Sunday?) and why you’ll probably get a week or more of study leave.

Fact: You’ll probably do better in the topics you revise properly.

There are three problems when it comes to revision.

1. Understanding,
2. procrastination and
3. technique.

Let’s deal with them one by one, with this badly-named guide thing.

Know: Your Understanding

How are you going to revise if you don’t know what you’re talking about? Understanding the actual subject is required to be able to do well in it.

Don’t start revising anything unless you understand it. Otherwise, you’ll waste some valuable learning time.

Teachers are there for a reason. Use them!

If you teacher is unapproachable, unwilling to answer questions, etc., that teacher is pretty rubbish – don’t force answers out of them, just go to another. Approach a teacher after a lesson, during lunch or break or whatever. Just DO! You need to know this stuff as soon as possible, and a 5 minute one-on-one crash course in “the mole” or whatever can only help!

Books are the next best thing. It might take a bit of searching (good books that explain well are hard to find), but there will be at least one book that will give you a clear, easy-to-understand explanation of whatever you’re trying to know.

After that is the internet. Even I will admit that the internet isn’t always that reliable, but it’s usually a good last option, as teachers sometime have fabulous websites that really make it clear. Sometimes they don’t however, so this should be a kind of last resort.

Books are generally better because the publisher will pick a really clever person to write them, and words cost money to print, so editors will try to keep it short (but not always, in the case of some horrific A-level books I’ve seen).

Go: Procrastination

This is the biggest problem for me, and as far as I know loads of others.

Putting the revision off means that you waste time by saying things like “I’ll do it later” or by doing something completely different like cleaning your room or watching TV. Suddenly that can all become far more interesting when you’re trying to revise. Also, you might be very happy to revise a subject you like, but much less willing to revise something dull like RE or maths. I can’t offer you the definitive guide to not procrastinating because I myself do it all the time, but I can try to help by giving you some tips:

• Remove all distractions – turn off the telly, remove all things you can fiddle with from wherever you study and make sure you have any food or drink you will want so you don’t have to take a trip to the kitchen to disrupt you “flow”.
• Get someone to give you a “k” in the “a” – I couldn’t think of a better way to say it, but all you have to do is tell you family members to make sure that you revise during particular hours. Tell them that they should shout at you whenever they find you not revising, or something like that, and that they should not allow you to tell them you don’t need to. Don’t make them do that all the time, though.
• Think of how satisfied you’ll feel – and how much work you’ve already done! You don’t want to throw two years of blood, sweat and tears down the drain, do you? Then revise! Results day can be either fantastic or disappointing. YOU are in control of that. You already know what you can achieve at your best. Revising will make that happen, and not revising will simply mean relatively low grades that you’re going to feel awful about. Don’t put yourself through that – REVISE!
• Make use of our waaaay cool desktop wallpaper – if you are willing to have a constant reminder of the impending GCSE exams, take a look at our wallpaper for your desktop background on your PC. It’s kind of like that “hang in there” poster they had on “The Simpsons”, but harsher. Be warned – once you do you’re exams you have to remove it and forget about it, to avoid mental damage.
• Start by doing a little – try revising for 10 minutes and see how it feels. Good? No. Acceptable? Yeah. Keep going until you really need to stop.
• Organise your time better using lists

Flow: Killer Revision Technique

I only called this part flow because it rhymes with know and go. It’s also a kind of homage to SFU.

I’m going to tell you how I revised. Only, I procrastinated a lot and so didn’t do much of it. Which was a mistake a really do regret, and hope you don’t make. That’s why the “go” step is there.

Different subjects require different revision techniques. Buster Tests fits in quite nicely to those techniques, but isn’t the only thing you need to do. I’m best at the sciences by far, and they are by far the easiest to revise. Below is my revision technique for the sciences, and that’s it. Later on I’ll be sure to add methods for other subjects, but until then I’m sure you can work them out for yourself based on the info below.

1. Get a specification
   There is no excuse for it, whatsoever. Your specification (or syllabus) is a kind of fountain or knowledge. You can use it, definitively, to find out EXACTLY what you need to know. If you can’t get one off of your teachers, ask them for the exact name of the course you are doing (e.g “EdExcel Double Science 2005 B”), go to the examining board’s website, download and print out the useful pages. That is, the pages where what you need to know is listed bit by bit. Not the pages about teaching technique or how science is good for the students’ sense of morality.
2. Buy record cards, make revision cards.
   Record cards can be bought from WHS or Woolies for relatively little money, and are absolutely ideal. I tend to think that Woolies’ cards are the best because of their size, price and line colour (I’ve considered these things for you!). Go through your specification line by line (this is where the time for revising comes in) and turn each point (or group or related points) into notes on a revision card. The key is to compress the information down to fit on the card. Use colours, diagrams and sometimes smaller writing. Make sure you understand what you write down and will be able to use the card later to jog your memory. You’re aiming to write little text but lots of information. It’s a skill that takes little time to develop and is really useful later on in life. Remember to keep your cards in order and to make title cards marking the start of a sub-section (like in physics, “electricity and magnetism”). Numbering your cards will be useful if you drop them because of nerves before a test.
3. Test yourself!
   Yay! My favourite part! How are you doing? What do you need to work on? What don’t you need to work on? This was going to come along eventually, but now do you see how useful Buster Tests is? It takes care of this entire step (for Physics, at least). For other subjects, make up tests (short, fast ones that get down to the meat of the subject) and try them out. Make lists of how you’ve done in them and what you need to revise. Revise that subject straight away if you have to – read your notes and revision card, look in the book a little. Try the test again? Score gone up? Thought so. Rinse and repeat.
4. Try out an exam or two
   Testing yourself prepares you for this, which prepares you for the actual exam. See how it works? Clever, innit? Like with the specifications, either get some sample or past exams off of your teacher, or download them. Some publishers sell them, but bear in mind that they can’t account for all the exam boards and you might be asked things you don’t need to know or not asked things you should know. That’s why past papers or sample papers are the way to fly. As with tests, mark it, revise what you got wrong, and then try another.
5. Give it a rest
   Don’t do everything constantly. Your brain will get tired and give up, and you’ll put yourself off revising other things (even more!).
6. Before the exam – quick reviews
   The evening before, read through your revision cards . Then go and chill out. Before the exam, calmly read through your revision cards, thinking about things as you go and reasoning with yourself. Teachers seem to be divided about weather or not you should read any notes before the exam. The way I see it, you’re going to anyway, so it might as well be some quality, brain-refreshing notes you made ages ago. Some teacher once told me that about 60% of what you write in an exam is what you read before you go in. There are some big flaws in that statement, but it just shows that someone thinks reading though your cards is a good idea.
7. Take the exam!
   Stay calm, time yourself well and just shine. You’ll do fine, safe in the knowledge that you’ve done far more preparation that ANYONE else!