You will all have your favourite tips for revision, but here are a few more that might help move you out of the dark woods into the sunlight.
- You are looking for retrieval, not recognition, so stop highlighting big chunks of your textbook and start writing or planning answers with the book closed. The IB Diploma exams are very near, A levels are not much further away, and many of you will be sitting end-of-year exams.
- Revise what you don’t know, not what you know. This is linked to the above: it is reassuring to realise that we know some things, but testing yourself on what you know is pointless. You need to test yourself, using old on what you are not sure of.
- Write, write, write. Don’t type your answers, unless you’ll be typing them in the exams. Your writing muscles need to get into shape now! So, when you are planning answers, writing notecards of material in your own words, summarising studies, do it by hand. You may have 5 or 6 hours of writing in one day in your exams, so get training now.
- Output, not input. Yes, by all means make recordings, diagrams, notes, overviews, pictures, but the crucial test is if you can use all these theories and studies you have learned to answer the question. So get hold of old papers and markschemes, or at least old questions, and start now.
- Plan your revision now. Make a revision timetable, and plan to cover at leat two different academic subjects (like Psychology and French, for example) each day, for up to an hour each. If you get tired, swap topics – so maybe study half an hour of sociocultural psychology and then half an hour of biological, planning the answers as you go. Stick to your timetable.
These exams will soon be over, but learning is a life-long skill.
Psychology Sorted 