Get Ready: Exam Preparation

Strategic Planning: Approach your revision in an organised systematic way. You will cover more
ground, and you will feel you are making progress. You will feel more in control, especially if you are
able to tick off topics that you have covered as you work through them. This in turn increases your
confidence and encourages you to keep working, and so helps you keep your motivation and effort
high.

Timetable: As examinations approach and the syllabus is covered, set up a revision timetable, a
countdown of sorts to help you stay focused and to keep your motivation and enthusiasm high. You
will very likely be given some time to prepare for exams, but often this is already used up for
essentials like catching up on coursework, feeding the emaciated cat and so on. Towards the end of
any course, effort can slip due to sheer tiredness and lack of energy, or burn out. Yet this is a time
when you need to gather your energies and resources, and prepare for the final victory.

Noise & other distractions: You may feel background music helps you focus, and maybe it does.
There are opposing schools of thought here. Many researchers cite the power of association: if you
build up the habit of listening to music or other background noise to concentrate, come exam time
you might not do as well without this “prompt”. More recently, Study Skills gurus are saying if music
be the muse of learning aids, play on! This is open territory: do what best suits you but treat with
caution.

Syllabus: Take care to check that you have covered everything on the syllabus before you launch off
into revising certain areas and topics.
Course or Topic Summaries: Write out a summary for each course or topic (Keep it to A4 size if
you can). This is time and effort very well spent, as it will show you the main areas you know, and
more importantly, those you need to know, and which you need to work on.

Past Exam Papers: Excellent preparation because they give you a template (a working example) of
what you can expect. Use them to see the kinds of questions that are likely, how to approach
structuring your answers, and how to time yourself when answering questions.

Course Notes: Use your course notes to go over main points. Skim texts, always looking to draw
information out rather than “stuff it” into your brain. Exams are about retrieving information quickly
and efficiently - train yourself in this.

The “Bare Bones” of examination answers: Prepare basic or “skeleton” answers. By condensing
learning you will be able to access it more easily in a real situation; single words or short phrases can
act as prompts and triggers. By practising writing under exam type conditions, even if you only write
out the outline of what you would cover, you will get used to writing under pressure


Practise the exam format: Make sure you know, and that you are comfortable with, the layout of
the papers. Each subject will have different sections, choices of questions, compulsory questions, and
questions that attract different marks. Use these as a guide for the exam structure and outline.

• How to get there: PRACTICE, PRACTICE, and PRACTICE. You remember 
• best by doing, not by watching, listening or reading, so do all you can