If you’re not sure of the best way to tackle your revision notes, then see our guidance below.
- Firstly, give a thought to what the weaker areas of your knowledge and understanding are, as this should give you the focus you need to get the most out of the revision process. Also, make sure that you’ve got all of the materials and resources that you will use as you revise.
- Reading. Read through what you have written before in lectures and classes or read through any textbooks or hand-outs you have. Be careful to pick out the key areas and not get overburdened with the finer details at this stage.
- Writing. This is perhaps best done as you read, but writing or typing is obviously at the heart of the revision note-making process. Notes should be clear, and to ensure they are easily remembered, they should be concise too. Of course, there will be times when you will need to write lengthier and more detailed notes, but it’s important to set these aspects out neatly and tidily so that they do not make your page so busy with writing that it appears chaotic and less easy to remember as a result.
- Organisation and Presentation. Once you have gathered all of the material you think you will need to revise, you can begin to arrange the information into an order that suits you. It is also wise to present these notes in a way that aids visual learning with the use of colours and images for example. Ensuring your notes are more visually striking should make them more likely to stand out in your memory as well. You might want to transfer some of the information you have onto smaller cards or pieces of paper that you carry around with you to test yourself as a way of building up your memory on those things that are a little more challenging.
- As an added tip, you might want to reinforce the learning you’re doing via the use of revision notes by watching videos relating to the topics you’re preparing for. This could expand and enrich your knowledge and boost your recall ability by associating the words you’ve written down with the images you’re seeing on screen.
The Next Step
Obviously, reading and re-reading your notes is vital to revising well. However, there’s other things you can do that may help reinforce what you’re learning in your memory. Try covering the page or scroll past the text on the screen and attempt to recall the information, then uncover the page or scroll back the relevant text to see how much you can remember. Repeating this process is likely to help enhance your memory of your notes. You could even make it a group revision exercise, where you ask each other questions on the chosen subject. This makes revision a lot more fun, and can help you remember the subject material much easier.
Another top tip for revision is to try to practise exam questions on the topics you’re revising. Sometimes you may be able to look at past papers on the subject. This is excellent preparation for what you’re likely to come across in the actual exams. Learning how to properly answer exam questions on the chosen subject, could then help make you feel much more relaxed and confident going into your exam.
