revising for essay based exams

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Your 3-step guide to revising for essay-based exams.

Essay-based exams are particularly difficult to prepare for. If you're worried about revising for your essay-based exam, read our blog from Newcastle University student, Robina, on how to get the most out of your revision.

This is the tried and tested revision method I’ve been using since college to pass essay based exams. The 3 R’s of revising…

Missed a lecture or two? It happens! Recap  is going to become your best friend over the break in helping you fill up any gaps you have in your notes.

Another thing I always find useful is to only write down what your lecturer is saying, not what's on the slide . Don't waste your time frantically scribbling down what you could easily access another time. 

Once recapped, you’ve got the basic skeleton of your essay down, now it’s time to put some meat on the bones.

Chances are you’ve got a massive reading list for each lecture. If you have no idea where to start I’d recommend following up any references already mentioned in the lecture , especially when it comes to case studies. Having relevant examples/case studies are  a MUST in essay based exams.

Every essay introduction should start with a basic definition , so look at the first few essential readings on your list, and pick out a definition you think sounds best. Work your way from there. I’d recommend including no more than three references already mentioned in the lecture or on the essential reading in your essay plan.

In order to get a 2:1, you need to show evidence that you’ve gone beyond the reading list and found your own material . So it’s best to get into the habit straight away. Looking at references within references is always a good idea, so picking a key author and seeing who they mention.

The same thing goes for your case studies and examples, refrain from just regurgitating the example your lecturer gave and try to find your own . Especially with a subject like human geography think about current events in the news, even if it is a basic example it will show the examiner that you’ve understood the concept/topic.

3. REHEARSE

This is my golden rule. What works best for me is firstly understanding the topic you’re writing about, but also actually MEMORISING your essay plans .

Do not underestimate the amount of time this step takes.

There is a general consensus amongst psychologists that the most effective way to remember information is through REHEARSAL .

Yes, you could probably cram a few days before but again, studies show that your short term memory can only retain 7+/- 2 pieces of information at any given time. So the TRICK is to get information into your LONG TERM MEMORY . And the only way I’m afraid is by going over your essay plans again and again. So highlight,  make cue cards,  say them out loud, listen to them, use pictures. Do whatever works for you but remember to keep going over them as much as possible.

When something is in your long term memory you have the ability to retrieve it at any time, so this way if you already have say 4 potential essay plans memorised it will save loads of thinking time in the exam.

We hope you have found this blog post useful, should you need a little more surviving exam season, why not read our essential blogs on what to know before accessing our libraries , and how to meditate to manage stress-levels during these especially uncertain times.

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Tips for revising for psychology essay-based exams

Overall tips for essay-based exam questions

Essay-based exam questions when you don’t know what the questions will be can be daunting. Sometimes when you first open the exam book, the essay questions can be worded in a way that might throw you – you might worry that you’ve only revised a very specific part of that essay question, for example. This is a completely normal, and a sometimes inevitable, reaction. Because you have spent a long time revising a topic in a specific way that’s best for you, thinking about it in a different way (that reflects how the question has been worded) can make you question whether you know how to answer the question and get a good mark. If you’ve revised the topic broadly with some key specific information about a topic, then I can assure you that you can answer the question.

Overcoming this initial worry is entirely possible. In many ways, you can do this by turning the question into something you have revised , and answering the question accordingly. This can take a bit of practice, so it’s important to do some practice exam questions before your exam day.

The way to do it is simple: pick out the key parts of the essay question . Sometimes questions can have superfluous information, so the key parts you want are the topic of the question and how to answer it. Remember: You don’t need to talk about everything you’ve revised or covered.

• If the question says compare and contrast or critically discuss , you know how to write the information. (I’ve provided a couple of definitions below for these key terms below.)
• If the question mentions a broad topic/phenomenon (e.g. language disorders), then talk about the key aspect of that broad topic that you have revised.

Before writing the essay question I recommend always creating a plan structure for your essay question. (You can scribble it out at the end.) This is a brief structure for the main points in your essay. Doing this at the start can actually help trigger your memory for some other pieces of information you could talk about. I’ve provided a general structure below that you can use to help start planning for any question.

A general structure to use for every essay-based exam question:

• What is a definition of the topic?
• This should be a brief overview of describing what the topic in the question is.
• You could mention an implication of why its important to study this topic.
• What is a theory of the topic? Or why does it happen?
• Brief summary of a theory or two of the topic.
• What is the evidence for the topic?
• Are there any clinical case studies to use as an example of how this approach has been tested?
• You could consider how difficult a topic it is to study. Is getting good quality evidence for this topic an easy or a hard thing (and how?), for example.
• Are there any other ways of assessing or understanding this topic?
• What assessment tools can we use to understand this topic, are there any other theories you could mention here, any other studies?
• ­This should always summarise an answer to the question and be reasonably conclusive. You could reiterate all of the key parts of the essay structure above.
• For example, if your question is asking about compare and contrast two theories, make sure to summarise which you think is better in the conclusion.

What do the key terms mean?

• Critically discuss/evaluate – go beyond purely describing a theory or an approach. Critically discuss/evaluate means evaluating what our current understanding is of a phenomenon: is the quality of the evidence good, do we have a lot of evidence (if not, what are we missing), are many of the studies outdated, how difficult of a topic is it to study? It can mean using a clinical case study to demonstrate the existence of an approach, and then critically evaluating whether a case study is a good source of evidence. I have a whole blog post on how to demonstrate critical evaluation here .
• Compare and contrast – Describe two theories/approaches for a topic, and then use critical discussion of which is more effective at explaining a phenomenon. A conclusion should be clear as to which is more effective.

Some pointers to help prepare :

As a general rule of thumb, try to do these things (in order):

• As it’s impossible for anyone to remember all of the information across a set of modules, which can be overwhelming, it pays to spend time before you start revising to look over your lecture notes and format the information to revise in a way that’s easy for you to read and understand.

This might involve creating a mind map or a table of information on a topic that you feel comfortable revising from. It should include (at minimum) all the parts of the general structure above:

• A definition for the topic,
• A description of theory of the topic,
• A study exploring the topic (which you can critically evaluate in some way and cite; you could search for one that you can remember in detail on Google scholar). This is where you can show further reading (by finding another study not mentioned in the slides), and
• An alternative piece of information that you can use to contrast the topic (e.g. a theory, another study).
• Think about any general difficulties of researching each topic. For example, studying language disorders is difficult because they could be a rare phenomenon. Therefore, we rely on case studies to understand the disorder, which do not provide us with a generalizable understanding of the disorder that may apply to everyone with the disorder.

Spend time creating this information for each module is important before you start revising.

2. Use general revision techniques to remember this information. Read and make sure you understand the topic.

3. Use practice exam questions and test yourself. Put yourself in the environment you will be in in the exam. Create your own questions based on the information you’ve revised. If you want to write your own questions, keep them reasonably broad for the general topic. Get in the habit of writing the same information twice but in slightly different ways (e.g. to compare and contrast or to critically discuss). You can create practice questions easily by going through your lecturer’s slides.

Want to know what you need to definitely pass?

A final way to help prepare is to know what you’re being tested on. You can usually find this information by looking at the overall learning outcomes for the module . This may include, demonstrating knowledge of the topic, synthesizing literature on the topic, and critically discussing the evidence for the topic. Make sure to include this information in any mindmap/table of information you use for each topic in your revision.

Other useful sources:

• https://www.oxbridgeessays.com/blog/essay-exams-make-revision-notes/
• https://tavistocktutors.com/blog/7-steps-to-revising-for-essay-based-exams

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Aptitude tests, higher learning, 7-steps to revising for essay-based exams.

University exams can be daunting. They are very different from school exams. There is often more material, but fewer questions. An entire semesters worth of material can sometimes be assessed on the basis of two essay questions. To do well, you need to construct a solid and convincing argument, and often need to cite specific literature, including the author and date of the research. This can seem impossible if you have never done it before!

In my first year of exams at University of Edinburgh, I barely understood the expectations of my exams let alone how to do well on them. Over the next three years I improved my approach to exam revision and by my final year, I achieved firsts on all my exams.

Here I share my exam revision method. It is important to remember that everyone is different, so it is important to find an approach that works for you. But this is what worked for me, and if you are intimidated or have found yourself struggling, it could work for you too!

Review material and make a module guide

This one is pretty simple. Go through the lectures, tutorials, your own notes, and your coursework. Make a new set of notes that outlines the whole module, including key ideas, concepts, research and readings (highlighting readings which you havent done would be helpful at this stage!).

Even if you will only need to know a couple of topics for the exam, courses are often designed so that all parts are connected in some way. Having a good understanding of the overall course will be helpful in understanding topics in greater detail. This is also a good way of spotting which aspects you are stronger or weaker on. If there is a part of the course you are struggling with, you can meet with your tutor to review these.

Use past papers

By this stage, it should be safe to look at the past papers without risk of causing a panic attack you will have just reviewed the whole module will likely have at least an understanding of what the question is asking and what you might say, if not an idea for an argument.

When looking at past papers, I like to copy and paste relevant questions into a word document (sometimes the syllabus changes and it will be clear that a question or two was not covered this year). This allows you to more easily look at the past few years all together, and cluster questions by topic. Sometimes you will see exact questions repeated over the years! This gives you a good direction for the rest of revision. You can choose topics/questions that have come up frequently and study those in more detail. If the exam involves picking two questions from a choice of six, I would recommend choosing for questions to revise.

Further reading

Once you have your topics picked out, its a great idea to go beyond the compulsory reading list to the optional or further readings section of the syllabus. Discussing further reading in an exam essay is a sure fire way to impress the marker! You can add notes from these readings to the module guide from step 1.

Another tip at this stage you will only need to know the key findings from the research. You probably will not have enough time in the exam to discuss readings in detail. So you have permission to skip the complicated methods section just know the context, key findings, authors and year!

Make condensed notes

With additional reading now included in the module guide, you can make a condensed set of notes of just the topics you have chosen to focus on. This might include definitions, and key readings with a sentence or two about the findings. I like to hand write these writing by hand has been proven to help you remember things! You can make it more fun by adding coloured pens.

Flash cards of key concepts, definitions, and papers

It is really helpful to make flashcards, particularly for the readings. Having the authors and date on one side with the key findings on the other is a great way to commit the literature to memory. I like to use online flash cards there are websites you can use to make them and that have different games you can play with them. Its a great break from all the reading and writing!

Make essay plans including thesis, key arguments, and papers that support those arguments

Choose some of the questions from the past papers and make plans for how you would respond.

I like to break the essay down into five or six parts:

• Introduction (including thesis)
• Counterargument (if available)

Each argument and the counterargument should be complemented with the readings. It is helpful to think about the readings in how they support specific arguments.

Play with the flashcards and rewrite the plans until they are committed to memory!

Additional resources:

Three Tips For Better Essay Writing

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Tackling essay-based exams

Exam season is almost upon us and one challenge you may find yourself facing is revising for essay-based exams. These can cause a lot of anxiety, not least because essay-based assessments are often something we are used to doing over the course of several weeks. How do you plan, structure and write an essay in the space of a couple of hours? And how on earth do you revise when you don’t know what you’ll be asked? 

Read on for our guide to effective revision and exam technique for essay-based exam questions:

What are essay exams testing?

Before you jump into your revision, it can be helpful to remember that essay exams are not just testing your memory. Instead, your lecturers are looking for evidence of how well you can  apply  the knowledge you have gained throughout the course to solve a problem or answer a question under timed conditions. Therefore, whilst memory is still important – you’ll need to be able to recall that knowledge in the exam – it’s only part of the story. You’ll also need to make sure you have an in-depth understanding of that knowledge and have practiced applying it to different questions, problems, and contexts.

How do I revise for essay exams?

You may be tempted to write a ‘generic’ essay on each of the topics you’re revising and memorise them so you can repeat them in the exam room. However, keep in mind that your lecturers are asking you to solve the specific problem they’ve set for you and simply ‘dumping’ everything that’s relevant won’t address the question and is unlikely to earn you good marks.

A more effective approach to revising for essay exams is incorporating strategies that develop your understanding of the topic so you can apply your knowledge to different problems effectively. Some revision strategies you might want to try for this are:

• Questioning and interrogating the knowledge: why does this happen? How does it happen? Does it always happen this way? Is this always true? What about if we apply it to a different context? What are the implications of this?
• Try applying the knowledge to case studies or different scenarios to get a better understanding of how theory works in practice.
• Look at past papers or devise your own questions and either answer them in full or sketch out an essay plan under timed conditions. This will help you to test your recall and practice skills you’ll be using in the exam.
• Compare and weigh up different approaches to the topic. Does everyone agree on this? Why? Why not? Which perspective is stronger?
• Identify gaps in your knowledge and do some additional reading to fill them.

What about strategies for the exam itself? 

You might be used to spending hours or even days planning, writing, and editing a coursework essay and be wondering how on earth you do all of this under timed conditions. Keep in mind that your lecturers  know  that this is a big ask and they are not expecting the same level of sophistication in the way you construct your arguments that they would be looking for in a coursework essay. However, it’s still necessary that your lecturers can follow your answer and see clearly how it addresses the question so:

• Spend some time at the beginning paying attention to what the question is asking you. Our video on question analysis offers some strategies for understanding essay questions: 
• Sketch out a basic structure to follow. This needn’t be more than the main points you want to argue and the order you want to argue them in.
• Clearly state your point or communicate your main focus at the beginning of each paragraph to help your reader get their bearings and follow your argument.
• If you find yourself running out of time, write down a few bullet points around your remaining points – you may still pick up a few extra marks for this! 

Do I need to reference sources in an essay exam?  

While you won’t be expected to reference others to the extent you do in a coursework essay, it’s worth incorporating a few references to back up your points and show how you worked out your answer.

Try to memorise a couple of key arguments and/or debates made by others for each topic as well as the authors’ surname(s) and the year of the article so that you can cite it in the exam. Don’t worry about the details – just one or two lines summarising their main argument is enough.

What about other types of exams?

Exams exist in various formats in addition to the traditional essay-based exam type. For example, your course may also have multiple choice papers, vivas/oral presentations or exams relating to specific processes, techniques and interactions. All types of exams test your ability to recall and apply your subject knowledge, so most advice on revision and exam technique is applicable to different exam types. Effective revision trains your brain both to retain and to retrieve information; a process that’s equally useful for all exam formats. However, different types of exams can also present different challenges, and transitioning from online to in-person exams is a key change for this year. For more details on this and other exam-related issues, see our  ASK Exams Collection  and our  calendar  for upcoming workshops on revision and exam preparation.

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How to tackle essay-based exams

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Regardless of whether they exhilarate you or exhaust you, essay-based exams are the backbone of testing in some faculties.

I used to think that just flipping through my notes was enough to study for essay-based exams—I would just write about what I remembered from the class, right?

Not so much. This type of exam does give you some flexibility in what you choose to write about, but it also requires careful studying beforehand and adjustments to how you approach essay-writing during the exam—not to mention a healthy dose of stamina to get you through.

Essay-based exams are challenging, and, as an undergrad, I often came out of them feeling like somebody had rearranged my brain with an electric mixer. However, having to prepare for and write one usually helped me understand the big picture of the course better.

You don’t have to learn to love them, but figuring out how to approach these kinds of exams can make them more manageable.

Strategically prepare with case studies and theory

Studying for an essay-based exam isn’t quite like studying for a multiple choice test . While both have their challenges, writing essays when you have a limited amount of time requires you to do a lot of active preparation beforehand. 

1. Use the review sheets to study efficiently

Most courses I’ve taken with essay-based exams have also provided a review sheet with topics and information about the exam beforehand.

This means that you often don’t have to review the entire course in depth to do well. If the professor gives you a list of say, 15 topics, and you know that there’s going to be 5 essay questions on the test, and you only need to write 3 essays in total, you can do a bit of math to figure out how many topics you’ll need to study to be prepared. 

Each essay question will probably require knowledge of more than just one topic in the course, but strategically focusing your studying can make you better prepared for the questions you’ll actually answer on the exam. 

2. Focus on flexible case studies

In courses like political science and history, I liked to spend a good portion of my prep time reviewing case studies that can be adapted for a number of essay topics. Prepare at least 3 or 4 case studies for each essay, with some backup. 

You can use these in different combinations depending on the essay question—you won’t have time to go extremely in-depth in the essay, but make sure you know the main points and how the case study relates to the theory of the course.  

3. Find links between examples and theory

Don’t neglect studying the theory—what have your course readings been arguing? Do you agree or disagree with them? It’s okay to have opinions that differ from the readings, but make sure you can back your arguments up with evidence. 

Consider what the overall themes of the course have been—how do all the topics link together? How can you link case studies together with course themes and theory?

Additionally, check out these tips if you're preparing for an English exam specifically!

Maintain a good pace while writing the exam

Once your preparation is done and you’re writing the exam itself, make sure you keep track of the time. If you have 2 hours to write 3 short essays, don’t spend 90 minutes perfecting your first essay only to realize you have half an hour to write both the second and third. 

Give yourself a few minutes at the beginning to read through the questions and plan your essays. Space out the essays so you have some time at the end as well—this gives you a bit of breathing room if you end up spending longer on a section or want to do some minor edits at the end. 

Commit to your thesis 

Whenever I wrote essays for assignments, I inevitably ended up readjusting my entire paper after I got further in my research and figured out what I actually wanted to focus on. While that freedom is nice when the due date is a week or two away, you won’t have the flexibility to change your thesis after a bit of writing in an exam scenario.

If you get halfway through your essay and feel you should've picked a different argument, you likely won’t have time to go back and restart. Whatever you end up writing, commit to it and be confident in your arguments—you’ve studied hard, so sell what you know!

Adjust your writing

The TA or professor marking your exam isn’t expecting a hyper-polished, publishable result here—they want to see that you can craft a solid argument and that you have a perspective on the course material. 

Of course, syntax, grammar, and  punctuation are still important, but keep your writing simple and to the point. Getting the information across is more important than showcasing your most eloquent writing. Focus on writing clear, straightforward sentences that reflect your understanding of the course, and save straining for colourful synonyms for your papers.

Lastly, don’t sweat the introduction and conclusion. All you need are a few sentences—the marks are in the discussion.

Writing essay-based exams takes practice, but with the right preparation you’ll find they’re a great way to cap off your understanding of the course!

Header photo credit: Paul Joseph / UBC Brand & Marketing

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How to revise for exams: Top tips

Revising for exams can be difficult and it can be easy to develop bad revision habits. read our helpful revision tips to ensure you are fully prepared..

Start early

Effective revision is not something that can be rushed. The earlier you start and the more organised you are, the greater your chance of success. You’ll be less likely to encounter stress or have to do last-minute cramming and pulling all-nighters in the library.

It’s a good idea to have a routine with your revision where you aim to start and finish at roughly the same time each day. Try and revise in the morning as this is when your brain is fresher. Not starting until the afternoon means you’re likely to wake up later and try to revise while tired.

Decide what you’re going to revise

Look over your syllabus and decide how you’re going to approach your revision. Find out the format for your exam as this will determine how much of the syllabus you need to revise.

For essay-based exams, you don’t need to cover the entire syllabus and it will be more effective to learn some of the content in greater detail. Short, answer-based exams will require a broader, yet less detailed, understanding of the syllabus.

Make a plan

Construct a detailed revision timetable, including any relevant papers or notes you need to look over. Block out time for socialising, exercising and any other breaks or plans you might have. Stick to this as best you can and avoid the temptation to jump straight into your revision without one.

Find a method that works for you

There are various revision techniques including flashcards, past papers, mind maps, group work and recording yourself talking and playing it back.

There's an element of trial and error to finding what works for you, and bear in mind what works well for one exam may not be the best method for another. All the more reason to start early, as you need to take time to find out how you revise best.

Eat healthily 

Eating a healthy, balanced diet will leave you feeling more energetic and focused. While revising, it can be easy to end up surviving off excessive amounts of coffee and junk food. This may be less time consuming but junk food leads to dips and spikes in blood sugar and too much caffeine can make you anxious – both of these will affect your concentration and energy levels. It’s best to drink plenty of water and eat balanced foods to get the best from your revision time.

Regular exercise

Exercise gets the blood flowing and makes for a nice respite from studying. Popping to the gym, playing team sports with friends or even going for a nice walk means more oxygen will reach the brain and help it function better. This should also help you sleep better at night, meaning you'll be able to concentrate better and retain information more effectively. 

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Take breaks

Effective revision does not mean constant revision. Taking breaks during revision gives the brain a higher chance of remembering what you’ve crammed into it.

If you start to lose focus, take a break and do something completely different. It's better to do five one-hour stints with breaks than to revise solidly for seven or eight hours.

Get a good night’s sleep

This is especially important the night before an exam, but applies to the entire revision period. Getting to sleep at a reasonable time means you'll wake up earlier and be able to fit in more revision during the day time. Sometimes revising later is unavoidable, but try to keep late nights to a minimum.

Stay calm and positive

Perhaps the most important thing to remember throughout the whole revision process is to stay calm and positive. Bear in mind that performing well in exams is not the be-all and end-all of your university experience.

If you have a bad day, try to not let it affect how you revise the next day.

There's no perfect formula for exam success and you may not find all of our tips to be right for you. The key is to work out how you revise most effectively and stick to that as best you can. Ultimately, when it comes to revision, you get out of it what you put in.

• Exam revision techniques

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• How to revise an essay in 3 simple steps

How to Revise an Essay in 3 Simple Steps

Published on December 2, 2014 by Shane Bryson . Revised on December 8, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

Revising and editing an essay is a crucial step of the writing process . It often takes up at least as much time as producing the first draft, so make sure you leave enough time to revise thoroughly. Although you can save considerable time using our essay checker .

The most effective approach to revising an essay is to move from general to specific:

• Start by looking at the big picture: does your essay achieve its overall purpose, and does it proceed in a logical order?
• Next, dive into each paragraph: do all the sentences contribute to the point of the paragraph, and do all your points fit together smoothly?
• Finally, polish up the details: is your grammar on point, your punctuation perfect, and your meaning crystal clear?

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Table of contents

Step 1: look at the essay as a whole, step 2: dive into each paragraph, step 3: polish the language, other interesting articles.

There’s no sense in perfecting a sentence if the whole paragraph will later be cut, and there’s no sense in focusing on a paragraph if the whole section needs to be reworked.

For these reasons, work from general to specific: start by looking at the overall purpose and organization of your text, and don’t worry about the details for now.

Double-check your assignment sheet and any feedback you’ve been given to make sure you’ve addressed each point of instruction. In other words, confirm that the essay completes every task it needs to complete.

Then go back to your thesis statement . Does every paragraph in the essay have a clear purpose that advances your argument? If there are any sections that are irrelevant or whose connection to the thesis is uncertain, consider cutting them or revising to make your points clearer.

Organization

Next, check for logical organization . Consider the ordering of paragraphs and sections, and think about what type of information you give in them. Ask yourself :

• Do you define terms, theories and concepts before you use them?
• Do you give all the necessary background information before you go into details?
• Does the argument build up logically from one point to the next?
• Is each paragraph clearly related to what comes before it?

Ensure each paragraph has a clear topic sentence that sums up its point. Then, try copying and pasting these topic sentences into a new document in the order that they appear in the paper.

This allows you to see the ordering of the sections and paragraphs of your paper in a glance, giving you a sense of your entire paper all at once. You can also play with the ordering of these topic sentences to try alternative organizations.

If some topic sentences seem too similar, consider whether one of the paragraphs is redundant , or if its specific contribution needs to be clarified. If the connection between paragraphs is unclear, use transition sentences to strengthen your structure.

Finally, use your intuition. If a paragraph or section feels out of place to you, even if you can’t decide why, it probably is. Think about it for a while and try to get a second opinion. Work out the organizational issues as best you can before moving on to more specific writing issues.

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Next, you want to make sure the content of each paragraph is as strong as it can be, ensuring that every sentence is relevant and necessary:

• Make sure each sentence helps support the topic sentence .
• Check for redundancies – if a sentence repeats something you’ve already said, cut it.
• Check for inconsistencies in content. Do any of your assertions seem to contradict one another? If so, resolve the disagreement and cut as necessary.

Once you’re happy with the overall shape and content of your essay, it’s time to focus on polishing it at a sentence level, making sure that you’ve expressed yourself clearly and fluently.

You’re now less concerned with what you say than with how you say it. Aim to simplify, condense, and clarify each sentence, making it as easy as possible for your reader to understand what you want to say.

• Try to avoid complex sentence construction – be as direct and straightforward as possible.
• If you have a lot of very long sentences, split some of them into shorter ones.
• If you have a lot of very short sentences that sound choppy, combine some of them using conjunctions or semicolons .
• Make sure you’ve used appropriate transition words to show the connections between different points.
• Cut every unnecessary word.
• Avoid any complex word where a simpler one will do.
• Look out for typos and grammatical mistakes.

If you lack confidence in your grammar, our essay editing service provides an extra pair of eyes.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
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• Sunk cost fallacy

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Shane Bryson

Shane finished his master's degree in English literature in 2013 and has been working as a writing tutor and editor since 2009. He began proofreading and editing essays with Scribbr in early summer, 2014.

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Revising for Essay Exams

Across the university, many exams are now at least partially in essay format. Rather than being asked for a basic fact, such as “What year was the battle of Waterloo?” you’re likely to face a more complicated analytical question, such as “What factors contributed to Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo?” These exam questions can sound very similar to the essays we write during term, but with one key difference: we have far less time to write them.

In an essay exam, we don’t have time to go down rabbit trails or to go off-topic. Instead, it’s essential to focus our revision on the key aspects of the module. In this blog post, we’ll cover three things markers look for in essay exams: understanding, specificity, and critical analysis.

Understanding vs. Knowledge

The most important element of essay-based exams is that they focus on understanding, rather than knowledge. It isn’t enough to simply memorise a few key facts. Instead, we need to demonstrate we understand the meaning and significance of all the knowledge we’ve learned.

Two revision techniques that can help improve your understanding:

• Teach a friend about the topic . This can be a coursemate or someone who knows nothing about your subject. Teaching someone else (especially someone who isn’t an expert) will force you to put the ideas into simple language and help you identify what you know and what you still need to revise.
• Summarise the big ideas. Take a chunk of the course (perhaps a lecture, or a key reading) and spend a few minutes writing out a summary. What are the main points? How do these points fit together? Why do these ideas matter?

Specific vs. General

Even though the focus in essay exams is on knowledge rather than understanding, it’s still important to back up our understanding with specific points. For example, you could say “In 2008, the Bank of England lowered interest rates” but it would be better if you could provide the specific interest rate: 0.5%. To make your answer even stronger, you could put this number in context by describing how the rates dropped from 5.75% to 0.5%, which was the lowest the rates had ever been in the 300 years since the Bank of England began! (Source: House of Commons Library )

As you revise, look out for key bits of information, particularly ones that could be useful in a variety of essay questions. These might include:

• Facts and figures (dates, statistics, numbers)
• Quotes from primary sources (literature or historical documents)
• Evidence from secondary sources (books or journal articles)

When you include these facts, it’s important to show you understand them. You can do this by:

• Providing contextual information (how does this fact relate to others?)
• Explaining their significance (why is this information relevant?)

Essentially, good revision will involve some memorisation of facts, but you should always make sure to keep these facts in context and remember their significance.

Analysis vs. Description

One of the main things your markers look for in essay exams is critical analysis. They don’t simply want you to copy information from lectures; no, they want you to use that information to say something interesting.

A few revision strategies to help you improve your analysis:

• Compare and contrast topics across the module. Many exam questions will ask you to relate different parts of the course to each other, so it’s good to practice during revision. Choose two parts of the module and identify the similarities and differences, or pick one key theme and see how it applies in different segments of the module.
• Read and critique an article. Find an article (your module reading list a good place to start) and work out its main ideas. Do you agree or disagree? What evidence does the author use to back up their points? How does the article fit with (or contradict) what you learned in the module?
• What’s your opinion? Choose an area of the module you’re particularly passionate about, or maybe one where you disagree with your peers or the tutor. What’s your opinion of the topic? How does your opinion differ from other people’s opinions? Identify the reasons (and the evidence!) why you think the way you do.

In this blog post, we’ve discussed three things markers look for in an essay exam and identified revision strategies that will help you improve in these areas. Essay exams can be challenging, but if you focus on understanding, using specific information, and critical analysis, you’ll be most of the way there to a brilliant exam answer!

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Five secrets to revising that can improve your grades

H ow do you get the most out of your revision time, and end up with the best grades you can? Or, if you're a different sort of student, how can you get the same grades you're getting now, but spend less time revising?

Either way, you need to know how to learn better. And fortunately, decades of research carried out by psychologists about learning and memory has produced some clear advice on doing just that.

As an experimental psychologist, I am especially interested in learning. Most research on learning is done in a lab, with volunteers who come in once or twice to learn simple skills or lists of words.

Wouldn't it be better, I thought, if we could study learning by looking at a skill people are practising anyway? And could we draw links between how people practise and how good they eventually get?

Computer games provide a great way to study learning: they are something people spend many hours practising, and they automatically record every action people take as they practise. Players even finish the game with a score that tells them how good they are.

Using data from a simple online game , my colleague Mike Dewar and I could analyse how more than 850,000 people learned to play . The resulting scientific paper , showed in unprecedented detail the shape of the learning curve, allowing us to test existing theories of learning, as well as suggesting some new ideas on the best ways to learn.

So here are my five evidence-based tips on how to learn:

1. Space your practice

Our analysis showed that people who leave longer gaps between practice attempts go on to score higher. In fact, the longer the gaps, the higher the scores.

The difference is huge: people who leave more than 24 hours between their first five attempts at the game and their second five attempts score as highly, on average, as people who have practiced 50% more than them.

Our finding confirms lots of other research: if you want to study effectively, you should spread out your revision rather than cramming. This is easier said than done, but if you are organised enough, you can spend less time revising and remember more.

2. Make sure you fail occasionally

A new result from our analysis shows that people who are most inconsistent when they first start have better scores later on.

Our theory is that these people are exploring how the game works, rather than trying to get the very highest score they can every time.

The moral is clear: invest some time in trying things out, which may mean failing occasionally, if you want to maximise learning in the long run.

3. Practise the thing you'll be tested on

The big mistake many students make is not practising the thing they will be tested on. If your exam involves writing an essay, you need to practise essay-writing. Merely memorising the material is not enough.

Writing exam answers is a skill, just like playing an online game is a skill. You wouldn't try and improve at a game by trying to memorise moves, you'd practise making them.

Other research confirms that practising retrieving information is one of the best ways to ensure you remember it.

4. Structure information, don't try to remember it

Trying to remember something has been shown to have almost no effect on whether you do remember it . The implication for revision is clear: just looking at your notes won't help you learn them.

Instead, you need to reorganise the information in some way – whether by making notes of your notes, thinking about how what you're reading relates to other material, or practising writing answers. This approach, called "depth of processing", is the way to ensure material gets lodged in your memory.

5. Rest and sleep

New research shows that a brief rest after learning something can help you remember it a week later. Other experiments have shown that a full night's sleep helps you learn new skills or retain information.

Even napping can help consolidate your memories, and maybe even make you more creative . This is great news for those of us who like to nap during the day, and is a signal to all of us that staying up all night to revise probably isn't a good idea.

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Essay-based exams: A short guide

• Preparing for the examination

Organising your writing time

Answering the exam questions.

• According to how many marks are available for each.
• Stick to the time limit you’ve set yourself for each question, so you can do justice to the entire exam paper.
• You may wish to plan all your answers right at the start of the exam.
• Everything you remember about the topic,
• Then select the points you want to make in your response.
• Turn these points into a bullet-pointed outline for your essay .
• Make sure you are not wandering off topic.
• Keep an eye on the clock. 
• You could either write the introduction to your essay immediately,
• Or leave a blank space to write it after you’ve completed your main body.
• Write an essay plan in the remaining time. It may be possible for you to receive marks by doing so.
• The essay plan illustrates that you know how to answer the question, but that you lack time to develop your ideas further.
• For instance, ‘discuss’ and ‘compare’ ask you for different types of responses.
• By doing this, you will have enough space to add other ideas later (if needed), and you will make your marker’s reading experience easier.
• Consider what other scholars and theories say about these terms or concepts. Reflect on the assumptions made within the essay question itself.
• All your ideas need to be clearly related to it.
• For instance, only develop one idea per paragraph, and use signposting phrases to guide your marker through your line of reasoning.
• For an exam question, leave some blank space and move to the next question. You may find some spare time later to fill in the gap.
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Study Skills

Wolfson college academic skills: exam and revision tips.

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• Publishing your research
• Using AI for Academic Purposes
• Reflection and setting goals
• Responding to and using feedback
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• Exam and Revision Tips

Time Management

• Revisions strategies and tools
• On the day of the exam.
• Time Management Templates

• Start revising early and create a revision timetable that works backwards from the day of your exam. This will ensure that you give yourself enough time to cover all the topics you need to in your revision and provide you time to write practice essays.
• Once you have established a revision timetable, treat it like a full-time job. While at first this may sound a bit scary, upon reflection, you’ll see that it is less scary than it seems. Treating your revision time like a job means marking off blocks of time that are protected from outside distractions. This also means that you will schedule in times for regular breaks, and after you have finished your revising for the day, plan some time for socializing or relaxing as well.
• Thinking of your revision time as a job also helps to keep your timetable realistic. Just as it would be unreasonable for you to work all day and all night on a job, it is also unreasonable for you to revise in the same manner. Working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, will not only leave you physically but mentally exhausted as well.
• Don’t be afraid to revisit your revision timetable and make adjustments if something is not working for you. Just because you have tried one revision technique or tried blocking off your time in a particular manner doesn’t mean you need to stay with it if you discover it is more counterproductive than helpful. Being attentive to what works for you will be key in helping you make the most of your revision time.

Revision Strategies and Tools

• How to revise
• What to revise
• Making notes
• Testing yourself
• Need more help?

Two important principles that will help increase the efficiency of your revision are active recall and spaced repetition . Active recall is a study method where you retrieve information you have previously learned by testing yourself throughout the revision process. Spaced repetition involves the repeated review of previous material at various intervals throughout your revision process. 

The reason behind practising spaced repetition is to counteract what German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) identified as the forgetting curve, or the amount of information that is lost as time passes. While the shape of this curve varies for different types of events, it is possible to stop ourselves from forgetting things if we revisit the information and relearn it. If we successfully recall things a short while after studying them, we are more likely to recall them later.

Spaced repetition is seen as an optimal way to revise. It builds on the idea of leaving a gap between relearning. What is perhaps novel is that it suggests increasing the gaps of time between each session. Each time is supposed to be at the point when you are just about to forget something. This way, the brain has to work hard to retrieve the information rather than repeating it when readily available. And like a muscle, it gets stronger when it works harder.

This graph for spaced repetition (also called distribution of practice) shows how we can boost our memory over a series of revision sessions set apart by several hours, 1 day, 3 days, a week, 3 weeks and so on, should we have time.

Before you start revising, you need to scope out what you need to learn.

Revisit your curriculum

List everything you have covered in the year. Then take into account any specific instructions from academic staff: if you know something will definitely come up on the exam then highlight it, are there any optionals, or anything unlikely to be included?

Look at past exam papers

Past exam papers are an incredibly valuable resource for your revision. If you can, try to get a hold of the last 4-7 years of exam papers in order to get a sense of the topics that have appeared and to begin to get a sense of how previous examiners have thought about the subject.  We have papers from 2015 in the Reading Room of the Library. As you go through the previous exam questions, pay attention to the wording of the questions. Is the wording asking for an explanation (by using words such as 'Why', 'To what extent' 'To what degree', etc.), or are there key action words that appear frequently ( 'Discuss' or 'Comment on')? Looking at how previous examiners have phrased their questions can help you as you create your own practice exam questions. 

Use the KWL technique to help guide your revision sessions .

The KWL technique stands for Know, Want to Know, and Learned. Before revising, and checking your curriculum, assess what you already know and write in the Know section. In the Want to Learn section, you can set a list of questions you would like to know by the end of your revision, and this will help you to focus your reading and revision planning. There may be gaps, things you didn't understand, supervisions that didn't go so well. In the Learned section, write down some key takeaways from your session. Note what you learned and why it is important. 

These tasks help you identify parts of the course that you feel comfortable with, which you can revisit less often. They also flag up problematic topics. If you really didn't understand something, don't shy away from it but start with that section of the course. Do some more reading, speak to peers, asks academics for support. The sooner you start, the more time you'll have to revisit the information during the weeks leading up to the exam.

Below is a video from Ali Abdaal, a former Cambridge student, in which he covers how he used flashcards, spider diagrams, and a retrospective revision timetable to prepare for his essay-based exams.

Notes form the basis of revision. Existing notes remind us what we have learned in the course of the year. New notes help us synthesise and play an active part in memorisation. Re-reading and copying out isn't enough - we need to repackage what we have learned to help us apply it in different conexts (the exam).

The key with notes is to think about what you want to get from them, make then active by engaging with the material, make clear what are your ideas and interpretation and which belong to an author, and organise them so you find them again easily. We have more information on our our separate Note Making LibGuide tab , but here are a few tips:

These are a great way to learn information in a simple and visually appealing way. Mind maps can help you simplify complex information, in effect checking your understanding of the topic, as well as help memorisation.  The great thing about mind maps is their flexibility; they have no heirachy and lots space for you to make new connections and add in new points or readings.

You can create them by hand or use software such as  Coggle ,  GitMind  or  Canva  to create editable and distinctive mind maps. If you have to memorise your notes, make them distinctive with colours and shapes, which will help you picture them in an examination. Even if you have an online exam, a distinctive map will be easier to find quickly.

These are good for summarising key texts or for clearing delineating between the views of an author and your reaction to them. Look at 'Structured notes' in the 'How to' section of the Note Making LibGuide to find out about the Tower or Cornell method.

Free-flowing or linear notes

These are notes recorded in the order in which you read or hear something. They always need interpreting as they will be long and won't be relevant to the question you are trying to answer in an exam. If lots of your existing notes look like this, try using a mind map or structured template to synthesise and overlay your thoughts, connections to other topics/reading material, and to help you break away from the heirarchy imposed on the material by the lecturer/author. This doens't mean you have to dispose of these notes, but at least aim for a cover sheet so you know what is in them and don't waste time reading them again and again.

Create Flashcards

Flashcards are a great way to test yourself and incorporate spaced repetition in your learning.  Anki  and  Quizlet  are two great programs that allow you to create your own flashcards or download flashcards other students have already made to test your learning or understanding of a topic.

• Tip:  While you may be tempted to make flashcards for everything, try to make them only for information you need to know. This will prevent you from making an extraordinary amount of cards that will then make it difficult for you to go through. 2. Hold off on the urge to begin making flashcards right away. Go through your notes first and then assess what you might need to make flashcards for

The Feynman technique

When learning something, test your understanding of the topic by trying to explain it to a friend or to someone who may not be familiar with the topic you are revising. When doing this, don’t use over-complicated language and try to drill down the topic to its essence.  Using the Feynman technique can help you test your understanding of a topic in a simple and clear manner.

Need a break from studying on a computer screen?

Building off the Feynman technique, try creating a Pocketmod . This fun app lets you create small paper booklets in which you can condense topics down to essential themes, dates, and information, print them out and carry them with you wherever you go.

Practise, practise, practise

There is no replacement for imitating the sort of exercises you will have to complete in the exam. So if you have to write essays, then practise planning lots of of them, and writing a few. If you have to recall facts from memory, test and check. If you will have to solve problem-based calculations, try out past papers.

Make use of your library’s resources

• We have lots of study skills books, which can help with writing, revision techniques and time management strategies.
• Book a 1-2-1 appointment  with your College librarians or your faculty librarians .
• Need templates to help get you started? Look around the Wolfson College Libguide  for templates related to time management, literature searching, and much more.

It is easy and natural to feel overwhelmed and stressed as you revise and your exams draw nearer.  Please know you are not alone, and there is nothing wrong with having these feelings. It is important to be kind to yourself during this time. Below are some tips and resources that may be helpful during this time.

• Study in groups.  Studying in groups can be a great way to utilize the power of positive peer pressure to help keep you focused. In addition, you’ll also have some great company during your study breaks when you step away from your revision materials. If you need to find a space that can accommodate group study or even find a different space to study for yourself, you can use Spacefinder to search for available study spaces across the University. Spacefinder even allows you to search according to the type of environment you are looking for, such as silent study or cafes within the University.
• The College Nurse.  The College Nurse can offer confidential help with a range of health problems. his includes assessment, advice and support for minor injuries and illnesses, as well as support with wellbeing issues, worries and mental health conditions. She can also refer you to other health services if required. Wolfson students can find further information about the College Nurse and the support she offers by visiting Wolfson's  Physical Health, Injury and Illness Support page.
• Procrastination
• Perfectionism
• Concentration
• Coping with exams   

             ​​​​In addition to the University Counselling Service, you can also access confidential support through ​​​Nightline  and the Samaritans . 

• ​​​ The day before the exam . You may feel tempted to try to hold one last cramming session the night before the exam. However, try to avoid this. Think of your exam as an athletic event; you wouldn’t want to run a practice marathon the day before you have to run the real marathon. Instead, do some light revision, and most importantly, try to get a good night’s sleep. This will be especially important in setting you up to start the next day off well.

On the day of the Exam

• Locations, materials and further guidance
• Test taking strategies

On the day of the exam, it is important that you give yourself plenty of time to get to the location your exam will be held or to set up your space if your exams are online. If you have an in-person exam, you may want to visit the location beforehand so that you can get a sense of the space. If you are unsure where your exam is being held, you can use the online  University Map  to search for locations at the University of Cambridge. You might also time how long it takes you to get to the location to avoid a stressful trip on exam day. 

• Your University ID Card
• Materials to take your exam such as pens, pencils and calculator (if necessary) 
• Will you be allowed to take a non-carbonated drink?

If you have an online exam, make sure your environment is conducive to taking the exam. Below are some questions to consider as you prepare for the day:

• Do you have a quiet space free of interruptions?
• Are your desk and chair adequate for your to sit for extended periods of time?
• Do you have adequate lighting, cooling or heating to feel comfortable during the time you are taking the exam?
• Do you have a reliable clock to keep track of the time available for you to complete your exam?
• Do you have the login instructions and your blind grading number to take your exam?

Further guidance about exams can be found on the University's Examinations homepage  Information for Students .

Each type of exam will require its own unique strategy to plan and manage your time during the exam effectively. Below are some general tips to help you begin to draft your own strategy. 

• Simplicity can go a long way . This idea will be helpful if you have to draft an essay plan for your exam. It can be tempting to create a very detailed essay plan when you are brainstorming, but be careful that this drafting stage doesn't go too much into your writing time. Sometimes being able to provide a simple and to-the-point answer to the question can help you organise the information you really need to answer your exam question.
• Make 'Am I answering the question?' your mantra . While you will have created numerous essay plans and answered a variety of practice questions in the lead-up to the exam, one of the common mistakes students can make when answering an exam question is attempting to fit in a previous plan or essay they wrote while they were revising. Remember, you must make sure that you answer the question in front of you. This means ensuring that you have considered all aspects of the question; focusing on the precise task you have been asked to do; keeping to the point; and making sure you answer all elements in a multi-part question. 
• Not providing enough in-depth information
• Not thinking critically about a topic- or, more likely, not providing evidence of your deeper-level thought
• Not setting a problem in context or not demonstrating a wider understanding of the topic.
• Not giving enough evidence of reading around the subject. This can be corrected by quoting relevant papers and reviews.

             As you practice answering revision questions, make sure you are developing these skills as well. 

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8.4 Revising and Editing

Learning objectives.

• Identify major areas of concern in the draft essay during revising and editing.
• Use peer reviews and editing checklists to assist revising and editing.
• Revise and edit the first draft of your essay and produce a final draft.

Revising and editing are the two tasks you undertake to significantly improve your essay. Both are very important elements of the writing process. You may think that a completed first draft means little improvement is needed. However, even experienced writers need to improve their drafts and rely on peers during revising and editing. You may know that athletes miss catches, fumble balls, or overshoot goals. Dancers forget steps, turn too slowly, or miss beats. For both athletes and dancers, the more they practice, the stronger their performance will become. Web designers seek better images, a more clever design, or a more appealing background for their web pages. Writing has the same capacity to profit from improvement and revision.

Understanding the Purpose of Revising and Editing

Revising and editing allow you to examine two important aspects of your writing separately, so that you can give each task your undivided attention.

• When you revise , you take a second look at your ideas. You might add, cut, move, or change information in order to make your ideas clearer, more accurate, more interesting, or more convincing.
• When you edit , you take a second look at how you expressed your ideas. You add or change words. You fix any problems in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. You improve your writing style. You make your essay into a polished, mature piece of writing, the end product of your best efforts.

How do you get the best out of your revisions and editing? Here are some strategies that writers have developed to look at their first drafts from a fresh perspective. Try them over the course of this semester; then keep using the ones that bring results.

• Take a break. You are proud of what you wrote, but you might be too close to it to make changes. Set aside your writing for a few hours or even a day until you can look at it objectively.
• Ask someone you trust for feedback and constructive criticism.
• Pretend you are one of your readers. Are you satisfied or dissatisfied? Why?
• Use the resources that your college provides. Find out where your school’s writing lab is located and ask about the assistance they provide online and in person.

Many people hear the words critic , critical , and criticism and pick up only negative vibes that provoke feelings that make them blush, grumble, or shout. However, as a writer and a thinker, you need to learn to be critical of yourself in a positive way and have high expectations for your work. You also need to train your eye and trust your ability to fix what needs fixing. For this, you need to teach yourself where to look.

Creating Unity and Coherence

Following your outline closely offers you a reasonable guarantee that your writing will stay on purpose and not drift away from the controlling idea. However, when writers are rushed, are tired, or cannot find the right words, their writing may become less than they want it to be. Their writing may no longer be clear and concise, and they may be adding information that is not needed to develop the main idea.

When a piece of writing has unity , all the ideas in each paragraph and in the entire essay clearly belong and are arranged in an order that makes logical sense. When the writing has coherence , the ideas flow smoothly. The wording clearly indicates how one idea leads to another within a paragraph and from paragraph to paragraph.

Reading your writing aloud will often help you find problems with unity and coherence. Listen for the clarity and flow of your ideas. Identify places where you find yourself confused, and write a note to yourself about possible fixes.

Creating Unity

Sometimes writers get caught up in the moment and cannot resist a good digression. Even though you might enjoy such detours when you chat with friends, unplanned digressions usually harm a piece of writing.

Mariah stayed close to her outline when she drafted the three body paragraphs of her essay she tentatively titled “Digital Technology: The Newest and the Best at What Price?” But a recent shopping trip for an HDTV upset her enough that she digressed from the main topic of her third paragraph and included comments about the sales staff at the electronics store she visited. When she revised her essay, she deleted the off-topic sentences that affected the unity of the paragraph.

Read the following paragraph twice, the first time without Mariah’s changes, and the second time with them.

Nothing is more confusing to me than choosing among televisions. It confuses lots of people who want a new high-definition digital television (HDTV) with a large screen to watch sports and DVDs on. You could listen to the guys in the electronics store, but word has it they know little more than you do. They want to sell what they have in stock, not what best fits your needs. You face decisions you never had to make with the old, bulky picture-tube televisions. Screen resolution means the number of horizontal scan lines the screen can show. This resolution is often 1080p, or full HD, or 768p. The trouble is that if you have a smaller screen, 32 inches or 37 inches diagonal, you won’t be able to tell the difference with the naked eye. The 1080p televisions cost more, though, so those are what the salespeople want you to buy. They get bigger commissions. The other important decision you face as you walk around the sales floor is whether to get a plasma screen or an LCD screen. Now here the salespeople may finally give you decent info. Plasma flat-panel television screens can be much larger in diameter than their LCD rivals. Plasma screens show truer blacks and can be viewed at a wider angle than current LCD screens. But be careful and tell the salesperson you have budget constraints. Large flat-panel plasma screens are much more expensive than flat-screen LCD models. Don’t let someone make you by more television than you need!

Answer the following two questions about Mariah’s paragraph:

Collaboration

Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.

• Now start to revise the first draft of the essay you wrote in Section 8 “Writing Your Own First Draft” . Reread it to find any statements that affect the unity of your writing. Decide how best to revise.

When you reread your writing to find revisions to make, look for each type of problem in a separate sweep. Read it straight through once to locate any problems with unity. Read it straight through a second time to find problems with coherence. You may follow this same practice during many stages of the writing process.

Writing at Work

Many companies hire copyeditors and proofreaders to help them produce the cleanest possible final drafts of large writing projects. Copyeditors are responsible for suggesting revisions and style changes; proofreaders check documents for any errors in capitalization, spelling, and punctuation that have crept in. Many times, these tasks are done on a freelance basis, with one freelancer working for a variety of clients.

Creating Coherence

Careful writers use transitions to clarify how the ideas in their sentences and paragraphs are related. These words and phrases help the writing flow smoothly. Adding transitions is not the only way to improve coherence, but they are often useful and give a mature feel to your essays. Table 8.3 “Common Transitional Words and Phrases” groups many common transitions according to their purpose.

Table 8.3 Common Transitional Words and Phrases

After Maria revised for unity, she next examined her paragraph about televisions to check for coherence. She looked for places where she needed to add a transition or perhaps reword the text to make the flow of ideas clear. In the version that follows, she has already deleted the sentences that were off topic.

Many writers make their revisions on a printed copy and then transfer them to the version on-screen. They conventionally use a small arrow called a caret (^) to show where to insert an addition or correction.

1. Answer the following questions about Mariah’s revised paragraph.

2. Now return to the first draft of the essay you wrote in Section 8 “Writing Your Own First Draft” and revise it for coherence. Add transition words and phrases where they are needed, and make any other changes that are needed to improve the flow and connection between ideas.

Being Clear and Concise

Some writers are very methodical and painstaking when they write a first draft. Other writers unleash a lot of words in order to get out all that they feel they need to say. Do either of these composing styles match your style? Or is your composing style somewhere in between? No matter which description best fits you, the first draft of almost every piece of writing, no matter its author, can be made clearer and more concise.

If you have a tendency to write too much, you will need to look for unnecessary words. If you have a tendency to be vague or imprecise in your wording, you will need to find specific words to replace any overly general language.

Identifying Wordiness

Sometimes writers use too many words when fewer words will appeal more to their audience and better fit their purpose. Here are some common examples of wordiness to look for in your draft. Eliminating wordiness helps all readers, because it makes your ideas clear, direct, and straightforward.

Sentences that begin with There is or There are .

Wordy: There are two major experiments that the Biology Department sponsors.

Revised: The Biology Department sponsors two major experiments.

Sentences with unnecessary modifiers.

Wordy: Two extremely famous and well-known consumer advocates spoke eloquently in favor of the proposed important legislation.

Revised: Two well-known consumer advocates spoke in favor of the proposed legislation.

Sentences with deadwood phrases that add little to the meaning. Be judicious when you use phrases such as in terms of , with a mind to , on the subject of , as to whether or not , more or less , as far as…is concerned , and similar expressions. You can usually find a more straightforward way to state your point.

Wordy: As a world leader in the field of green technology, the company plans to focus its efforts in the area of geothermal energy.

A report as to whether or not to use geysers as an energy source is in the process of preparation.

Revised: As a world leader in green technology, the company plans to focus on geothermal energy.

A report about using geysers as an energy source is in preparation.

Sentences in the passive voice or with forms of the verb to be . Sentences with passive-voice verbs often create confusion, because the subject of the sentence does not perform an action. Sentences are clearer when the subject of the sentence performs the action and is followed by a strong verb. Use strong active-voice verbs in place of forms of to be , which can lead to wordiness. Avoid passive voice when you can.

Wordy: It might perhaps be said that using a GPS device is something that is a benefit to drivers who have a poor sense of direction.

Revised: Using a GPS device benefits drivers who have a poor sense of direction.

Sentences with constructions that can be shortened.

Wordy: The e-book reader, which is a recent invention, may become as commonplace as the cell phone.

My over-sixty uncle bought an e-book reader, and his wife bought an e-book reader, too.

Revised: The e-book reader, a recent invention, may become as commonplace as the cell phone.

My over-sixty uncle and his wife both bought e-book readers.

Now return once more to the first draft of the essay you have been revising. Check it for unnecessary words. Try making your sentences as concise as they can be.

Choosing Specific, Appropriate Words

Most college essays should be written in formal English suitable for an academic situation. Follow these principles to be sure that your word choice is appropriate. For more information about word choice, see Chapter 4 “Working with Words: Which Word Is Right?” .

• Avoid slang. Find alternatives to bummer , kewl , and rad .
• Avoid language that is overly casual. Write about “men and women” rather than “girls and guys” unless you are trying to create a specific effect. A formal tone calls for formal language.
• Avoid contractions. Use do not in place of don’t , I am in place of I’m , have not in place of haven’t , and so on. Contractions are considered casual speech.
• Avoid clichés. Overused expressions such as green with envy , face the music , better late than never , and similar expressions are empty of meaning and may not appeal to your audience.
• Be careful when you use words that sound alike but have different meanings. Some examples are allusion/illusion , complement/compliment , council/counsel , concurrent/consecutive , founder/flounder , and historic/historical . When in doubt, check a dictionary.
• Choose words with the connotations you want. Choosing a word for its connotations is as important in formal essay writing as it is in all kinds of writing. Compare the positive connotations of the word proud and the negative connotations of arrogant and conceited .
• Use specific words rather than overly general words. Find synonyms for thing , people , nice , good , bad , interesting , and other vague words. Or use specific details to make your exact meaning clear.

Now read the revisions Mariah made to make her third paragraph clearer and more concise. She has already incorporated the changes she made to improve unity and coherence.

1. Answer the following questions about Mariah’s revised paragraph:

2. Now return once more to your essay in progress. Read carefully for problems with word choice. Be sure that your draft is written in formal language and that your word choice is specific and appropriate.

Completing a Peer Review

After working so closely with a piece of writing, writers often need to step back and ask for a more objective reader. What writers most need is feedback from readers who can respond only to the words on the page. When they are ready, writers show their drafts to someone they respect and who can give an honest response about its strengths and weaknesses.

You, too, can ask a peer to read your draft when it is ready. After evaluating the feedback and assessing what is most helpful, the reader’s feedback will help you when you revise your draft. This process is called peer review .

You can work with a partner in your class and identify specific ways to strengthen each other’s essays. Although you may be uncomfortable sharing your writing at first, remember that each writer is working toward the same goal: a final draft that fits the audience and the purpose. Maintaining a positive attitude when providing feedback will put you and your partner at ease. The box that follows provides a useful framework for the peer review session.

Questions for Peer Review

Title of essay: ____________________________________________

Date: ____________________________________________

Writer’s name: ____________________________________________

Peer reviewer’s name: _________________________________________

• This essay is about____________________________________________.
• Your main points in this essay are____________________________________________.
• What I most liked about this essay is____________________________________________.

These three points struck me as your strongest:

These places in your essay are not clear to me:

a. Where: ____________________________________________

Needs improvement because__________________________________________

b. Where: ____________________________________________

Needs improvement because ____________________________________________

c. Where: ____________________________________________

The one additional change you could make that would improve this essay significantly is ____________________________________________.

One of the reasons why word-processing programs build in a reviewing feature is that workgroups have become a common feature in many businesses. Writing is often collaborative, and the members of a workgroup and their supervisors often critique group members’ work and offer feedback that will lead to a better final product.

Exchange essays with a classmate and complete a peer review of each other’s draft in progress. Remember to give positive feedback and to be courteous and polite in your responses. Focus on providing one positive comment and one question for more information to the author.

Using Feedback Objectively

The purpose of peer feedback is to receive constructive criticism of your essay. Your peer reviewer is your first real audience, and you have the opportunity to learn what confuses and delights a reader so that you can improve your work before sharing the final draft with a wider audience (or your intended audience).

It may not be necessary to incorporate every recommendation your peer reviewer makes. However, if you start to observe a pattern in the responses you receive from peer reviewers, you might want to take that feedback into consideration in future assignments. For example, if you read consistent comments about a need for more research, then you may want to consider including more research in future assignments.

Using Feedback from Multiple Sources

You might get feedback from more than one reader as you share different stages of your revised draft. In this situation, you may receive feedback from readers who do not understand the assignment or who lack your involvement with and enthusiasm for it.

You need to evaluate the responses you receive according to two important criteria:

• Determine if the feedback supports the purpose of the assignment.
• Determine if the suggested revisions are appropriate to the audience.

Then, using these standards, accept or reject revision feedback.

Work with two partners. Go back to Note 8.81 “Exercise 4” in this lesson and compare your responses to Activity A, about Mariah’s paragraph, with your partners’. Recall Mariah’s purpose for writing and her audience. Then, working individually, list where you agree and where you disagree about revision needs.

Editing Your Draft

If you have been incorporating each set of revisions as Mariah has, you have produced multiple drafts of your writing. So far, all your changes have been content changes. Perhaps with the help of peer feedback, you have made sure that you sufficiently supported your ideas. You have checked for problems with unity and coherence. You have examined your essay for word choice, revising to cut unnecessary words and to replace weak wording with specific and appropriate wording.

The next step after revising the content is editing. When you edit, you examine the surface features of your text. You examine your spelling, grammar, usage, and punctuation. You also make sure you use the proper format when creating your finished assignment.

Editing often takes time. Budgeting time into the writing process allows you to complete additional edits after revising. Editing and proofreading your writing helps you create a finished work that represents your best efforts. Here are a few more tips to remember about your readers:

• Readers do not notice correct spelling, but they do notice misspellings.
• Readers look past your sentences to get to your ideas—unless the sentences are awkward, poorly constructed, and frustrating to read.
• Readers notice when every sentence has the same rhythm as every other sentence, with no variety.
• Readers do not cheer when you use there , their , and they’re correctly, but they notice when you do not.
• Readers will notice the care with which you handled your assignment and your attention to detail in the delivery of an error-free document..

The first section of this book offers a useful review of grammar, mechanics, and usage. Use it to help you eliminate major errors in your writing and refine your understanding of the conventions of language. Do not hesitate to ask for help, too, from peer tutors in your academic department or in the college’s writing lab. In the meantime, use the checklist to help you edit your writing.

Editing Your Writing

• Are some sentences actually sentence fragments?
• Are some sentences run-on sentences? How can I correct them?
• Do some sentences need conjunctions between independent clauses?
• Does every verb agree with its subject?
• Is every verb in the correct tense?
• Are tense forms, especially for irregular verbs, written correctly?
• Have I used subject, object, and possessive personal pronouns correctly?
• Have I used who and whom correctly?
• Is the antecedent of every pronoun clear?
• Do all personal pronouns agree with their antecedents?
• Have I used the correct comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs?
• Is it clear which word a participial phrase modifies, or is it a dangling modifier?

Sentence Structure

• Are all my sentences simple sentences, or do I vary my sentence structure?
• Have I chosen the best coordinating or subordinating conjunctions to join clauses?
• Have I created long, overpacked sentences that should be shortened for clarity?
• Do I see any mistakes in parallel structure?

Punctuation

• Does every sentence end with the correct end punctuation?
• Can I justify the use of every exclamation point?
• Have I used apostrophes correctly to write all singular and plural possessive forms?
• Have I used quotation marks correctly?

Mechanics and Usage

• Can I find any spelling errors? How can I correct them?
• Have I used capital letters where they are needed?
• Have I written abbreviations, where allowed, correctly?
• Can I find any errors in the use of commonly confused words, such as to / too / two ?

Be careful about relying too much on spelling checkers and grammar checkers. A spelling checker cannot recognize that you meant to write principle but wrote principal instead. A grammar checker often queries constructions that are perfectly correct. The program does not understand your meaning; it makes its check against a general set of formulas that might not apply in each instance. If you use a grammar checker, accept the suggestions that make sense, but consider why the suggestions came up.

Proofreading requires patience; it is very easy to read past a mistake. Set your paper aside for at least a few hours, if not a day or more, so your mind will rest. Some professional proofreaders read a text backward so they can concentrate on spelling and punctuation. Another helpful technique is to slowly read a paper aloud, paying attention to every word, letter, and punctuation mark.

If you need additional proofreading help, ask a reliable friend, a classmate, or a peer tutor to make a final pass on your paper to look for anything you missed.

Remember to use proper format when creating your finished assignment. Sometimes an instructor, a department, or a college will require students to follow specific instructions on titles, margins, page numbers, or the location of the writer’s name. These requirements may be more detailed and rigid for research projects and term papers, which often observe the American Psychological Association (APA) or Modern Language Association (MLA) style guides, especially when citations of sources are included.

To ensure the format is correct and follows any specific instructions, make a final check before you submit an assignment.

With the help of the checklist, edit and proofread your essay.

Key Takeaways

• Revising and editing are the stages of the writing process in which you improve your work before producing a final draft.
• During revising, you add, cut, move, or change information in order to improve content.
• During editing, you take a second look at the words and sentences you used to express your ideas and fix any problems in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.
• Unity in writing means that all the ideas in each paragraph and in the entire essay clearly belong together and are arranged in an order that makes logical sense.
• Coherence in writing means that the writer’s wording clearly indicates how one idea leads to another within a paragraph and between paragraphs.
• Transitional words and phrases effectively make writing more coherent.
• Writing should be clear and concise, with no unnecessary words.
• Effective formal writing uses specific, appropriate words and avoids slang, contractions, clichés, and overly general words.
• Peer reviews, done properly, can give writers objective feedback about their writing. It is the writer’s responsibility to evaluate the results of peer reviews and incorporate only useful feedback.
• Remember to budget time for careful editing and proofreading. Use all available resources, including editing checklists, peer editing, and your institution’s writing lab, to improve your editing skills.

Writing for Success Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Active Recall Revision Techniques for Different Types of Exams

Are you struggling to come up with effective revision techniques for your exams? Active recall is one of the best revision techniques, however, applying this across various exam types can be confusing. In this article, we’ll be sharing how you can implement active recall when revising for multiple choice, short-answer, problem-based and essay-based exams.

Multiple Choice (MCQ) and Short Answer (SAQ) Exams ‍

Multiple choice and short answer style examinations test our ability to recall facts rather than discuss ideas. For MCQs, we need to have a thorough understanding of the material to select the correct answer from amongst a range of distractor answers. Typically, MCQs test our ability to identify and remember factual information rather than apply critical thinking. Likewise, in SAQs we are assessed based on our capacity to provide concise and factual responses, instead of our ability to provide discussions or analysis of the concepts at hand. 

In SAQ style exams, our knowledge can be tested in a variety of ways. Broadly, these assess our understanding of key concepts and their significance. By scoping your subject , you'll be able to identify the core concepts and their relations to one another. This will be the framework for your learning and revision. Typical SAQs might ask you to define a key term; explain how something works or why something is true; provide examples related to a concept, and to look at the relationship between two or more ideas. For each question type, it’s important to be concise but thorough. Here, you can demonstrate your ability to integrate lecture materials and wider reading into a concise and factual response. 

For both MCQ and SAQ exams, revision should focus on learning the fundamental concepts, terms and understanding the relationships between them. You might also need to learn sequences of information. For example, if you were studying learning disabilities, you may need to know what causes one disability over another and how this occurs in a sequence of events. This means that both types of exams can test you on complex knowledge, even if it is purely factual. You’ll need a thorough understanding of concepts and definitions to apply them in the exams and articulate yourself well. 

Revision Techniques for MCQ and SAQ Exams ‍

Here’s some ideas for revision techniques that utilise active recall . For memorising facts and figures, flashcards are the perfect way to test your ability to recall information. It’s a simple but effective technique and can allow you to test yourself frequently. Programs such as Anki can help you to create flashcards quickly, study on the go and memorise the information you struggle with by showing it more often. Depending on your subject, you might be able to find pre-built flashcard decks from other students. However, make sure you’re utilising the content from your own course and those flashcards align with your needs.

Another method is practising condensing information into concise sentences or paragraphs, ideally from memory. This can be done by paraphrasing or summarising the information. Paraphrasing involves rewording an idea into your words while maintaining their original meaning, this is useful for key terms and concepts. Alternatively, when discussing key features from a range of ideas, summarising the content might be more effective. By doing so, you’ll be practising your ability to articulate the information rather than simply recall it. This is good exam practice, especially for SAQs, and gives you another method of active recall to implement. 

Exam practice is another key active recall style revision method. Nothing can prepare you for the exam more than repeatedly testing yourself. Ideally, make use of past papers or text-book summary questions, these will provide examples of the kinds of questions to expect and test your ability to recall information while answering those questions. However, if these aren’t readily available, create your own by turning lecture notes and readings into questions. To ensure you understand the concept thoroughly, it can help to study with friends and share revision materials. This will test your understanding of the concepts outside of your own curated revision notes and questions. 

Problem-Based Exams ‍

Problem solving style exams can come in a variety of formats such as MCQs, SAQs or long calculations to solve. As mentioned above, these styles of exams are more fact based. However, problem solving exams go a step further, and will require you to apply problem solving skills, formulae or logic to the questions at hand. Instead of understanding the relationship between information, which is still important, there might be more emphasis on knowledge building. For example, you might need to understand one concept before another makes sense. Your course structure will highlight this. This means it's essential to structure your learning in a way that allows you to connect these building blocks. 

Revision Techniques for Problem-Based Exams ‍

Similar to regular MCQ and SAQ style exams, practising exam style questions is key to effective revision. For problem solving, this is even more essential. The style of question can vary so testing your ability to apply a formula, concept, or process to a wide variety of problems can ensure you’re well prepared. Memorising the information is necessary but your ability to problem solve under exam conditions can only be improved by frequent practice. 

You can test yourself using past papers, homework questions, or problems set in lessons. Search online for more practice options and make use of the questions in your textbooks. The more questions, the better, and having a wide variety of questions can test your understanding thoroughly. Be sure to reflect on your progress and re-visit the areas where you struggle. If you’re struggling to understand something, ask for help from a friend or lecturer, or try a new mode of learning, see if you can find a resource that explains the information in a different way. 

A good method to pair with regular self-testing is concept mapping . Through this method, you summarise key ideas, and concepts and make connections between them. Similar to scoping your subject , this can provide a broad overview of your course content. By completing a map from memory, you can see if you understand the hierarchy of the information you have learnt, and pinpoint new connections. Being able to do this from memory can be beneficial when problem solving, especially if you’re unsure where to start with the solution. 

Essay-Based Exams ‍

Essay-based exams might consist of a few short-form essays or 1-2 longer essays. Sometimes, exams might combine a mixture of MCQs, SAQs and then a longer essay question at the end. In contrast to MCQs and SAQs, essay based questions test your understanding of course content in a creative way. You’ll need to engage in critical thinking, be able to share relationships between facts, theories and research, and build logical credible arguments using wider reading alongside course content. 

Revision Techniques for Essay-Based Exams ‍

Active recall can still be applied when revising for essay-based exams. The essay memorisation framework encourages us to prepare a variety of essay plans and essays, and then use active recall to commit this information to memory. This process involves memorising the core facts, theories and research but within the context of an essay format. First, you need to come up with some essay titles, which can be determined using your course content and past papers. Ideally, past papers will be the best resources to help you structure your questions. But focusing on the broad themes of your course, and the relationships between them will also be a valuable starting point. 

Second, begin essay planning, incorporating lecture content, readings and wider research. For those top marks, finding your own material can show the breadth of your knowledge, especially when weaving it amongst your existing lecture content. This will highlight the depth of your understanding. Next, take some time to write the essay, in a way that is logical and easy to follow. This will help later on to break down the essay for memorisation. If you’re not confident in your essay writing skills, take some time to research good essay structures. Particularly, learning how to write a solid introduction can help in your exams. Your introduction can act as your essay plan and guide the reader through the topics you’ll cover. 

Finally, break down this information onto flashcards and begin memorising. This is useful for the broader concepts, and research. It’ll ensure you know the finer details and can recall them with ease. However, we want to ensure we can effectively plan essays from memory . For this, you can use spider diagrams to map out your existing essay plans, using keywords and ideas to recall the point you aimed to make. It’s quicker to recall the essay plans but it can also help to practise writing these essays under exam conditions. You won’t be able to predict all the possible essay questions that come up, however, you will have learnt and worked with enough of the material to be able to create a new essay plan within the exam.

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Analysing and answering essay-based exam questions

For the following activity, you can use questions from a specimen paper, past papers or even questions you have devised for yourself.

Exam questions for essay-based courses often contain ‘process words’. These require you to organise what you know about a topic in a particular way. The mark you obtain for your answer will, to a large degree, reflect your success in interpreting the instruction contained within the question’s process words.

Using Table 1, check out your understanding of a selection of ‘process words’. These are frequently found in essay-based exam questions. Note down what you think each word means. The meaning of the first process word is filled in as an example.

When you have completed the table, have a look at Table 2 in the next section on ‘Process words’. This shows a completed version of the table. You can use it to compare with your answers.

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Home • How to revise for exams

How to revise for exams

16 November 2021

If you’re studying for a professional qualification, you will probably have to sit an exam in order to pass the course. For example, Financial Services courses such as CeMAP, CeRER and DipFA require you to pass one or more exams which may have a multiple choice format or have questions based on case studies.

Few people enjoy exams but effective revision is the best way to ensure that you are well prepared, giving you the greatest chance of passing your exams.

So here are some exam revision tips to help you learn how to revise effectively and different exam revision methods to try.

How to study for exams

Everybody studies in their own personal way, but here are a few things you can do to be well prepared for your exams.

Don’t leave it too late

The earlier you start your exam revision and the better organised you are, the more likely you are to achieve exam success. You’ll feel more relaxed and in control and won’t need to do last minute cramming.

Set a revision routine

It’s also a good idea to set a regular schedule for exam preparation, starting and finishing at roughly the same time. Many people find that revising earlier in the day works better, as you will take in the information better when you are mentally fresh.

Make a revision plan

First decide which parts of the syllabus you need to revise, and then make a detailed revision plan that sets out exactly what you will revise on each day. Remember to include practice exams and block out some time for exercise and relaxation.

Use the right study methods

You may already know which exam revision techniques work well for you. If not, you could try out different techniques like mind mapping, flashcards or recording the material and playing back the recording.

Prepare for the exam

Make sure that you know how long the exam will be and what format the questions will be in. The more you know about what will happen on the day, the more familiar it will feel and that will help you to feel less nervous.

Stick to a healthy lifestyle

It’s easy to get so caught up in your revision that you end up surviving on caffeine and junk food. But try to eat a healthy diet, drink enough water, get some exercise and plenty of sleep so that you can get the best results from your exam revision.

How many hours should I study for an exam?

There’s no set rule on how many hours of revision you need to do, but there are some general guidelines on how many hours you should do at one time.

Studying for three to five hours per day seems to be the upper limit for effective exam revision. Beyond this, you are more likely to lose concentration and not retain the information that you are revising.

Taking regular breaks throughout your study sessions will give you more chance of retaining the information that you’re studying. And if you find that you’re losing focus totally, it’s better to call it a day. Doing something completely different will refresh you ready for the next study session.

How to remember things for exams

There are many techniques for revising and it’s important to find the best revision techniques for you. Some popular revision methods include:

Creating a phrase or acronym can help you to remember details more easily. For example, the mnemonic Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain is used to remember the colours of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet

Test and repeat

Try covering a section of your notes and writing down as much as you can remember. When you check back, you’ll be able to see any areas that need further revision.

Revision cards

Flashcards can be a useful revision tool for facts such as names, dates and definitions. Using highlighters, coloured pens and diagrams will make them more memorable and A5-sized cards are a good size to carry around with you for extra revision. You can also use Q&A cards for testing yourself or get a friend or family member to test you.

Study buddies

Revising with a fellow student can be great for motivation and encouragement. You’ll probably have different strengths and weaknesses so you can help each other to understand the topics that you find more difficult. And working through past papers with another student can help you to find new ways to approach questions.

How to revise for essay based exams

Whereas short questions require you to have a broad knowledge of the whole syllabus, studying for an essay based exam is more effective if you focus on specific topics in greater detail.

Once you’ve decided which areas you are going to focus on, one of the best ways to prepare is to practice writing the sort of essays that you will need to write in the exam. Past papers are very useful as you can see what questions are likely to come up and prepare for them.

When you’ve completed your revision and exam day arrives, try to go to sleep at a reasonable time the night before. Last minute cramming is rarely effective and you will remember more if you’re feeling fresh on the day.

There’s no guarantee for exam success but preparing a revision plan and sticking it to it as much as possible will give you the best chance of passing your exams.

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How Best to Revise for Your Exams

• Pearson VUE
• May 9, 2023

Exams can be one of the most stressful periods of your life, with all the hopes and effort that you have put into your education coming down to a few hours of exam time. One of the key factors in passing your exams is correctly preparing for them. So, to help give you the best chance of coming away with the mark you want, here are nine easy tips for how best to revise for your exams.

Table of Contents

Start Early

Decide what you’re going to revise, make a plan, find a method that works for you, regular exercise, take breaks, get a good night’s sleep, stay calm and positive, committed to inspiring excellence.

An early start can make all the differencewhen it comes to revising Effective revision is not something that can be rushed so start well in advance of the exam date. This will lessen the chance of having to do last minute cramming and pulling all-nighters in the library.

Try and start your revision early each day as your brain is fresher, making it easier to work. Not starting until the afternoon means you’re likely to be up later and trying to revise whilst tired.

It’s a good idea to have a routine with your revision where you aim to start and finish at roughly the same time each day.

Look over your syllabus and decide how you’re going to approach your revision. Find out the format for your exam as this will determine how much of the syllabus you need to revise.

For instance, with essay based exams you don’t need to cover the entire syllabus as it is more effective to learn some of the content in greater detail. In contrast, short answer-based exams will require a broader, yet less detailed, understanding of the syllabus.

Making a good revision plan is NOT a waste of time. Once you know what you will be revising, you can make a revision timetable. Make this detailed, including any relevant papers or notes you need to look over. Block out time for socialising, exercising, and any other breaks or plans you might have. Stick to this as best as you can and avoid the temptation to jump straight into your revision without one.

Whilst you might think that making a plan is time-consuming, in the long run, it will save you time as you won’t be having to decide what to revise on a day-to-day basis.

There are various revision techniques including flash cards, past papers, mind maps, group work and recording yourself talking and playing it back.

There is an element of trial and error to finding what works for you, and bear in mind that what works well for one exam may not be the best method for another. This is all the more reason to start early, as you need to take time to find out how you revise best. Eat Healthily Whilst revising, it can be easy to end up in the library all day surviving off excessive amounts of coffee and junk food. You may feel like doing this instead of spending time cooking proper meals.

This may be more time efficient but it does not amount to more productive revision. Eating a healthy, balanced diet will leave you feeling more energetic and focused.

Regular exercise helps keep you focused and is a nice break from revision. Exercise gets the blood flowing. This means more oxygen will reach the brain and help it to function better.

Anything you can do to get the brain working well will be welcome during the exam period. Plus, it makes for a nice respite from studying.

Effective revision does not mean constant revision. If you start to lose focus, take a break and do something completely different. It is better to do five, one hour-long stints broken up, than revising solidly for seven or eight hours.

Taking breaks during revision gives the brain a higher chance of remembering what you’ve crammed into it.

This is especially important the night before an exam, but applies to the entire revision period. Getting to sleep at a reasonable time means you will wake up earlier and be able to fit in more revision during the day time. Sometimes, revising later is unavoidable, but try to keep these instances to a minimum.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember throughout the whole revision process is to stay calm and positive. If you have a bad day, try to not let it affect how you revise the next day. Remember, performing well in exams is not the be all and end all of your university experience, and whilst they are important, they are not worth getting really stressed about.

There is no perfect formula for exam success and you may not find all of our tips to be right for you. The key is to work out how you revise most effectively and stick to that as best you can. Ultimately, when it comes to revision, you get out of it what you put in!

Here at Northwest Career College, we are committed to providing our students with the best possible facilities to allow them to take advantage of the excellent courses we have on offer. In addition to our Pearson VUE testing center, we also offer morning, afternoon, night, online, and blended classes to accommodate your Las Vegas work and family schedule. And, we have an experienced Career Services team to help you find the best employment opportunity for your new career. Call us today at (702) 403-1592 to find out more about what we can offer you!

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USSD-based call forwarding  

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Context: The Department of Telecom (DoT) has directed telecom operators to halt USSD-based call forwarding from April 15 due to misuse, requiring subscribers to activate it through alternative methods.

What is Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD)?

USSD is a protocol used in GSM networks for sending short text messages . It facilitates instant messaging without storing messages on the operator or subscriber’s device. USSD comes in two types: Pull (user-initiated) and Push (operator-initiated), using * and # characters and numeric codes. Messages typically start with * or # and end with #, with a maximum length of 182 characters. It’s commonly used for balance deduction notifications and checking IMEI numbers on mobile phones.

• g., Checking prepaid mobile balance: *141#; Checking IMEI number: *#06#

What is USSD Call forwarding?

USSD call forwarding is a feature that allows mobile subscribers to redirect incoming calls to another phone number . It is typically initiated by dialling a specific USSD code on the phone, followed by the destination number . This service is commonly used for various purposes such as call diversion during busy periods or when unreachable .

Issues with USSD call forwarding include misuse for unwarranted activities, such as fraud and online crimes, leading to regulatory intervention

About GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) network is a standard for mobile communication used by cellular devices worldwide . It allows users to make calls, send text messages, and access data services. GSM networks operate on specific frequency bands and use SIM cards to identify and authenticate users.

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