How to: study for a retake exam
Hello, Reader!
Organising your time can be hard when you don’t have a revision plan. Since you’re kind of on your own in studying for this exam, you have to create some kind of action plan for how you’re going to tackle revision for it and how you can make sure you will do better in it than the previous time - after all, you’re retaking an exam for a reason. Your revision plan should consist mainly of past papers. Flash cards, topic notes, etc. are for when you’re still learning the content… and you should know the content inside out by now. If you don’t - revise it, but your action plan really should be all past papers. See how much work you have to do and how much time you have left to do it and decide how much you have to do per week or per month - then make sure you stay on top of it. Past papers will help you see the problem areas and let you focus on those a bit more. This is why it’s so important to mark them properly: check where every mark comes from, see where you lose marks most often and then use that information to improve with every past paper you do.
Here’s where tracking your results comes in. You need to create a way to keep all of your results together, which will make sure you can track your progress and see patterns in your work - what in your life affects your performance? Were you distracted when doing the past paper? Did you have a bad day? How can you avoid making the same mistakes on the actual exam day? This action plan also includes space for notes on the mistakes you’re making, however, I don’t really use this so I can’t really tell if I recommend it or not.
I’m back with some study tips! Not just any study tips, however - tips for exam retakes: how to create an action plan and track your progress and how I, personally, apply all these tips to my revision! You might be wondering what’s the difference between studying for retakes and studying for your exams the first time around; I found three main differences. (This might not be all true for you, but hopefully you can relate to some.)
The first difference, the one common to everyone retaking exams, is that you know all the content already: when you’re studying to take your exams for the first time, it’s likely that you haven’t finished the course yet so you’re still actively absorbing information about the topics you’re taking exams in. After the course finishes, you might need to revise some info but you’ve already learned it and studied it for your exam so the majority should be pretty solid in your brain. The second difference might not be true for everyone, depending on what you’re retaking and when, but if you’re like me - you don’t have to focus on other subjects. Of course, if you’re retaking a GCSE exam or an AS exam, this probably doesn’t really apply to you, but if you’re only retaking one or two exams, when you’re already out of school - you can focus all the time you want on these exams without worrying that you’re neglecting your other subjects. The downside of retaking exams after finishing school (and the third difference) is that you’re out of that school routine with strictly structured days and time put aside just for studying. This means that you, independently, need to find time to dedicate for studying since now you are in charge of organising your time.
Organising your time can be hard when you don’t have a revision plan. Since you’re kind of on your own in studying for this exam, you have to create some kind of action plan for how you’re going to tackle revision for it and how you can make sure you will do better in it than the previous time - after all, you’re retaking an exam for a reason. Your revision plan should consist mainly of past papers. Flash cards, topic notes, etc. are for when you’re still learning the content… and you should know the content inside out by now. If you don’t - revise it, but your action plan really should be all past papers. See how much work you have to do and how much time you have left to do it and decide how much you have to do per week or per month - then make sure you stay on top of it. Past papers will help you see the problem areas and let you focus on those a bit more. This is why it’s so important to mark them properly: check where every mark comes from, see where you lose marks most often and then use that information to improve with every past paper you do.
Here’s where tracking your results comes in. You need to create a way to keep all of your results together, which will make sure you can track your progress and see patterns in your work - what in your life affects your performance? Were you distracted when doing the past paper? Did you have a bad day? How can you avoid making the same mistakes on the actual exam day? This action plan also includes space for notes on the mistakes you’re making, however, I don’t really use this so I can’t really tell if I recommend it or not.
Finally it’s time to share my own study plan! As you can see, I dedicated a page in my journal for a “study plan” which includes a tracker of the past papers I do. I created this revision plan by checking how many past papers there are on Maths and Physics tutor and then put them into boxes. I made sure to consider the time I have left until the exam, which turned out to be around 4 months at the time I made the spread so I figured out that I have to do about 15 papers each month so that I can do each paper twice - notice how each box has two spaces for results - so hopefully I can see progress I’m making. This is why at the top of the page I have a reminder of “3-4 a week” since I plan most of my work weekly rather than monthly. I also decided to colour code my results according to how well I think I’ve done, which I don’t have strict boundaries for but I simply go with how happy I am with my result - you can see how hard I am on myself when it comes to exam results.
I’m sure a lot of this can be applied to studying for any exams but you can look out soon for blog posts more specifically about how I studied for my A-Level exams - and some of my GCSE exams too! I hope this post helps you create your own study plan and make your revision a bit easier.
Love, Agnes xo
Love, Agnes xo
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