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Section

Revision Methods

Handwritten flashcards spread across a wooden table in two uneven piles, one card turned face up, soft afternoon light from the right.

Revision is the part of a degree with the largest gap between what is popular and what works. Rereading, recopying and colouring feel productive and leave very little behind; retrieving, spacing and mixing feel worse in the moment and are what actually moves material into memory that lasts until June.

This section treats each method as a procedure rather than as a principle: which box a card goes into when you get it wrong, how long a block runs before you switch subjects, how many new cards a week a module can absorb, what to do with the session you missed on Tuesday. Where a method has a limit, and every one of them does, the limit is written next to the method rather than left for you to discover in an exam hall.

Filed under Revision Methods Most recent first
A paper wall calendar with several days circled in blue pen and small notes in the margins, pinned above a desk, flat even daylight.
Revision Methods

Spaced repetition without an app

Three boxes, a calendar and a rule about what moves forward. The paper version is slower to set up and much harder to quietly abandon.

A thick stack of index cards held by a rubber band on a desk, the top card showing a handwritten question, shallow depth of field, warm lamp light.
Revision Methods

Flashcards that ask harder questions

Most cards test recognition and feel productive. Rewriting the front of the card so it demands an explanation changes what the pack is worth.

Two thick textbooks lying open side by side on a desk, one showing a diagram and the other a page of dense text, a notebook between them with a pen laid across it, even daylight from above.
Revision Methods

Interleaving two subjects in one sitting

Blocked revision feels smooth and transfers badly. Mixing two subjects in a sitting feels worse on the day and holds up when the questions arrive shuffled.

An open paper planner showing a week laid out as a grid of days and hours, a few blocks filled in pencil and two squares left deliberately empty, pen and mug on the desk beside it, morning light.
Revision Methods

A revision timetable that holds after week two

Most revision plans are built for a version of you that never gets ill, bored or invited out. What has to be in the timetable for it to survive the first bad week.

Next section

Revision is practice, the exam is performance

Knowing the material and producing an answer in forty minutes are different skills, and only one of them is trained by cards. The exam section covers the clock, the mark scheme and the final days.

Go to Exam Preparation