Revision skills

Planning to revise
Make sure that you start your revision early enough. Successful students revise throughout the course as well as during the time before an exam. Making a revision timetable is a good idea to start with, ensuring you give more time to your weaknesses. Here are some useful tips: revise every lessons work on the evening after the lesson revise thoroughly for topic tests during the course begin your exam revision at least 2 months before your exams plan when you will cover each topic in the syllabus and stick to your decision rate yourself on every topic score 1 if you fully understand, score 2 if you partly understand, score 3 for real areas of weakness in your revision plan give more time on topics you have scored yourself 3 as you revise, problems will come up list your problems and then get extra help on them from your teacher leave sucient time to do plenty of past paper questions dont ll all your time with revision you need some social activities in between to refresh you. It is more eective to revise in several short sessions with breaks in between than trying to do one long revision session. For example, revising for two 25-minute sessions with a 10-minute break will be better than one 50-minute session. You will learn best at the start of session and just before your planned break. After a break, quickly recap on what you have revised already. Revisiting this after a day and then after a week has been shown to improve your recall. It will also help to plan to revise two or more dierent subjects each day to help to maintain interest and eectiveness. Turn your notes into a set of revision cards. You can carry these around to do a little revision in spare moments as well as some last-minute revision before the exam. Test yourself, and get help from others rather than working alone. Explaining what you know to other students will help both you and them. Make a list of things you are unsure about to ask your teacher. If you dont understand the chemistry you wont be able to apply it in exam questions. However, there are also basic facts that you must know in order to understand chemistry. For example, in organic chemistry you need to know the functional groups required in the syllabus. You also need to know denitions such as standard enthalpy changes of combustion and formation, as you are expected to recall these in exams. When you rst revise a topic, get a quick overview of what you need to know from the syllabus (see the objectives at the start of each chapter in the book). Then as you revise build up a mind map which shows how the dierent ideas in the topic are linked. A large piece of paper can be used to make a poster of your mind map. This provides you with a visual record put it up somewhere that you walk past regularly. Large writing and bold colours will help. Use the internet if possible to visit some revision websites or use revision CD-ROMs. Some people prefer to work on-screen rather than from books and most people benet from variety in their revision. Animations can help you see what happens in processes and reactions more eectively than reading an explanation. This will help your understanding. Make sure you practise lots of chemical calculations. Dont just look at the answers to questions before trying them yourself even if you already got the question right in your notes. A good way to practise is to nd a worked example to look through in your notes or book. Make sure you understand the logical steps between each line in the calculation. Then cover the answer and try to solve the problem yourself. If you get an incorrect answer, this method can show you straight away where you went wrong. Or if you get stuck, you can reveal the next line, and then carry on. Finally, try some new questions to test your understanding. You will nd the answers to the check-up questions at the back of the book. The answers to the end-of-chapter questions are on this CD-ROM.
Revision skills guidance

Doing your revision

Dont just read through your work and expect to remember and understand it. It is better to use your time doing some form of active revision. Here are some ideas. Make notes. Condense your work into shorter sets of bullet points of key information. Use colours to make a visual impact, e.g. underlining headings. Highlighter pens are very useful.

AS and A Level Chemistry Cambridge University Press