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Top 10 Exam Tips from Really Useful Resources

1. Pay attention to what you wish to learn. The determination to remember will achieve a recall 20 to 60% greater than if you don't make the effort. Spend half your time in reading and note taking and the rest in reviewing ordering and outlining. Little and often is most effective. Do 20 minutes then take a break.
2. A 50% increase in revision time equates to a six fold increase in recall. Never be without notes or books. Time planned is rarely wasted.
3. The more ways of stimulating your brain the more you will remember. Write things down, use colourful highlighters, pin study cards to the wall, or stick notes around your desk. Shuffle notes into smaller and smaller topic groups. All of these activities will give structure to random pieces of information and help funnel down from general to the specific. Test yourself frequently. Visualise your thoughts or map them out on the carpet. Walk around conducting an internal conversation or describe what you're learning to others. Things won't happen by magic, so be creative and marvel at what you can remember.
4. It's never too late to study. Often in an exam you will have a moment when you recognise something you looked at "just last night". Try to have lots of these moments.
5. As you get close to an exam, concentrate on the stuff you know best. This is the money in the bank. Don't leave the exam without having spent it all. Better to know 100% of one thing than 1% of a hundred things.
6. In an exam, keep the scoreboard ticking over. Don't waste precious time trying to squeeze an extra mark from a question you're struggling to finish. Move on and score big from a new question.
7. Examiners are not out to ambush you. Questions are designed to be frameworks upon which you can hang your knowledge. They are tests of what you know, not what you don't know. Answer them with this thought in mind. You don't have to create a new theorem or write a totally new Harry Potter book during an exam. Use material you have practiced before in course work and in class.
8. Spend a few minutes glancing through the questions. Like scouring the gossip columns, certain key words, phrases or names will leap out at you. That same technique will give you a sense of which questions you should spend time on. Don't rush in and struggle with question one when question ten might require all of your efforts.
9. Eating well does more to keep your mind awake than drinking coffee. Sleeping well does more to prepare you for a week of exams than burning the midnight oils. Exercise will stimulate the mind and body and doing something, anything, is always a better form of stress relief than doing nothing at all.
10. There is an old theatrical saying. "If you enjoyed the show, tell your friends and come again next week". Really Useful Resources provides great study aids, books and on line resources. If your NCEA year starts again in the new year then look out for great offers and new products on this site from January.