Revision: the myths, debunked

When it comes to studying, advice is everywhere and not all of it is helpful. From well-meaning teachers to exhausted older siblings, there’s no shortage of tips about how to revise. Often, however, these tips are based on outdated habits, not how learning actually works. In this blog, I’m going to break down some common revision myths and offer smarter, more effective alternatives.

No two learners are exactly alike. The key is to find what works for you and build revision strategies that feel manageable.

1. Study Less, Study Better

The mistake so many students make when studying, is to confuse effort for efficiency. In other words, they sit with their head in a book for 8 hours straight and they think they are on the path to success. In truth, no matter how much time you spend revising, it can be practically worthless if that learning is not of quality. What so few people realise, is that you can make your learning time much more effective by actually reducing the time spent.

Firstly, by pushing through for hours at a time, very often, students create a miserable situation for themselves. This means that the quality of their studying dips very quickly once they get started and often gets worse, the more they delve into this soul-destroying slog. It also makes it much easier to slip into procrastination if you have made your studying pattern draining and depressing.

Use the Pomodoro Technique. This technique has much grounding in scientific evidence. Study for 25 minutes, then take a 5-minute break. Why it works: the brain switches between two key modes: Focused (when you’re actively thinking) and Diffuse (when you’re resting and making creative connections). Switching between the two is what actually helps you learn, not just cram.

2. Passive vs Active Learning

You may have heard of these terms before. It’s important to bear in mind that different people do learn differently. For some, simply reading the textbook is enough to beam the information from the page and into their heads. However, these are the rare few. For most, it takes a more active approach, whereby you pick apart the information, deconstructing and reconstructing it until you both understand and remember it. This makes sense, when you think about the fact that you will probably have to apply your learning in an exam, not just regurgitate it.

Scrap Passive Reading
Always try to avoid it if you can. Do you ever read a paragraph and realise you’re not taking it in? So you just read it again and realise you have done the same thing? So you go over and over the same information, until you give up. Madness is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result and passive reading is madness. Stop expecting the words to jump off the page and into your head. The next few paragraphs will explain how to be more active.

Highlighting
While decorating your books with fluorescent pen feels active, it is often (but not always) a waste of time. If you like your sparkly pens or glowing markers, then there are ways to make it useful. Firstly, if you highlight everything, you may as well be highlighting nothing. The point of flagging up certain parts of a text is to distinguish it from the rest and you can’t do this if you just make everything bright orange. Secondly, be careful not to just disintegrate the information. In other words, by highlighting certain phrases, it often disconnects the relationship between them and prevents proper understanding, so be aware of where it is useful to split the information up and where it is not.
Instead, use highlighting as a way of organising the information, so you can approach different areas of learning effectively. You may have your own system for categorising information, whether that’s highlighting quotes in one colour, dates in another etc. Or you may find it useful to split the information based on how you intend to learn it.

Waffly Notes
It sometimes feels more proactive to simply copy notes out from a textbook, writing them out for yourself, but this isn’t much better than passive reading. It may familiarise you with the information, but this is not the same as actually learning it. Instead, as a first step, organise the information into two categories: Facts and Concepts. By doing this, you can approach different kinds of information appropriately. This is where you can put your highlighters to use, if you must. Facts are little nuggets of information, to be memorised. You either know them or you don’t. Concepts, however, may involve the integration of various facts, but require understanding. You don’t want to just understand a fact, with no ability to recall it when you need it eg. a chemical formula. Equally, you don’t want to just remember a concept, without understanding it enough to apply it in an exam eg. economics. These two categories can be treated differently in your notes. As an example, use your simple mnemonic devices (memory tricks) like acronyms, acrostics etc. to drum the facts into your memory. With concepts, it is really useful to rephrase the information, writing it out in your own words, rather than just copying from a textbook or other notes. This is both an exercise in learning and self-awareness, as you can check your progress by how well you manage to explain what you know. This leads nicely into the next tip…

Teaching is the Best Way to Learn
‘If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’ Einstein said that. This indicates something really important about the relationship between understanding and communication. Exams do nottest knowledge or understanding. They test your ability to communicate your knowledge or understanding. It doesn’t matter if you have all the best ideas in the world, unless you can express it well on paper. An examiner can only grade you based on how well you have relayed what you know in words on a page.
Because of this, it is so important to dedicate time to communication when studying for a test. You can do this by teaching someone else. Grab a family member or friend and articulate what you have learned. If they don’t get it, explain it again, in a different way. Reshape the way you teach to fit someone else’s mind and I guarantee, you are on the road to better answers in most exam subjects.

Making Mnemonics
Memory devices are so useful, if you take the time to hone the skill of coming up with them. Essentially, we remember things that are funny, rude, silly, vivid, shocking or unique. So the best mnemonics are ones that you probably wouldn’t want everyone to know you thought of. It takes practice and confidence to design good ones, as you don’t want an acronym that is just a string of consonants that are harder to remember than what they stand for (eg. GBDLVBQR doesn’t lend itself to sticking in your mind forever). You can also use acrostics (sentences that represent a word eg. Richard of York Gave Battle In Vain is the one for the order of colours in the rainbow). You could try the Link Method, where you create a visual image or story in your mind that connects a bunch of symbols. The real trick is to decide which mnemonic is best for remembering a certain piece of information, to direct them more at facts than concepts and to be playful enough to think of something that will outrage yourself into really remembering it. The best ones are the most inappropriate!

3. Mind Map Madness

Mind Maps can be useful, but so often they are just used to make things pretty, to no real effect. It’s certainly true that pages and pages of boring text do not stick in your mind and your notes should not just be paragraph after paragraph. However, a tangle of boxes connected by coloured lines and bubble writing can sometimes make things more visually confusing. The trick of a good mind map is that it organises the information and draws clear connections. Here are a few ways to use mind maps to your advantage.

Colour Code, Not Colour Craziness
Use colours distinctly, to reference certain themes or to distinguish between one type of information and another. You can make a key at the top of the page, so you know what you are looking for. This will allow you to navigate the page in a way that is conducive to learning.

Branching Out
Try to have a system that gives each new tier of branches a job. For example, you might start in the middle of the page with a title box, to note the topic. Then, branching out from that, you may wish to connect three or four main themes or areas. From each those, you might branch out several facts or definitions. Then, from those, a few examples or quotes. Then, you might have the occasional connecting line with a box between, to reference how different themes or areas link. This all depends on the subject you are studying. Just think about how the topic can be broken down as simply as possible and try to keep things organised and logical, rather than a mess of information.

Mind Map Planning
Planning is all about setting out your ideas in a way that allows a clearer mind when it comes to writing an essay. Whether it’s an exercise in creative writing or an academic essay about the Russian Revolution, there are many ways to plan. If mind maps are your method of choice, have a system. Organise the branches into tiers. Giving yourself a structure will allow you to move around the web of ideas quicker, more memorably and will act as a kind of check-list for what you need to include. You might write the essay question or brief in the middle and branch out with several themes as starting points. From these, you might then list a few separate ideas or examples that relate to these themes. Then, you may give some commentary, branching from each of the examples. Lastly, you could jot down some quotes or evidence that backs up what you have said. Of course, this depends on the subject and how you have been taught to structure the paragraphs of your essay. This gives you a sensible and manageable approach that makes things easier, rather than more complex.

4. Flashcard Fallacy

Flashcards are fantastic, but only when they’re used to test, not to cram.

Students love flash cards. Why? When I see a student with thousands of tiny cards, crammed with information, I don’t see the point. Does learning grow deeper, the smaller your handwriting? The smaller the piece of paper, the easier it is to remember? The use of flashcards for comprehensive notes is totally useless… However, flashcards can be really useful.

Like anything, it depends on how you use them. Flashcards are really good for self-testing and this is a really important stage of revision. Once you have learned the information, test yourself. Don’t cram a flashcard with notes, just use it as a quiz card.

1.        Fold the flashcard in half.

2.        On the outside, write a question.

3.        On the inside, write the answer.

4.        On the other side of the outside, write/draw a clue. This can be one of the cheeky mnemonics you have designed.

5.        Make a pile of these quiz questions and go through them at random. Ask yourself the question, seeing if you can remember the answer. If not, look at the clue for help.

6.        Make three piles: a pile of cards you got correct; a pile of ones you got wrong; a pile of ones you managed with the help of the clue.

7.        Use the knowledge of which you are getting wrong or finding more difficult to remember to target the relevant areas in your revision.

The beauty of flashcards is in repetition, tracking progress and focusing where you’re unsure.

5. Wasting Practice Papers

Practice papers are really useful, when used at the appropriate stage in your revision. But there is no point in launching straight into practice papers before you have had the chance to revise the topics. This will just knock confidence and waste valuable papers that could be used more effectively. Use past papers as the final stage of revision, to both practice application and to test your progress.
Don’t rush through multiple papers. The in between stage of doing one practice paper and another is really important! Do one, then mark it. Then, identify the areas of weakness, whether this is a topic, a method or a style of question. After this, go back and revise the relevant information, before you do your next practice paper.

Timing
When it comes to timing, don’t panic about working against the clock too early on. Remember, ‘accuracy before fluency.’ Once you have mastered the topic and the methods, you can work towards a personal best. You might even wish to simply measure the time you take, without trying to meet a time limit. This way, the feeling of the timings will work their way into your mind, for when you are ready. Beating your personal best each time is what you should strive for, before setting strict deadlines when you are ready.

6. A Summary of Tips

LEARN - The C.R.A.P Method
Far from being actually ‘crap’ this acronym represents what every note-making session should involve.

Categorisation: Split the information into facts and concepts.

Rephrase: With concepts, put them into your own words and practice articulating them without just copying from text books.

Associate: With facts, make links and associations (using whichever mnemonic feels most useful) that creates a strong, vivid memory that will last.

Present: Present what you have learned, both orally and in writing, by teaching, explaining, communicating, expressing what you have learned in several different ways. This, when it comes down to it, is what exams test you on.

CONSOLIDATE - Self-Quizzing

Once you have completed those initial steps in learning the information, quiz yourself. This will solidify the knowledge into your memory and strengthen your ability to recall it. Use flashcards as described in the last section, to ask yourself questions and drum in the associative clue that you created. Quiz yourself on the bus, quiz yourself in the kitchen, get your family to quiz you, quiz yourself in your break times. All the while, use the results of each quiz as data collection, to target the weakest areas by going back and learning the ones you get wrong or where you needed help.

APPLY - Practice and Tests

Whether it’s writing essays or completing old science papers, this is the time to start applying what you have learned. As mentioned earlier, don’t just whiz through 5 essays in a row, or knock out a bunch of papers from 2013. Do one, get it marked and then assess where things are going right or wrong. Before doing any more papers, go back and redo any of the previous steps necessary and target the specific areas you most need to improve.

MANAGE TIME

Once you are where you want to be with quality, start thinking about timing. But remember, it’s about time management, not just speed. Be aware of how much time you need to read questions and any relevant additional material, how long you need to answer questions and - essentially - how much time you need to check and edit your work. You might find that your timing is way off to begin with, but as mentioned earlier, work towards an awareness of time before you start setting strict deadlines. Everyone is different, so you can shift your proportions around as you go. Perhaps you are quite quick at writing answers, but need to prioritise checking/editing time, as you know you’re prone to sloppy mistakes. You can adjust accordingly.

Final Word

Revision doesn’t have to be a chore. With the right tools, the right mindset and a bit of creativity, it can actually be satisfying. It’s about organising and strengthening your brain rather than stuffing it. If you would like support in helping your child build a revision strategy that’s practical and effective, we are happy to help. Contact us at info@linkythinks.com or sign up for our next Study Smart at KS3/KS4 course.