Preparing for exams

If you're feeling overwhelmed about how to revise for an exam, this tutorial will give you some useful techniques to improve your performance. We'll cover how to revise for your exams and also provide strategies you can use while you are taking the exam.

Revision

Revision begins in the first week of the semester. This page explains how topics are presented logically and sequentially so you need to build on your knowledge and understanding throughout the semester.

Examples of regular revision are:

• reading of required texts
• revising after each lecture
• summarising your notes
• developing a weekly study timetable
• establishing regular study habits.

Revision strategies

Just reading is too passive. Your understanding and ability to recall information will improve if you study more actively. If you actively use what you have read or heard, you will find it much easier to remember and understand in the future. If you don't do anything with the information you have learned in a lecture:

• you will forget 50% within one hour
• you will forget 75% within 24 hours.

So, don't just read—write notes, talk, listen and make sure what you have seen or heard is learned.

How to make revision more 'active'

1. Write summaries and use mind maps
   • File your lectures, essays, research under topics.
   • Write bullet point summaries of each topic—use notes from lectures, tutorials, reading and assignment materials.
   • Further reduce your notes using highlighting.
   • Rewrite you notes as mind maps—note key ideas and supporting examples or evidence.
2. Revise with others
3. Practise answering past exam papers
4. Analyse practice exam questions by identifying instruction words, key words and limiting statements.

Let's look at the following exam question as an example:

Analyse the reasons for the fluctuations in the Australian dollar over the past two years. Look at the different components that make up this question.

In this case:

• analyse is an instruction word.
• the reasons for, the fluctuation in, and the Australian dollar are key words.
• Australian and over the past two years are limiting statements.