• Question: whart helped you pass your science exams?

    Asked by eloisebrown to Alice JB, Andy, Barbara, James, Jo on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Andy Norton

      Andy Norton answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I have tried lots of different ways of revising/learning over the years, and I’m still not sure which works best. One year I tried listening to one album when I was revising one subject (I had Blur’s Parklife for Chemistry, LCD Soundsystem for Physics etc.) – the idea was that when I then listened to that album again, all my knowledge came back. I don’t think that it worked (although I might find Parklife again and see if it all comes back!)

      I also tried making flash cards with key words on, and I would then have to talk outloud and explain what that word meant and what it related to. That worked quite well.

      I also tried typing up/re-writing all of my notes. One year at Uni, I re-wrote all my notes, made them colourful, and taped them up around my room. Honestly, I had so many that I put some of the ceiling. That was a bit werid to sleep in… But the re-reading and re-writing the notes helped.

      There are lots of other ways to learning/revising – you just have to find which one works for you. 🙂

    • Photo: Alice Jones Bartoli

      Alice Jones Bartoli answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I like Andy’s methods very much – he’s using a whole bunch of ideas that have been tested by Psychologists interested in memory. My favourite is teaching other people, lots of studies have shown that teaching someone else about a subject is a great way to learn about it yourself. You get to be involved in that topic and have to work out how to answer other people’s questions on it.

      One thing that I suggest to my students is to work in small groups, find some friends and start to go through your notes together, test each other, find out what you know and what other people know and share it. It does feel like a pretty geeky way to spend your time, but it’s useful, and I think it’s better than revising on your own and getting bored. I also find it useful to write practice essays, but that might be less useful for GCSE type science exams?

    • Photo: Barbara Guinn

      Barbara Guinn answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      I think really enjoying it. I really enjoyed biology, more than chemistry and much more than physics and my results at school really showed that. I did best in biology, not as good in chemistry and worst in physics. It made me think that if you enjoy something it is easier to do well in it. Otherwise it’s just hard work and practise, and sometimes when you get something, when you have worked to understand something (in science), then it becomes enjoyable and you start to do better. I did much better at University as I became more confident and liked how we were taught, and the teaching suited me as a student, but now teachers teach much better and understand how to teach so you learn much more than we did at school. You learn in different ways – we used to just get things read out to us or written on the board and only a few really cool teachers would make learning fun. You guys are lucky but also learn tonnes more than I did at school and are great learners making use of what is on offer (the computers, internet, facebook etc).

    • Photo: Jo Hulsmans

      Jo Hulsmans answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Studying very hard is the key!

      What worked best for me is to have someone else (another student) ask me questions about the material, which often made me think about it in a way that I hadn’t done before. It helps if the other person is smarter than you!

Comments