WELCOME to the Advanced History Study Guide. This guide is written to help you to be an effective student, to gain a high reward for your effort and to enjoy your study. These intentions are met by the three main themes which run through the guide: a positive mindset (so that you actively respond toward your study opportunities); attention to strategy (so that you take a longer view of your study tasks); and study skills - any one of which may not be decisive but, taken together, will greatly reshape your study procedure. You may think some of my suggestions are so minor they hardly matter. My answer is that lots of minor improvements, when taken together, will make a major advance. Even the world’s largest ocean, the Pacific, is made up of only individual drops of water.

It is easy to remain in a rut with work procedures. However well your methods work, better students are circumspect and open to improvements. This guide does not seek to prescribe how you should study but to offer suggestions which you can try in order to increase your study effectiveness. The short chapters can be read in any order. Several chapters relate to others and I usually indicate this. In some chapters I begin with simpler procedures and go on to more sophisticated points, so if you decide that you have already mastered the suggestions don’t dismiss the chapter straight away. While you may choose to read the guide from beginning to end you will probably want to refer and re-refer to particular chapters over your years of study. There is no ’quick fix’ for improved study effectiveness but changes in technique, practised and developed over weeks and months, together with a sound study strategy and positive mindset, will radically enhance your life as a student, enable you to achieve higher grades and to have a great time.

This guide, with the exception of Chapter 8, was written for students, and teachers, by Gilbert Pleuger, who is Editor of new perspective - the leading journal for AS/A History teachers and students.