However high your grades for your coursework you now need to learn - so that you can answer exam questions from memory. By a few procedures, carefully undertaken, you can become an effective performer and achiever just as an athlete, by a programme of training, can prepare for high performance in a competition.

There is no such thing as a person with a bad memory. Have you ever wondered why you can remember some occasion when you were very young, years and years ago, but cannot remember something from last week. If you understand how this can happen you will know how to be a skilled learner with a powerful memory. Your very early memories are of occasions which were very important or particularly interesting to you. If you achieve the same mind-set with your History learning, you will be an effective student. One good way to increase interest is to discuss your work with a friend. If she/he is a History student both the speaker and the listener benefit. 

Read the notes you have on a topic twice. Then write a summary of your information for a topic on a sheet of paper. Write, in summary form, both information (facts, events, dates) and ideas. Give prominence and emphasis to key points by the way you lay out your notes.

If you try to remember notes on a topic by just reading them, you will find you gain little reward for the time you put in. The key is to be active. Pick out the six key points from one of your sides of A4 and memorise them. To do this use the 3Rs: Read the six points; Repeat them several times by speaking or writing them; Recall, that is, write them from memory to test they are remembered. The trying to remember fixes information in your mind. When the six are securely remembered choose one or two points between the ones already remembered and repeat the process. You have now memorised about 18 points from your revision page. Any remaining information and ideas you will remember by their association and relationship with the 18 or so remembered core points. History students are helped because events are in sequence, connected to one another. After you have learned you revision sheet, repeat this process twice more leaving a week between each session and repeat it in the week before your exam.

The revision programme

If you have exams in June don’t leave this revision until the last week. Start your first learning up to 10 weeks before and give yourself time for two cycles of revision. Learning is arguably the hardest study task. Don’t drift towards June with weeks wasted and little achieved. 

Once a topic is learned find time to apply it to past questions. The questions you will have in your June papers will be very similar, but seldom identical, to past questions. Well prepared candidates are never surprised by their exam question papers. 

The comments on essay questions that follow apply to structured questions. There are, in addition, particular points to bear in mind with structured questions. (a) Note the allocation of marks for each part of the question. Use the marks as a guide to the length of answer required and the time to spend on it. (b) Take great care to notice the exact wording of the question so that you refer to the correct sources and answer what is asked. (c) Read the sources with care: you will have enough time for this and unhurried reading will be repaid by a more accurate answer. (d) If a question asks you to write with reference to sources and your own knowledge be sure to draw on anything you have studied for your answer. (e) Plan answers to the latter question(s), which carry over half the marks, in the way you would plan an essay answer.

The exact question asked

The greatest reason why students do not gain as good a reward as they should deserve for their answers is that part or much of their answers is irrelevant to the questions asked. So before you plan and write an answer take care to understand the question that is asked. This is how to do it.

Underline the key words and rephrase the question in your own words so that you understand its meaning. Keep this meaning in your mind and scribble the key ideas and information on scrap paper before you begin to write. You are now more free to concentrate on writing it clearly. This is the procedure for a course essay. It is exactly the same for an exam answer except you have to rely on your memory for ideas, arguments and information.

Skills required with document questions are separate from core course work skills and you will have practised these with your teachers but a few points cannot be made too often. Success with these questions require a thorough knowledge and understanding of the whole topic and particular care with the wording of the questions. Note, in particular:

Context. Place the source in the context of what happened before and the events which occurred afterwards.

Understanding. You do need to know the meaning of the key ideas, words and phrases.

Comparison of two or more documents may be required. Have a check list of questions to ask of the document in order to develop an answer. Do the documents contradict each other? If so, how far, and in what ways? Do they support one another? Are there inconsistencies within a document?

Evaluation. This is a more demanding task and it will be based on an assessment of authorship, bias, extent of information/misinformation and degree of corroboration. Successful evaluation is possible only with some knowledge of the author, the history of the document, the purpose of the document when written and some appreciation of its language and tone.

So good luck with your exam preparation and when you tackle the question papers, not that you will need much luck if you have followed a fair amount of the advice outlined here.

The resource is provided by history-ontheweb.co.uk
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