A Level & IB Consult Diaries: Exam Revision Strategy

Today I'm going to talk about a very common problem that A level students taking economics have.

 During consults, a lot of students are telling me, hey I understand what is going on in school, like I pay attention during classes, I've been working hard, and I just cannot apply during exams, like I understand what's going on in class, but when it comes to doing exam questions, I just cannot do .

Or that I do already, then it comes back and the score,  I don't do very well. What is wrong? What can I do? Okay, so there are three problems that I think students actually suffer from but they do not realize. So do listen to this.

First thing is that you might think that you actually understand the content But what might be covered in classes that you think you understand might only scratch the surface.

So you don't even recognize that you don't understand the content because you're only scratching on the surface.  The second problem is that you might not actually be proficient in essay writing, which is actually a skill that is developed over time.

So essay writing, it requires quite a number of things. It requires  the ability to dissect questions, understand the requirements of the questions, do proper planning, be able to elaborate with economic rigour, evaluate. So these are things that can be acquired only across a period of time and doesn't happen overnight

the last problem that you might have is that you do not have sufficient exposure to exam questions so you do not actually understand what the requirements of exam questions or the permutation and combinations of exam questions that can come up for a specific topic

If you suffer from these problems, what can you do?

Let me give a very short and simple quick piece of advice today.

This kind of applies to JC2 students and not JC1 students.

If you're six months away from the A Levels, this is a strategy that you can adopt. Hey, you should have, almost finished covering your content in school already. So what can you do? Hey, so instead of what most students do, which is that they will flip through their lecture notes, they write notes they come up with, they highlight their notes and then they come up with their own set of notes and then they read and then try to understand and try to digest.

This is something that you can do if you are JC1 and you have not yet covered all the topics and you don't have a at least a basic level of understanding of the topic.

Instead of doing that very conventional way of revision, you should flip it around. Start with the 2023 ECONS paper. Then, say, start by doing your TYS questions. Do your TYS question, 2023 paper 1.  Then next time you revise, 2023 paper 2. Next time you revise, 2022 paper 1. Next time you revise, 2022 paper 2.

Whenever you are attempting these  papers, your objective is not just to attempt these papers. Your objective is to stop every time that you have a query. Okay, if every time that you are doing these papers and then you are stuck, what do you do? You stop doing the paper and then you go and revise that specific part.

You go and try to do your research for a specific part. Look at your lecture notes. What is in the lecture notes? What are my answer keys that I've done in tutorials. What is available on the web for me to understand this piece of content? Once you understand the piece of content, then you go back to answering the question.

So you use the papers to get an understanding of what kind of question comes up for specific concepts. Then you try to acquire that knowledge. So you don't acquire knowledge first. You attempt the papers first, and then as you get stuck in doing the papers, then you go and acquire knowledge, then you answer the question.

Alright, then after you answer the question, then you make sure you have a good set of answer keys ready. If you have a good set of answer key ready, then you grade. You grade your answers, right? Think of how many marks you have gotten. So this four mark question, how many marks you have gotten. This helps to condition yourself to have the examiner's kind of mindset, so that every time you're doing a paper, you're asking yourself, eh this point that I'm writing, how many marks is it going to get?

Is it going to get me three marks out of four marks, or is it going to get me four marks out of four marks? Then you start to realize that, hey, there is a specific routine, there's a specific way, there's a specific structure to answering all these kind of questions. Then, every time you finish a paper, write down a list of things that you are unclear about.

And then after maybe you have a collection of questions, go and consult your teachers. This is a very quick strategy that I would recommend JC2 students to do if you are at this stage of revision, 6 months away from the A Levels.