This is a continuation of the previous posts, essentially collecting thoughts for first year students. I am asking you, the reader to suggest what might be wrong, or missing from this, and anything else which will be helpful for a new first year who is just arriving at university to study maths…
The following sections in the resource book are about mentors and the whiteboard workshop. They are really quite specific to the course, and more about the details than the philosophy of it, so I am not including them here.
The next section on the other hand is vital, as most students are never given much guidance in how best to revise, and it is one of the most important skills they can gain. I have written my thoughts from my own experience, but I am not trained specifically in education, so I am grateful for any additional thoughts.
How to revise
Revision is a bit like comedy: Timing is everything! If you get the timing wrong your exams will fall as flat as if you were doing a stand-up show and told the punch-line at the beginning of a joke. Plan your timing, and make sure that you hit the exam when you’re at the peak of your understanding.
The other thing that is really important when you’re revising is to be in the right environment for optimum concentration. For some this may be the library, for some it may be at a cafe, for some it may be in your bedroom. What I can virtually promise you is that it won’t include having Facebook on in the background and Whatsapp by your side. Try to turn off as many devices as possible and work with just pen and paper as your only study materials. It may be that some people are able to revise in very different conditions, so it’s worth experimenting with what works best for you.
While you should be doing your tutorials as you go through the course, the tutorial sheets can also make for the bulk of your revision material. If you understand every question from every tutorial, then you should be able to score very very highly in the final exam.
When it comes to test revision, as well as exam revision, you have to balance the fact that you have to keep up with the new stuff you are learning, while also revising the material which is specifically for the test you are about to take. This isn’t an easy balance, but it is possible, especially if you’ve kept good notes of your tutorial solutions as you’ve been going through them the first time.
By the time you get to the decant test you will have done at least five tutorials. My advice would be to start ramping up to serious revision two weeks before this test. That means going back to the first tutorial and making sure that you still understand it. That means actually sitting down and doing it again, without the answers you wrote before, writing notes about anything which you don’t quite remember, and, if you feel completely comfortable with it, running through any extra questions you can find on the topic. Read through the notes on that section and make sure that everything makes sense – you are looking for mastery, not just a basic knowledge. Then go through the second tutorial a day later, then the third a day later, etc. By the time you’re a few days from the test, you have been through all the past tutorials, and feel comfortable with them. Now look through the past papers. Sit down with them as if you were sitting a real test and time yourself. Work out which areas are still difficult and go back and revise these, then do the tests again. Find more questions on these areas. I am happy to send you more if you have run out of material. 24 hours before the test you should have to do any revision at all, but just to make yourself comfortable, you can sit down and reread your notes to make sure it’s all fresh. Really this time should be a day of reasonable relaxation, letting your mind mull over what it’s taken in over the last two weeks. It’s important that you have timed yourself going through past tests so that you feel confident that you will have enough time when the pressure is on.
The revision for the other tests should be pretty similar.
The revision for the exams is different because you have a lot more material to get through. In fact you have a whole year’s worth of material to revise which is a daunting task! I would recommend starting at least a month before the exams. This sounds a lot, but it means that it’s not a rush. Go back to the very beginning and revise the previous tutorials just as you did for the tests, but now you’ve been through each tutorial at least twice before, and so it should be much faster. You should be able to get through several tutorials a week. Try and make sure that you’ve been through all the tutorials at least a week before the exams so that you can sit down with past exam papers and go through them just as you did for the tests.
Integrated into this revision should be discussions with classmates to talk about tricky problems you’ve found and to teach other people what you’ve learnt. Teaching really is the best way to learn this stuff!
When I started reading this section, about ‘timing,’ I assumed you were talking about getting one’s studying done in the nick of time. That’s what students are always talking about. I think you should change the wording so that the reader immediately understands that you are talking about studying in advance.
It is a good idea to take past papers seriously and time oneself.
You made a spelling mistake where you said “24 hours before the test you should have to do any revision at all.”
Lastly, you suggested doing all the tutorials two to three times. I think that is impractical, with the students taking three other courses per semester. It is difficult enough to do then all once, and will be tedious to do them all again in their entirety. I think a better suggestion is to complete them all and to focus on the difficult questions when going back to revise tutorials, perhaps asking the student to mark several questions from each tutorial that they would like to do again.
Hi Aidan, all good points – I will make these amendments in the main document. I like your idea regarding the marking of difficult questions.
Cheers,
Jonathan
Does this sound better?
By the time you get to the decant test you will have done around five tutorials. My advice would be to start ramping up to serious revision two weeks before this test. That means reading back through the notes for all previous sections, then going back to the first tutorial and making sure that you still understand it. That means actually sitting down and doing parts of it again, without the answers you wrote before, writing notes about anything which you don’t quite remember, and, if you feel completely comfortable with it, running through any extra questions you can find on the topic. When I say that you should do parts of the former tutorials, I recommend marking specific questions on them as you do them the first time to remember to do them again come revision. There will be questions which you remember as being tricky, and giving particularly good insight into topics and these should be repeated.
Speed is an integral part of the tests. This is a pity, but it is a part of the system that universities have in place for testing understanding, and so being able to do the very routine questions quickly will give you a lot more time to answer the harder ones. Spend time getting your arithmetic really quick, and your algebra skills fast and it will pay dividends.
Yes. It sounds great.
I found your advice on exam revision extremely helpful last year, so this will be great to have in the resource book indeed. I feel it would be helpful if you focus a bit more on the topic of finding the time to do all this revision, because I think it is by far the biggest challenge.
The advice you gave me that I found helpful was to make a set period of time each day for maths revision, even if it is just half an hour. Then, adjust how much you redo in each section depending on how easy you find it.
So maybe you could include a short discussion of finding the revision time after talking about the study environment?
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