No one can teach you how to revise, as we all learn differently. All we can do is to suggest some guidelines and ideas for you to try. Some ideas will suit you, others may not. However, give all of them a chance and see if they work.
Revision guidelines
Start your revision early! You should start your revision at least three months before the IGCSE examination.
Plan your revision.
Split the work into chunks. We will give some advice on this later.
Go through the chunks to ensure you understand each piece of work. If you do not understand something, ask for help. You can ask your teacher or a friend who is also studying the course, but do not delay and hope the problem will go away. It won’t. You will never learn anything really well unless you understand it.
Summarise the work in a form you can go through easily the next time. We will suggest ways of doing this later.
Ensure that you have completed the summarising of the entire course at least a month before your exams start.
Go through each summary at least twice more, referring back to more detailed notes where necessary.
Make your revision active – do not just sit and read the textbook or your notes. Find activities to make yourself think about what you are doing. The section on revision techniques will give you some ideas on how to make your revision active.
Remember that your exam papers will test your skills as well as your knowledge and understanding. Practising past questions will help you to make sure you know how to do calculations, handle data and so on. Look in the specification to make sure you know what these skills are.
Don't forget to revise your practical work! You can be asked questions about any of the practical mentioned in the text book.
Revision aims
When you revise, you are trying to:
- Improve your memory
You are trying to increase the amount of biology that you can remember. Your brain quickly forgets. Most of what you try to learn by heart you will forget over the next two days. Nevertheless, you can help your brain to remember by using
different revision techniques, such as the ones explained in the revision techniques section.
- Organise what you have studied
If you organise what you have studied so that it all makes better sense, you will be able to remember more of it. You can organise it by linking together the main ideas. Remembering one idea will help you remember another. We will suggest ways of doing this later.
- Improve your understanding
If you can improve your understanding of the important underlying ideas in biology, you will be able to remember more of the details.
Splitting the work into chunks
It is very much up to you how you do this. For example, you might like to split all of your biology up according to the arrangement of your notes or your file – the chunks in which you were taught. Or you might like to use the syllabus and split this up into chunks. Or you might do it using groups of chapters in your textbook. Just doing this splitting exercise will help you to learn, because it makes you think about the subject as a whole.
Your Biology work has been “chunked” for you already in the revision outline document you were sent.
Methods of summarising
Topic headings and key words
It is worth making a list of individual topics with minimal details under each heading; simply key words and key facts, with any relevant equations, units etc. If you were looking at a chunk on Respiration your list or flash cards might look something like this:
Respiration
release of energy from nutrients in a cell – oxidation of glucose
happens in all cells
Aerobic respiration
oxygen combined with glucose
glucose + oxygen carbon dioxide + water (what’s the symbol equation?)
lots of energy released
Anaerobic respiration
glucose broken down without oxygen
glucose lactic acid (humans)
glucose ethanol + carbon dioxide (yeast and plants)
less energy released than with aerobic respiration
used in brewing and bread-making
Gas exchange
diffusion of oxygen into and carbon dioxide out of an organism
gas exchange surfaces – thin, large surface area, good blood supply
human gas exchange system – trachea, larynx, bronchus, bronchioles, alveoli, lungs, pleural membranes diaphragm, intercostal muscles
labelling these on a diagram
Breathing
breathing in – diaphragm and external intercostal muscles contract
breathing out – both sets of muscles relax
contraction of muscles pulls diaphragm down and rib cage up – increases volume in thorax
this produces a lower pressure so air moves in from higher pressure outside
and so on…
The process of doing this summary is a really good way of getting your brain to think hard about what you need to know, which in itself is very useful revision. It's much better than just learning things from a revision guide, where someone else has done the summarising.
Mind threads
In science there are often threads that run through large sections, where a true understanding can only be gained by seeing the thing as a whole. By drawing a simple diagram we can get a complete visual picture, which will help your understanding as well as your memory. Sometimes these threads will cover more than one of our chunks. For example, think about how muscle contraction links up with respiration, breathing and heart rate:
You could make even more links than this. For example, you could include breathing rate and temperature regulation – because muscle contraction generates heat – and the way that extra carbon dioxide in the blood causes an increase in breathing rate. You could include anaerobic respiration, and how glucose gets into the blood (diet and digestion link in here). And what about adrenaline?
The most useful thing about these mind thread diagrams is the process of putting them together. Making your brain work out the links will help you to remember the information.
How long should I spend revising?
You are far better off doing a sensible amount of quality revision than hour after hour of meaningless reading. Lots of people find they cannot concentrate for periods of much more than 20 minutes. If that is you, then take a short break every 20 minutes; make a cup of tea or get some fresh air for a few minutes before going back to your work.
After about an hour and a half take a longer break of at least fifteen minutes, and do something completely different. Other people find they work best by settling down to concentrate for a longer period – say 45 minutes – when they think only about their work and nothing else, and then take a longer break.
If you have done the preparatory work described above, you should not need to spend hours cramming the night before. All you should need to do is a quick run through the basics and a check on anything that you are unsure of. That way, you can get to bed early and arrive at the examination room refreshed and ready to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding.
Where should I do my revision?
Ideally you should have your own private space where you can work undisturbed. If you are unable to find your own private space, find somewhere without any immediate distractions (such as a television). Some people like to play music as they work – others don’t. If you do, make sure you are concentrating on your work, not the music!
Some important points to remember
- Make your revision active. You should always be doing something active to force your brain to work. Just staring at notes or the textbook is no good.
- Keep fit. Take exercise. Eat healthily. Take breaks to do things you enjoy. Try not to worry.