5 Unique Revision Techniques
So we’ve all heard of the standard revision advice. Listen in class. Do all your homework. Do all the past papers. However, you may want something new and unique which might help you to fly high above everyone else. So we’ve done the courtesy and gathered some novel, unique revision tips that you may never have heard. You don’t have to do all of them but just use this as inspiration.
1) Use Notion
Notion is an app that is amazing for students. It has a great feature which enables you to toggle content helping you to actively remember things rather than just reading your notes.
It is the perfect app for both taking notes and planning for your exams. If you want to learn more then check out this excellent video by Ali Abdaal explaining what it’s all about!
2) Teach your parents (or anyone who will listen)
Teaching is an excellent way to revise. Sit down with your parents for 20 minutes every day before your exams and explain one topic from start to end. Pretend as if you’re a teacher and make sure they ask you questions.
This will help you find out the weak spots in your knowledge.
Don’t worry if you embarrass yourself. It’s all part of the learning process!
3) Write down questions with no answers
By writing down questions for a topic as you go through a textbook you not only save time by now not writing the answers but you enable active recall to constantly take place.
For example, if you are going to be using Notion to take notes (which I highly recommend) then you don’t need to write any detailed explanation of your notes.
All you can do is take a picture of the text/lecture or even link a Wikipedia article.
When you review your notes you’ll see a bunch of questions which you can answer one by one.
As we know, the best way of revising is by actively retrieving things from your brain (essentially just testing yourself). Therefore when you go through these questions you will be using one of the best ways to revise while having saved yourself a huge amount of time with not writing the answers!
See my blog post on active recall and spaced repetition.
4) Talk nonsense
Now, this may be on the strange side but I promise it will help out hugely for those facts that you just can’t seem to remember.
All you do is you make up a word or sentence that you link with that particular fact.
For example, let’s say you need to remember “animal cells don’t have cell walls”.
You could say “Animals hate cages, especially walls made of brick”. This is a random sentence which helps you remember animal cells don’t have cell walls (as “walls of brick” refers to “cell walls”)
Rather than brute memorising the sentence “animal cells don’t have cell walls”, you memorise this sentence and relate it to the original fact.
You can take this to the next level and start making up words.
For example in my medical school exams, I used the word BARFISP to memorise the side effects of EPO therapy.
It stuck because of how weird it was!
You said you wanted unique revision tips and although this is a strange one, if done properly you can remember things for a long time.
5) Create a unique game
This one requires a bit of effort however it would be well worth it.
Get your friends together and prepare a bunch of questions. Every time someone gets a question wrong they have to complete a dare.
This makes studying fun and will help you to cover a lot more content.
You could get creative with this and make all sorts of games.
Not only will you be having fun but you’ll be learning at the same time!
There is nothing more unique than revising using a game!
