I have a exam coming up soon which consists of four essays with questions unseen. I've picked the topics I think (hope!!) will come up but I'm having difficulty with revision because each subtopic is so expansive. I have nine subtopics to study for the one exam so I'm a little panicked.
Has anyone else ever had to do essay examinations? How did you tackle revision, so to speak, so that the needed information was there in your head and at the same time allowing you to achieve a good mark?
My degree course was based entirely around essays at exam time. Each week we'd cover a topic in the lecture and seminar and we knew some of them were going to appear in the exam. The good thing was that the same topics were also the stuff of essays, so we got together and photocopied each others essays, so each of us had a ready-made argument and essay for several of the topics, and this covered enough to ensure that what we had would surely appear in the exam. If you course is similar I'd suggest the same.
Eilidh is a wonderful name by the way, how is it correctly pronounced? Is it something like Ay-lee? Excuse me English ignorance; learning the Celtic tongues is on my to-do list
I hated exams myself, but as you hear of so many people trying to cramb in so much at last minute, what I tend to do is remember all the easy stuff, and then concerntrate on the harder stuff before the exam.
even if it means writing things out like 50 times, I find that writing stuff out, is better than just sitting there, and reading it, as it takes more concerntration to write it by hand. and tends to stick a bit better.
I wouldn't recommend writing everything out though, as it would probably take 500 times longer than you got.
Have you tried mind-mapping at all? It's very useful for subjects that are expansive likes yours is. Basically you need to pick out the most central topic of each sub-topic and then put all the points you can think of around it and some mroe points around them. It helps me aout with essay type questions a great deal if I've given myself time to do a quick one.
Thank you for the suggestions I've taken them all on board. I discovered a book relevant to my course which has strategies for essay-type examinations. Mind-mapping is definately something I'm going to use and hopefully it will work. My exam is seven weeks away so hopefully by the time the exam comes around I will know something.
Thank you again!!!
Dan, you're spot on, usually no one gets it right!
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