igcse studyblr!

thank you @alpenglow-fantasies for the ask!

just in time for revision, below are a few tips and methods for studying for igcse exams!

studying tips:

don't listen to music with lyrics, unless you have tested and proven that it is more effective for you. try to avoid music with a distinct rhythm/beat as well, as both lyrics and strong rhythm takes your concentration away from the work you are doing. there are exceptions in different people, but unless you have proven yourself to be of exception, try to avoid lyrics/rhythm in music. an alternative choice in music could be (mellow) classical music or any steady form of background noise. most study playlists on 8tracks work well, but make sure it helps your productivity before you

study somewhere that isn't home. if you, like me, find it difficult to concentrate at times, study somewhere such as a cafe or the library. it's good to designate a time/place where you HAVE TO STUDY with minimal distraction (i find it helpful to bring my phone to search up any questions i have or use as a calculator for simple questions, but i know people who turn all mobile devices off to prevent distractions). basically sit somewhere you can't do anything else except for study, and you'll find yourself a lot more concentrated. take bathroom breaks and walk around, but don't use it as an excuse to catch up on social media or text a friend.

download online resources, so you don't have to access the internet while using it. this would be useful if you are easily distracted by social media or other internet/electronic device functions, or if you will be studying somewhere you know you will not have access to internet.

go through the same material more than once. if the subject requires lots of memorisation, like biology, don't take your ability to memorise a term that afternoon to be your ability to memorise that term in the exam. your brain forgets things that you don't use anymore to clear up memory capacity, and you will not fully memorise something unless you go back over the same material every so often. make a list of the topics you went through today, and start tomorrow with testing yourself on the knowledge on that list. revisit it every week, revisit it before the exam.

prioritise. at this point in the year, prioritising will probably be the most important thing you do. go through the topics you struggle with the most, and focus your revision on there first. prioritise your subjects as well - if you're sure you’ve grasped english literature, leave it alone until a few days before the exam to flip through your set text. focus your time and attention on those subjects and topics you are the most unsure of, and you will find your revision a lot more efficient and effective.

studying methods:

do past papers. when you take an exam like igcse, past papers are your bible. do them. worship them. take advantage of the fact that a similarly formatted exam is issued every year, and your exam this year will not vary too much from all past exams. this method may be difficult for newer courses such as computer science, but do as many past papers as you can. choose to do them under exam conditions to train your test taking and time management skills, or just do them as a casual exercise. some past paper resources: xtremempapers for cie, shawsonnotes for edexcel.

for science and maths subjects, make a formula list with the template here. this keeps all the things you need to memorise in one place, and makes it easier for testing. alternatively, you can make a deck of flash cards, but i personally find that fragmented pieces of information is hard to stick in my mind. if you are an audible learner, you may find it helpful to repeat a formula in your head over a period of time until when you are posed Force, you brain replies immediately with Mass times Acceleration.

go through your syllabus. i find this especially helpful with quantitative syllabuses such as science, geography, or business (and most other humanities subjects), as the syllabuses are specially phrased so you know exactly what you need to learn. i print out a copy of my syllabus, and write down my answers to the questions on the syllabus - 'the candidate needs to know the importance of diffusion in the human transportation system', and i write down all the reasons below it why diffusion is important.

this is a popular norm, but try not to uselessly highlight large chunks of your textbook. that does not help you remember information better. highlighting is intended to make certain pieces of information stand out, and if an entire paragraph or huge chunks of pages are highlighted, it isn't going to stand out from the rest. you might find it helpful to highlight certain keywords or very, very important statements that you need to memorise. otherwise, i tend to use highlighting with my syllabuses, by either working through the syllabus and highlighting everything i know or grow to know during my revision, or i highlight the topics i need to work on. for the latter method, an erasable highlighter could do you wonders, as you can erase every difficult topic as you revise and understand them better. another popular method is the red/amber/green color coding method.

many of my friends used a method that proved the most helpful (they got the best grades for mocks), but is also very time consuming. for every difficult topic in the syllabus, they wrote an a4 page of notes on it, from resources like the textbook, online, and class notes. this method is useful because a), writing information down helps you remember it as your brain remembers you registering and reworking the information in your mind into your own words and writing it out again, and b), these pages give you one solid sheet or binder you can take to revise anywhere, with all the information you need on one single sheet. this is more effective than a textbook because you can hold more useful information in the sheet and target the topics you have trouble with instead of taking an entire book with redundant information that you already know and are fairly confident in. if you are someone who is easily distracted by the internet, this could be a great alternative to online resources. if you take geography, these sheets could be useful to create for case studies.

and a last one that sounds obvious - ask your teachers! if you stumble across a question you don’t think you understand or if you come across a topic you’re not 100% sure about, go to a teacher. you are their priority right now, and i assure you, they will set everything aside to help you. if you have a subject teacher who is completely unhelpful, go to other teachers teaching that subject. they will also be willing to help - teachers love proactive students.