I've been studying English for 10 years (and I also studied biology) and every time I have to sit for an exam I go through the same stages: the planning stage, the re-reading stage, the “I do not even know what I don’t know” stage, the “I’m going to fail” stage and finally, the “We have a make-up anyway” stage. I should be used to exams by now, but, if truth be told, I am not. Sometimes I think I am not going to be able to study everything (even if I have a month to do it).
In secondary school, I used to study everything by heart, and that helped me. The thing is, there are some subjects that you cannot study only by heart (Hello, Maths, Physics, and Chemistry) you need to find another way to do it. Apart from that, the problem with studying by heart is that if you forget a word of a definition, you forget everything.
A technique that I use a lot is to tell everything I’ve studied to another person. I have 5 brothers, so if I have to suffer for my exams, they must do it too (that’s what younger brothers are for). I try to explain everything I know about the topic. When I started studying English everything change because they don’t understand the language. So, I imagine myself in front of a lot of people who really want to know everything about The French Revolution and its stages. I have imaginary people asking questions about the different topics. Did that help me? Of course, it did.
Get together with friends for a study session never work for me. I know a lot of people learn a lot by studying with friends but I just can’t. I need to study alone and then yes, with a nice cup of tea or milkshake in between, I can sit in a round of questions and answers with my friends.
I don’t think an exam can tell you how much a person knows about something but you know…life. I used to worry a lot about my exams at the point of getting ill because of them. Now, I see them as part of the process of learning. I plan my time to study and to relax. I read everything before my lessons, I ask everything I don’t understand, and I prepare all the summaries beforehand.
After the exam, there’s nothing I can do, so I try to relax by eating chocolate, watching a Harry Potter marathon or listening to Scottish music. My motto now is “exams and grades are temporary, but education is permanent.”
