How to revise: the revision techniques that actually work
How to revise for GCSE and A-level: active recall, blurting, the Feynman technique, spaced repetition, interleaving and past papers, and what the evidence says.
The best way to revise is to test yourself rather than reread. Close your notes and write down what you remember, answer flashcards, or do exam questions, then check and fix what you got wrong. Come back to each topic after a gap of a few days instead of finishing it in one sitting, and mix different topics in a session once you know the basics. Rereading and highlighting feel productive but do less than students expect.
What is the best way to revise?
Most revision advice comes down to one question: are you putting information into your head, or pulling it out? Reading, highlighting and copying notes put it in. Answering a question from memory pulls it out, and pulling it out is what the exam asks you to do. The psychologist John Dunlosky and his colleagues reviewed the research on ten common study strategies. Writing for teachers, he says they rated two as the most effective: practice testing and distributed practice, which means spreading study out over time. Interleaved practice, elaborative interrogation and self-explanation showed a lot of promise. Rereading, highlighting and summarising came out as less useful. None of the strong techniques needs special equipment. Each one is described below with a GCSE or A-level example, roughly in the order you would use them.
What is active recall?
Active recall means trying to remember something before you look at it. Researchers call it retrieval practice or practice testing. Flashcards, a blank-page brain dump, a practice question or explaining a topic out loud all count, as long as your notes are shut while you do it and you check afterwards. A well-known experiment by Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke, published in 2006, shows why it beats rereading. University students learned a short science passage. One group read it in four study periods. Another read it once and then took three recall tests, writing down what they could remember with no feedback. Five minutes later, the rereading group remembered more. A week later the result had flipped: the testing group recalled 61 per cent of the passage and the rereading group 40 per cent, even though the testing group had read it far fewer times. The same study found that the students who reread were the most confident they would remember the passage. That is the trap. Rereading makes material feel familiar, and familiar feels like learned. The study used university students, prose passages and a one-week test, so treat it as strong evidence for the principle rather than a precise prediction of your grade.
Blurting is the simplest form of active recall. It is a study habit rather than a research term, but it is a version of the free recall test used in the Roediger and Karpicke study. For example, in GCSE Biology write “cell transport” at the top of the page, then blurt diffusion, osmosis and active transport: definitions, examples and the factors that affect the rate. For A-level History, blurt the causes of one event with dates and evidence. The gaps you fill in afterwards are tomorrow's revision.
Pick one topic small enough to fit on a page, such as a subtopic from the specification.
Shut your notes and write everything you can remember for five to ten minutes: facts, key terms, diagrams, equations.
Open your notes and add what you missed or got wrong in a different colour.
Turn the corrections into flashcards or questions, and blurt the same topic again in a few days.
What is the Feynman technique?
The Feynman technique is a popular name for explaining a topic in plain words, as if to someone younger, to find out whether you really understand it. Where you stumble, reach for jargon or say “it just does”, you have found a gap. Go back to your notes, fix it, and explain again. It has not been tested under that name, but it is close to two strategies that have been. Dunlosky defines self-explanation as explaining how new information relates to what you already know, or explaining the steps you take in solving a problem, and elaborative interrogation as working out why a stated fact is true. He describes both as promising but in need of more evidence, and notes that students with no background knowledge of a topic may find elaborative interrogation difficult. So learn the basics first, then explain. Try it on a GCSE Chemistry question such as “why do ionic compounds conduct electricity when molten but not when solid?”, or on each line of a maths method: “I divide both sides by 3 because I want x on its own”. If you can explain why, not just what, you are ready for the questions that use the idea in an unfamiliar context.
How does spaced repetition work?
Spaced repetition is about timing. Instead of revising a topic once for three hours, you revise it for half an hour now and return to it after a gap, then a longer gap. Dunlosky's summary of the evidence is that students retain knowledge and skills for longer when they distribute their practice than when they mass it. He also notes that many students believe the opposite, which is why cramming is so common. There is no single correct schedule. A sensible rule of thumb is to come back to a topic the next day, then a few days later, then a week later, then every couple of weeks until the exam. Make the gap longer when you get it right and shorter when you do not. Flashcards suit this well: in a box, or in an app that brings back the cards you found hard sooner.
Interleaving means mixing different types of question in one session instead of doing twenty of the same kind in a row. Dunlosky describes it as able to improve achievement, especially in problem solving, but says it has been studied less than practice testing and spacing and the benefits do not extend to all subjects. It matters most in maths and the sciences. When every question on the sheet is about Pythagoras, you never practise the step the exam tests, which is deciding that this is a Pythagoras question. Once you can do a question type on its own, move to mixed sets that jump between topics. Your score will dip at first. That is the cost of practising the real skill.
How should you use past papers?
Past papers are practice testing in the exact format of the exam, so they belong in every revision plan. Use them by topic early on and as full timed papers closer to the exams. Mark strictly with the official mark scheme, sort every lost mark by cause, such as a gap in knowledge, misreading the question or missing a step, then fix the cause and redo the question a week later. Exam boards also publish examiners' reports, which comment on how candidates performed and where answers could be improved. Ask your teacher for the report that goes with a paper you have done. Use your score as a rough guide only: Ofqual explains that new grade boundaries are set each year to reflect the difficulty of each paper.
You revise maths by doing maths. Reading worked examples feels useful but builds little on its own. Find your weak topics with a past paper, learn each method from one clear example, cover it and reproduce it, then do questions without looking back. Once a topic is secure, mix it with others. Keep a list of your mistakes and redo those questions from scratch a week later.
Start from your exam board's specification, not the textbook. It lists every topic you can be examined on. Go through it and mark each topic red, amber or green based on evidence, such as a test score, rather than a feeling. Red topics get your best time. Then run the same loop every week: learn or repair a topic from your notes, test yourself on it, check and correct, and come back to it after a gap. Sessions of 30 to 45 minutes with a specific task, such as “blurt osmosis, then do five exam questions on it”, are easier to start and to check than a vague “do biology”. As the exams get closer, shift the mix from learning towards timed past-paper questions.
Rereading is the most common one. Dunlosky says it has inconsistent effects and that any benefit over a single reading may not last. Highlighting is similar: it can be a first step in picking out what matters, but it is not learning on its own. Summarising can help, but he notes that students who find it hard to write good summaries may need a lot of help before it pays off. This does not mean you should never read your notes or make them. Notes are how you understand a topic the first time. The mistake is to keep polishing them instead of testing yourself on them. If a session ends with neat notes and no questions answered, it was probably mostly input.
What other study tips actually help?
Protect sleep. The NHS says most teenagers need 8 to 10 hours a night, and suggests allowing about half an hour to wind down between studying or screens and going to bed. Revision done at midnight instead of sleeping is poor value. Make starting easy. Write tomorrow's first task before you stop today, so you sit down and begin rather than spend ten minutes deciding. Put your phone in another room during a session and check it in the break. Use short sessions with a clear finish line, and stop when the task is done rather than when the clock says so.
John Dunlosky, “Strengthening the Student Toolbox”, American Educator (2013): A cognitive psychologist's review of which study strategies work: practice testing, distributed practice and interleaving, and why rereading and highlighting do less than students expect. Henry L. Roediger III and Jeffrey D. Karpicke, “Test-Enhanced Learning: Taking Memory Tests Improves Long-Term Retention”, Psychological Science (2006): Two experiments with university students: after a week, students who had tested themselves on a prose passage recalled more than students who had reread it. OCR: examiners' reports: What examiner reports contain and when OCR releases them. Ofqual: GCSE 9 to 1 grade scale explained: How the numbered grades work and why grade boundaries are set fresh each year. NHS: help your child beat exam stress: NHS advice for parents on sleep, food, pressure, signs of stress and when to get help.
Practice testing, in any form that makes you recall from memory, is the best supported, alongside spreading your study out over time. Combining the two, by testing yourself on a topic and then testing yourself on it again a few days later, is the core of good revision.
Is the blurting method good for GCSE revision?
Yes, as long as you check afterwards. Blurting is a quick way to see what you can recall without help, and the corrections show you exactly what to revise next. It works best on one small topic at a time, repeated after a few days.
Does the Feynman technique work?
It has not been tested under that name, but it is close to self-explanation and elaborative interrogation, which research reviews describe as promising. It is most useful once you know the basics of a topic and want to check that you understand why, not just what.
How many hours a day should I revise?
There is no official number. What you do in the time matters more than the total: an hour spent testing yourself and fixing mistakes is worth more than an hour of rereading. Start with a realistic amount you can keep up most days, and protect sleep.
Are mind maps a good way to revise?
Making a mind map while looking at your notes is mostly copying. Drawing one from memory and then checking it against your notes is a form of active recall, which is far more useful.
I have left revision late. What should I do?
Use the same methods with tighter priorities. Do a past paper or a topic test in each subject to find the biggest gaps, spend most of your time testing yourself on those, and still sleep properly. Short spaced sessions over a few weeks will do more than a few all-nighters.