[Celyn]

Hey there,

I’m sorry to hear that you are struggling with revision and exams. They can be hard even at the best of times, but there’s no need to call yourself stupid, dumb or compare yourself to your sister. You are not those things, and while you may struggle with some exams, I’m sure you have other talents that you can be proud of!

Firstly, it can help to look at each subject individually, and write down a list of all the topics within the subject. If there are particular topics you don’t feel confident in, you can highlight them. Equally, if your teacher thinks a particular topic might come up in an exam, highlight those ones too. The topics you have highlighted will require more time spent on revision, even though you have to revise all the other topics too. This gives you a handy checklist, and allows you to better organise your time when revising. Also, try to dedicate certain days to revising certain subjects, by picking one or two subjects to focus on e.g. Maths and English on a Monday, French on a Tuesday, History on Wednesday etc. Rather than trying to do all subjects every night.

It also sounds like you find it difficult to remember things. I also took French and History GCSEs and unlike other subjects where you have to remember how to work things out, these subjects require you to remember specific facts, names, places and dates and with French, grammar, vocabulary and word order. These things require different parts of your brain, as opposed to working a maths problem out. How have you been revising? It can be helpful to think about the ways that you prefer to learn, and try to use that for your revision sessions. There is a theory that people have different learning ‘styles’ such as visual, auditory and kinaesthetic (there are more). For visual learners, colours, pictures, diagrams and mind maps can help when trying to remember things. For auditory, videos, podcasts, recording yourself reading notes and playing them back, are good methods. Kinaesthetic learners prefer doing things, and movement, so exercising when revising, and role playing can be helpful. You can also ask your tutor what they recommend you do, or ask if they could use some of these methods with you when you are having a tutoring session. My style was more towards writing, so I would summarise my work into notes and write them out over and over again. It was boring, but it helped me to remember things.

In general, it can help to keep revision sessions short, for example 20-30 minutes of revision with a break, followed by another 20-30 minutes. This helps to keep you motivated, rather than get bored. Set realistic goals for each revision session and reward yourself when you reach the goals. Also, testing yourself, either by doing past papers, or getting friends and family to read out questions to you can help. Making use of the Bitesize website can also help too.

It can be hard when you have picked subjects that you aren’t too interested in. Perhaps if you have a goal in mind to improve your grades, then you could reward yourself? This can help as it gives you something to focus on and work towards, even if you don’t really enjoy the subject. As for the science, is it possible to ask your teachers to swap to the core science?

Also, don’t forget that your teachers want to help you. If you are finding things difficult or are really struggling with your memory, try talking to a teacher about it, and perhaps they can help. Also, how are you with your tutor? If you find that you don’t particularly get on with your tutor, is possible to get a different one?

Hope this helps and best of luck with your exams