Revision Methods for GCSE/IGCSE English Language

When revision seems rather overwhelming or a long task, it can put students off starting. Our tutor, Elizabeth, has put together some methods to make revision more manageable.

5+10 Revision

For just 5 minutes or 10 minutes a day, you can build your future towards ambitiously aiming and gaining the GCSE grades you want to achieve.

Tasks for 5 minutes

• Complete shorter comprehension style questions
• Read text and look up vocabulary
• Choose quotes
• Annotate language and/or structural techniques and/or tone
• Write down inferences
• Analyse focus
• Specify your own opinion
• Check spelling, grammar, punctuation

Tasks for 10 minutes for two texts

• Read texts and look up vocabulary
• Compare texts, summarising similarities or differences
• Compare and evaluate the attitudes and perspectives of the writers
• Choose quotes
• Annotate language and/or structural techniques
• Write down inferences
• Identify audience, purpose and form and plan your response
• Build characterisation, atmosphere, place, plot, structure and suspense
• Construct your line of argumentation
• Use a wide range of punctuation, sentence forms, ambitious vocabulary, language and structural techniques
• Check spelling, grammar, punctuation

Whole Questions

For the completion of whole questions, you should spend 15-25 minutes on the longer questions, depending on your exam board, and 45 minutes on the writing tasks. For the CIE Board, you can spend 1 hour on the writing tasks.

However, before you can do that, you need to get your answers right. So don’t time yourself at the beginning.

Spacing

One revision strategy is to space your learning first. When you are really confident with this approach, you can start interleaving your learning and timing yourself.

The spacing effect was first introduced in 1885 by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus who found that we tend to forget information if we only learn it once. Since then, research has consistently proved the power of methodically spacing out your learning where information is reviewed over a period of time.

To remember something does take time and stresses the need to revisit the learning regularly so that spacing allows the brain to process and solidify the information, which enables you to transfer it into your long-term memory.

An Example Timetable for Spacing the English Language Papers

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Read text and look up vocabulary for 1 or 2 Texts   5 min. or 10 min.	Choose quotes for question for 1 or 2 Texts   5 min. or 10 min.	Annotate language and/or structural techniques for 1 or 2 Texts 5 min. or 10 min.	Write down inferences for 1 or 2 Texts     5 min. or 10 min.	Write up whole question for 1 or 2 Texts
Complete for all the other questions and repeat if necessary

 

Interleaving

Interleaving mixes up the type of questions, which helps to cement the knowledge because it makes the brain work harder to recall prior learning and determine how to answer the different types of questions.

Thus it enhances long-term retention and results in an increased ability to remember and apply learned knowledge. It promotes a deeper understanding of the material and also developed problem-solving abilities so that you make meaningful associations.                                            It helps you to notice the similarities, differences and connections between questions, which will encourage you to analyse the questions in depth.

An Example Timetable for Interleaving and Timing Yourself

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
2 Questions	2 Questions	2 Questions	2 Questions	2 Questions	2 Questions (if needed)
Repeat every week until the exam

 

The Pomodoro Method: Make sure you take a break between each question for 20-30 minutes.

The Leitner System

One way to learn the knowledge for both English Language papers is to use The Leitner System by studying with flashcards that use spaced and interleaved repetition to help you learn and retain information.

For each review session you are actively involved to recall the information, which strengthens your memory and subsequent retrieval of the information.  You gain a better understanding of the learning material and thus it makes learning less daunting and increases your motivation to learn.

Materials: index cards, pen, boxes

Method:

• Cards are sorted into boxes based on how well you know the material.
• Cards that are answered correctly move to boxes that you review less often
• Incorrect cards move back to the first box for more frequent review.

For example: You could use three boxes labelled ‘Every Day’, ‘Every Other Day’ and ‘Once A Week’.

Start with Box 1:

• Review each flashcard in the box.
• If you answer correctly, move it to Box 2.
• If you answer incorrectly, it stays in Box 1.

Box 2:Review each flashcard in the box.

• If you answer correctly, move it to the next box to Box 3
• If you answer incorrectly, move it all the way backto Box 1.

• Make sure you review each box regularly according to their assigned frequency.
• If you forget a concept on a card from a later box, move it back to an earlier box to review again.

Try all or any of these techniques and see which works best for you.