Most revision is re-reading, and re-reading is close to the least effective option available. It feels good because familiarity is mistaken for knowledge — and that mistake is only discovered in the exam.
Recognition is not recall
Reading a page again produces the sensation of knowing it. But the exam does not offer the page; it offers a question and four options. If you have only ever practised recognising the material, that is the only thing you have practised.
The test is simple: close the book and say what was on the page. The gap between what you expected to remember and what you can produce is usually uncomfortable, and is the entire point.
Retrieval practice, concretely
- Read the chapter once.
- Close it. Write everything you can remember.
- Open it and mark what you missed.
- Reread only the missed parts.
- Repeat in two days, then a week, then a fortnight.
Step two is unpleasant the first few times. That discomfort is the difference between the methods.
Spacing beats cramming, reliably
Four separate one-hour sessions across two weeks produce better retention than four consecutive hours, even though the total time is identical. The forgetting between sessions is not wasted — recovering the material is what strengthens it.
This means a revision schedule has to be planned in advance. Revision that happens "when there is time" happens in one block, which is the weak version.
Mix topics rather than blocking them
Practising thirty questions from one chapter is easier and less useful than thirty mixed questions. Blocked practice lets you apply the same method repeatedly without deciding which method applies — and deciding is the skill the exam tests.
What to keep
- An error log — every confident mistake and its cause.
- One-page summaries, written by you, per chapter.
- A list of what you could not recall in each retrieval session, which is your real revision queue.
Notes copied from a book are not revision. Notes reconstructed from memory are.