Top 10 tips for avoiding exam stress revisionworld.co.uk

Tip 1 - Revision Timetable Just do it. Don’t argue. Don’t procrastinate. Do it on the first day Agree it with your parents.

Tip 2 - Horrible Subjects Revise the subjects you hate in the morning Successful people in all walks of life attribute their success to one simple technique: if you have a set of jobs to do, you do the most difficult thing, the thing you hate, first.

Tip 3 – Take a break Everyone needs time off, and it’s a bad idea to abandon your social life and sporting activities, but for a period near the examinations, you may need to cut down. Schedule these activities into your revision timetable, as well as short breaks between study e.g. 10 mins on Facebook.

Tip 4- Reading is Useless……..? DON’T….just sit with a boring textbook willing the information to go into your head. DO….do something with the information: take notes underline, highlight and colour code do drawings or mind maps put pieces of information into table form ask someone to test you practice past papers

Tip 5 - Exam Time Management Make sure you spend the most time on the questions that have the most marks. Often these are the last ones, and there is a very solid argument for looking at the paper first, seeing which questions carry the fat marks, and doing these first.

Tip 6 – Practice Past Papers The best way to prepare for the real thing: Test your time management. Mark against the actual mark scheme. Learn how to give good answers. Familiarise yourself with the layout.

Tip 7 - Check your paper If an exam is one-and-a-half hours long, you have exactly one-and-a-half hours to squeeze every mark you can out of it. If you find yourself towards the end of an exam, lounging in your chair trying to catch your mate’s attention in the next row, wake up! You are sabotaging your own chances. There is only one mark’s difference between a ‘C’ and a ‘D’, an ‘A’ and an ‘A*’. Checking your paper at the end could be the thing that gives you that one, crucial mark.

Tip 8 - Use positive self-talk People who tell themselves they can’t do things invariably find that they are right. People who tell themselves they can are right too. During your revision and during the exam itself, keep telling yourself, “I can do this.” You’ll find you can.

Tip 9 - Answer the question Make sure you answer the question in front of you, not some other question you’ve made up, because that question is asking you for things you know. Do this by underlining three key words per question and checking with yourself that you know – exactly - what is being asked for.

Tip 10 - Do your best That’s all you should ask of yourself. If, at the end of the day, you are able to honestly say to yourself that have done your best, you have a right to be happy with yourself no matter what the grade. No one has any right to ask any more of you. Nor will they.

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