The word revision used to evoke in me (and I am sure many of you) the following thoughts – ‘revision is so boring’, ‘why do we have to revise….we have done the work already!’, ‘yay…we have half an hour for revision, I can practice my drawings instead.’
However, when my husband introduced me to the world of memory, the word REVISION was used A LOT. It was an action that was revered and of utmost importance! In fact, revision, carried out correctly, was essential in every event. If one did not revise often, one had no chance of remembering anything!
3 Reasons Why Revision is Important
1. The more your brain sees something, the more it trusts that what it sees is important.
2. Revision, done correctly, can trick your brain into believing that what you are learning is in fact exciting and wonderful! By using a strategy, one tricks their brain into believing that this information is of utmost importance!
3. Revision will help increase one’s confidence and reduce anxiety.
The key point here is that revision always needs to be DONE CORRECTLY.
3 Revision Tips
1. FIND A MEMORY TECHNIQUE THAT WORKS: Before revising one needs to first learn about long term memory and the various strategies that top memory competitors use to store information, e.g. the Roman Room. Once these have been put in place, one can revise information that has been stored correctly to long-term memory.
2. BEGIN EARLY AND BE CONSISTENT: The earlier you start with summarising your information and storing it to memory, the more prepared you will be. This way you can revise the content consistently as well as often!
3. REVISE OFTEN: There are certain guidelines for frequency of revision, depending on what type of method one uses, as well as the type of information stored.
Some more handy tips that can help make your revision more exciting can be read in this article: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/advice/5-revision-tips-help-you-ace-exam-season-plus-7-more-unusual-approaches.
Kath Denholm is a speech therapist and owner and founder of Little Genius Puppets, an online educational programme teaching young children to identify key information and take it to long-term memory. Visit her website for more information: www.geniusseries.com/memory-training-3.