Re-vision – or vision?

It is always scary when you finally respond to the pressure of looming exams, dig out your notes and then realise that they are not as complete / helpful as they need to be!

Revision is meant to be exactly that – looking again at work previously covered. But what to do when you find yourself looking at material for the first time?

At this stage, your teachers simply won’t have time to be wading through the basics – their job now is to help you pull it all together. Luckily, there are many web resources such as Crossref-it.info that provide helpful summaries of texts, scene by scene, chapter by chapter so as to remind you of how events fit together. Good ones should also pose questions that focus your thinking about the text.

In the new The Winter’s Tale guide, for example, you will find sections that give an overview of individual characters, as well as linking themes and sequences of images – great help if you are time poor.

For higher A Level grades examiners want to see that you can draw all your knowledge together into a ‘wide-ranging’ answer – backed up by specific examples too of course.