Help! I’m really worried about these exams!

My general advice is given in ten quick points below.

But you also need to be aware – I’ve designed a whole online revision course this year (2018) for the new spec, with my colleagues Andrew and Daniella, both Heads of Department and highly experienced. You can access this for just £4.99 a paper (which you have to admit is a very low price!!!). Click here.

In this course we go through the whole syllabus step by step in brief presentations, one on each section, lasting around 10 minutes. There is a downloadable set of notes with exercises which build essay-writing skills step by step.

You can therefore ‘pick and mix’ by choosing which parts you want to strengthen (or perhaps feel you don’t understand). Try doing some timed essays. Maybe do it with a friend, in pairs, and discuss your answers to the exercises.

Apart from this – here’s my general advice on revision.

1. Prepare your own summary sheets. There’s nothing like filtering stuff through your own brain. So bring together your textbook, articles from here, my handouts and powerpoints and try to organise your thoughts. In one sentence, what is this philosopher on about?

2. Don’t learn model answers! You need to respond to the question that is set before you. .

3. Attack the question! In the new A level the marks are allocated according to AO1 criteria (knowledge and understanding maximum 16/40) and AO2 (analysis and evaluation maximum 24/40), so you need to be aggressive and dismember the question and expose the falsity/inadequacy of the generalisation or clarify the issues underlying it. If you’re not sure what it’s driving on about, then one technique I have used in the past is to ask three questions about the question. You can than spend one or two paragraphs answering your own take on what’s being asked.

4. Use your own examples. Ground your discussion in something – films, the newspaper, your own experience. Moral dilemmas throw up problems and issues for all theories. So expose those problems. See some extracts on this site for ideas.

5. Learn some quotes – short ones from philosophers and academics. If you’re stuck, many of my topic areas have lists of quotes or strengths/weaknesses quoting learned people. Bounce off these ideas – it makes for more interesting reading. But don’t evaluate by listing strengths and weaknesses – you need instead to evaluate as you go along by pointing out assumptions, difficulties, counter-arguments.

6. Structure your thoughts! So many essays I read ramble around in a kind of free association piling in as much as you’ve ever learnt on this topic. This is folly! When you sit in the exam and see the question , reflect for a few moments and try to sketch out your answer. Write your conclusion first. If you don’t know what it is, then it’s not going to be a very good essay! Your conclusion is what I call your thesis statement (a one-line summary of your position).

7. Organise yourself now! You have the whole holidays! Get a revision plan together. Reward yourself with little things (chocolate/music/a walk) as you achieve something. The OCR spec is now reproduced section by section on the peped site – it’s the first document in any section. Make sure you look at it!!

8. Work out your best learning style. For example, I’m a visual learner so I like mind maps stuck on the wall which I can meditate on. Your style may be different.

9. Maintain variety. Use friends. Revise together. Test each other. Try something different.

10. Interact with your teacher. It’s much better to decide you don’t understand something specific about Kant than to say “I just don’t get Kant”. My final tip: when you understand the worldview and historical context of these major thinkers you understand a lot about them. So what is the “Enlightenment”? (Incidentally – try placing your mouse on the dotted line under a word eg Enlightenment- the Glossary definition will come up – quick and useful)

11. And finally…don’t forget to practise timed essays. You have maximum 40 minutes per question and you need to answer three questions out of four in two hours. This means you won’t be able to ‘question spot’ very effectively and you will need a broad knowledge of the specification. I’m expecting however that the questions will be fairly straightforward and the next document on this site is a list of possible questions. Make sure you can answer the ones you’re not too sure about!!

Good luck! That’s me!