Exam Literacy

In Exam Literacy: A guide to doing what works (and not what doesn't) to better prepare students for exams, Jake Hunton focuses on the latest cognitive research into revision techniques and delivers proven strategies which actually work.

Foreword by Professor John Dunlosky.

 

‘Read, highlight, reread, repeat …' – if such a revision cycle sounds all too wearily familiar, you and your students need a better route to exam success. And in light of the recent decision to make all subjects at GCSE linear, so that students will be tested in one-off sittings, it will be even more important that students are well equipped to acquire and recall key content ahead of their exams.

In this wide-ranging guide to effective exam preparation, Jake Hunton casts a careful eye over a wide range of research into revision techniques and details the strategies which have been proven to deliver the best results. With plenty of practical suggestions and subject-specific examples, Exam Literacy provides teachers with user-friendly advice on how they can make the content they cover stick, and shares up-to-date, evidence-based information on:

The nature of learning and the various types of memory.

How to improve students' retention of knowledge and recall of content.

Why popular revision techniques, such as rereading, highlighting and summarising,may not be as effective as you think.

How revision strategies that have been identified as being more effective – such as interleaving, elaborative interrogation, self-explanation and retrieval practice – can be embedded into day-to-day teaching.

How students can be encouraged to make use of these winning strategies when revising independently.

 

The book also shows how the proven revision strategies which Jake details could work alongside subject content, and explores the overlap between the use of revision strategies in and out the classroom – suggesting ways to fill any learning gaps. As an additional focus, Jake discusses why teachers may be better off delivering their own revision (or ‘revisiting') strategies as part of the normal flow of their teaching of the curriculum rather than resorting to after-school revision sessions or outsourcing to revision companies.

Suitable for all teachers looking to improve their students' exam results.

Contents include:

Part 1: The Debate

1. Testing and Revising: The Evidence

2. Memory and Forgetting

3. What Might Not Work As Well

4. What Might Work Better

 

Part 2: The Strategies

Elaborative Interrogation

Self-Explanation

Practice Testing/Retrieval Practice

Interleaving and Distributed Practice