[louise_williamson]

Hi

I'm just wondering how your teachers are getting you to learn the notes for the exam? My notes are simply a set of 20 essays that we have to learn off by heart! I don't know if i'm being awkward here but it is physically impossible for me to learn the essays all off by heart - they are like 1,500 words long each!! Any other suggestions as to how i can learn it? Not getting anywhere - mock tomorrow (failing) - and times kinda running out!

HELP PLEASE

[MrJohnDClare]

Sounds like it's a strategy to try to help you at the last minute because you don't know the stuff well enough - so he's written down everything you need to know and told you to learn it.

Also, you have to marvel at the dedication of the teacher, to sit down and write all those essays.

So I'm on the teacher's side a bit here - pfcourse you can't learn then by rote, but on a practical basis, if that the body of information you;ve got to learn, you gotta learn it.
Seems like a no-brainer to me,

Sit down with the first essay and a pen-and-a-piece-of-paper.
Copy the title of the first essay onto the paper.
Read the essay, making notes paragraph by paragraph - every time you meet a significant word, write it down on your paper.
Leave gaps in between the paragraphs.
Then REVIEW - go through your notes, using your blocks of words to remember more-or-less what the essay said.
If you can't, you can cheat by looking at the original essay.
Keep reviewing until you can do this fluently.

Go onto the next essay.

You won;t have time to do this before the mock, but you WILL have time to do it before the exam.

I think my main message is that there's no shortcut here - you gotta earn what you gotta learn, and you gotta get on with it sort of NOW, because time is running out.