“I did revise… it just didn’t go in!” Sound familiar?

What about “I turned over the exam paper and my mind just went blank…”

It’s worrying to feel like everything you’re doing to prepare for an exam somehow isn’t working. But you can harness the science behind how memory works to make your revision more effective.

Engage and rephrase

Going through a page of notes with a few different coloured pens, highlighting everything you think could be important, might seem an obvious way to revise a topic. But this is what’s known as passive learning. There’s little requirement for you to process the information and you don’t have to think too much. You might well step away from your desk with no memory of anything you’ve highlighted.

You don’t have to discard the highlighters entirely, though. There’s a better way to do this. Limit yourself to three or four highlights a page. Read the whole page first, then go back and highlight the three points you think are the most important. Now you’re comparing pieces of information – and actually thinking about what you’re reading.

As this requires a greater depth of thought you are more likely to be able to remember this information that simply reading it alone. Avoid passive learning, be more active in your approach and you will remember more.

When you have identified the core points, the next step is to then write these down in your own words. The process of rephrasing what you’ve read increases the depth of processing and increases your likelihood of recalling it.

Make it interesting

Hopefully the information that you need to remember is interesting to you. This is good – interest leads to motivation and motivation leads to better understanding, which leads to better memory. Foster your curiosity: this will enable you to engage with the material, and motivate you to succeed.

But revising can be a drag, and you may well be trying to commit things to memory that you aren’t that engaged with. If this is the case, you can add interest yourself – such as by using stories, rhymes and acronyms that catch your imagination.

For instance, you might struggle to fix the order of the planets in the solar system in your brain. Is Uranus closer to the Sun than Neptune, or the other way around? But it could be easier to remember that “my very energetic monkey just served us noodles” – the first letter of each word being the same as a planet, and showing the order.

Embellish the information

Don’t just read or make notes on the things you need to learn. It’s worth taking the time to do more – it’ll help fix the information in your brain.

A research study found that people remembered nearly a third more information when they doodled while listening than if they just listened. So if you’re listening to a revision audiobook or watching an online lecture, doodle while you do it. Doodles that relate to the content will improve your recall.

If you’re musical, turn your revision notes into a song. Melodies provide structure, which helps chunk information into meaningful units.

Another great option is to gamify your revision. An old board game with question cards from a charity shop – maybe Trivial Pursuit – can be repurposed to your revision needs. Setting questions will help you process the information, and playing the game with friends studying the same subject consolidates this learning. You might even have fun (and that enjoyment will help your memory, too).

Keep it manageable

Long, constant revision using the same approach to the same material is unlikely to be successful. Divide your time across the day and plan different activities and approaches to revision.

We’re more likely to remember the first pieces of information and the last pieces of information that we read or learn in a study session. Use this to your advantage – have lots of breaks, so you have lots of starts and lots of endings. Start each revision session with something really important, and end with a summary. Then the important parts and the summaries will be the elements that you are most likely to remember.

You can do it!

You’ll no doubt have heard about the power of mental rehearsal and the strength of visualisation for success. But this doesn’t mean just daydreaming about getting top marks. What does help is thinking about the processes that you need to engage in to achieve success.

Think about the good things you will experience when you achieve your goal, how you are going to achieve this and record your progress towards it. Creating a plan, telling people about your goals, and rewarding yourself for each goal achieved have all been shown to foster success.