BIOLOGY TEACHING ORGANISATION

PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENT RECORD
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EXAMINATION AND STUDY SKILLS
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Check the list below. Use the links to find the resources. When you have attained those skills, record them in "MY PAR"

Examination and study skills:

• How to take effective and useful lecture notes (HELP)
• How to prepare and revise for examinations (HELP)
• How to find, and learn from, past papers (HELP)
• How to use your time during examinations (HELP)
• How to succeed in course assessments

Your main source of advice on these and other issues can be found at:
HOW TO SUCCEED IN EXAMS

You should also:

• Critically evaluate your exam performance/record at the end of each academic year and see how to improve it. Seek advice from your Director of Studies or the relevant Course Organiser.

You can find past examination papers for School of Biology courses. But you should note that we do not publish multiple-choice questions.

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Lectures and lecture notes

All lectures start promptly at 5 minutes past the hour, and should finish at 5 minutes to the hour, to provide time to get to your next lecture, practical or tutorial. You should aim always to be seated at 5 past the hour, or you could miss the important introductory remarks - the overview of what the lecturer wants you to gain from this lecture. Quite often, this can be a clue to the exam question!

During a lecture, a lecturer tells you what he or she thinks is most important about the topic you are studying. The approach will often differ from that of a specific textbook, being based on the lecturer's experience of different books, or of what students find hard to understand, or on his or her own specialist knowledge. Some lecturers will excite some students, but bore others; some will be admirably clear, but will not challenge you to think for yourself; some will stimulate you to read widely in their subject for your own interest. Whatever your reaction, a lecture is an effective way of informing you about course material, and about current ideas and theories in a subject.

You should take notes during the lecture to remind yourself of the main facts covered, points made and theories discussed. Leave some space (a few lines) at regular intervals, so that you can insert further notes afterwards. After the lecture, make sure your notes are clear and that you understand them. It is wise to do this as soon as possible because lecture notes will form an important resource for revision before exams. On the other hand, it is not really necessary to copy lecture notes out again in a neat version every evening – the important thing is to make sure that you can understand the notes and that you will still understand them when the time comes for revision!

Look up a textbook for anything you have not understood in a lecture, and supplement your notes, using the spaces you left during the lecture. This is important because you will integrate the extra information into your lecture notes, rather than having sheets of extra notes that you will never read again! Keep these extra notes brief, and add a note of the textbook page number so that you can refer back if you want to. While you are at it, read about related material in the book and try to get a real feeling for the interest of the topic. Generally, the more you know about something, the more interesting it becomes. Do check that you have got formulae and names correctly recorded in your notes: it is hard to unlearn mistakes once you have memorised them.

Remember that good headings and clearly numbered points are a great help for later revision. Do use abbreviations, as long as their meaning is clear to you.

It is important to go to all the lectures. If you miss material that was taught in a lecture, and use someone else's notes, these will never be as useful as your own notes.

Past papers

You can find past papers for most biology courses on the BTO website. They provide guidance on the structure of the exam and the sort of questions that are likely to be asked. But you should always be careful when reading past papers because the questions relate to material covered in previous years, not necessarily in the current year. Don't panic if you cannot answer some of the questions!

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