How to revise

How to revise A-level physics

Most revision advice is about feelings. This is about marks: what actually moves them, in the order that works, and the traps that waste whole evenings.

Do the thing the exam does

The exam asks you to answer questions from memory under time pressure. So the activity that trains you fastest is answering questions from memory under mild pressure, and checking yourself against a mark scheme. Reading notes feels like progress because it is comfortable; answering questions feels worse because you keep being wrong. Being wrong and finding out why is the part that changes your grade. A good split is roughly a third reading and two thirds retrieval: flashcards, exam-style questions and past papers.

Little and often beats heroic and rare

Twenty minutes a day, most days, will beat a five-hour Sunday every time, because memory is built by returning to things just as they start to fade. That is what spaced repetition is: the cards you get right come back later, the ones you miss come back tomorrow. The day planner runs this for you and sizes each day to the time you give it, and the app carries the same plan in your pocket.

Learn the definitions like lines in a play

A surprising number of marks are given for saying a sentence correctly. Specific charge, electromotive force, the principle of moments: each has a wording the mark scheme wants, and a nearly-right version that scores nothing. The definitions page keeps the scoring versions in one place. Say them out loud; writing them out is slower and no stickier.

Know which equations are yours to carry

The AQA data sheet prints most of the equations, so memorising all of them is wasted effort. What earns marks is knowing the handful that are not on the sheet, and being fluent enough with the rest that you recognise which one a question is asking for. Practise choosing the equation, not just using it.

Treat the practicals as content, not memories

Around a quarter of the paper leans on practical skills, and questions about them are answerable from knowledge you can revise: the independent and dependent variables, why the method controls what it controls, where the uncertainty comes from. The twelve required practicals are written here for exactly that kind of revision.

Save past papers for when they count

There are only so many past papers, and the first time you sit one tells you the most. Early in the year, practise topic by topic instead, and let the checklist show you where you are weak: rate yourself honestly on the revision checklist and spend your time at the bottom of the list, not the top. In the last six weeks, switch to full papers under timed conditions, marked with the real scheme.

The traps

Highlighting and re-reading feel productive and train almost nothing. Copying out notes is the same activity wearing a disguise. Watching someone else solve problems is useful exactly once per problem type; after that you have to do the solving. And revising only your favourite topics is the most expensive comfort there is, because marks lost on your weakest unit cost the same as marks lost anywhere else.

Everything linked above is free and works without an account. If you only take one thing from this page: answer more questions, sooner, and mark them honestly.