5th May 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Virtually all of our tutors will have routines they remember from when they took exams, and obviously (since they’re our tutors) the routines will have been very successful. The temptation around this time of year is for tutors to try and encourage their students to follow the same routines in the hope that they will work as well for the student.
Suggesting that a student follow a tried and tested routine obviously isn’t a bad thing, but the danger is that a tutor enforces a routine on a student which completely doesn’t work for them. The tutor has to realise what aspects of the routine are universally beneficial, and what may change depending on the student’s personality and preferences.
The clearest universal benefit is organisation. A student needs to ensure that they’re clear on how they are going to revise and prepare for an exam. Thankfully, even if a student is very disorganised, it’s something which a tutor can dramatically help with. Whether the plan is very general, and simply indicates roughly what should be covered during a particular day, or if it details exactly what the student should be doing every hour of every day, some kind of plan is a good idea.
Also, organisation must include a student sleeping and eating properly, and hopefully getting some exercise. Even if the student likes to ‘cram’ in the few days before an exam, it should never be at the expense of sleep and diet.
After these tips on what every student’s preparation should be, a tutor should try and tailor a revision plan to each particular student and realise that the same thing doesn’t work for everyone. We’ve all tutored students who we know are never going to work solidly for 8 hours day, and also students who we know we can’t stop from working that hard (sometimes it’s not a good thing!). Tutors have to forget what they would do in the same situation, and focus on using the student’s strengths to develop the most effective revision plan.