How people actually study from documents, and what to do when a document will not cooperate.
Hannah worked in university learning support for six years, most of it helping students who could not use the documents their courses handed them. She writes the revision-workflow and accessibility material here, and she is firm that a study technique which sounds impressive and does not survive contact with a real timetable is not worth recommending.
At a glance
- Role
- Study skills and accessibility
- Writes about
- Revision technique, reading workflows, accessible documents, screen readers
- Working in this field since
- 2019
- Guides on this site
- 8
Guides by Hannah Whitlock
Building a topic pack
Every question on one topic, from every paper you have, in a single document. It is the most useful thing you can make out of a folder of past papers, and no publisher sells it.
How to use an examiner report
A mark scheme tells you what the right answer was. An examiner report tells you what thousands of people got wrong and why, which is far more useful and takes ninety seconds to read.
Why highlighting a PDF does not work
It feels exactly like studying, produces a document full of yellow bars, and leaves you no better able to answer a question. Here is the mechanism, and what to do instead.
Taking notes from a PDF
The rule that makes the difference is not which app you use. It is that your notes have to be readable without the document open beside them.
Revising from a tablet
A tablet is the best PDF reading device there is, and almost nobody sets one up correctly. Three changes make it genuinely comfortable.
Condensing a mark scheme
Extract it to text, delete everything you already know, and what remains is a revision document of exactly your gaps - written by the act of deleting.
Reading a PDF on a phone
An A4 page on a phone screen is about a third of the size it was designed to be. There are three workable responses and one that wastes an hour.
Submitting handwritten work
One file, in order, under the size limit, readable by someone who is not you. Four requirements, and every one of them fails for people every year.