Want Perfect Grades But Falling Behind With Revision? Watch This (Full GCSE/A-Level Protocol)

Summary

Feeling overwhelmed with your upcoming GCSE or A-Level exams? Don't worry, you still have time to turn things around with Akshay G's comprehensive five-step study protocol. The video acknowledges the stress associated with exams and provides practical strategies to transform that anxiety into confidence. Key points include assessing your current level honestly, organizing subjects by difficulty, focusing on challenging areas and using tools like ChatGPT for simplified learning. The approach is designed to enhance understanding, boost retention through techniques like the 'read, cover, write' method, and encourage consistent self-testing. With Akshay's guidance, students can develop a robust exam routine that not only aims to reduce stress but ensures you're well-prepared to achieve your desired grades.

Highlights

• Feeling stressed about exams is normal, but it's not too late to make a difference in your outcomes. 🎯
• Organizing subjects by difficulty helps allocate revision time more effectively. 🕒
• Focus on understanding difficult content first to secure more marks. 🔍
• Using tools like ChatGPT and online resources can simplify complex topics. 🌐
• The 'read, cover, write' method aids in memorization and understanding. ✍️

Key Takeaways

• Acknowledge your current academic level honestly and be ready to work hard to improve. 💪
• Organize subjects based on difficulty and prioritize time for harder subjects. 📚
• Utilize the 'read, cover, write' method for retention and understanding. 🧠
• Use tools like ChatGPT for clear explanations on difficult topics. 🤖
• Establish a routine paired with stress management to achieve your dream grades. 🌟

Overview

Akshay G addresses the common anxiety students face just months before their GCSEs and A-Level exams, ensuring viewers that there's still ample time to improve their grades. The video goes beyond conventional study advice, offering a five-step protocol Akshay personally uses to ace his exams stress-free. He stresses the importance of addressing the root of the stress, which often results from not being at an adequate level of preparedness.

A critical aspect of Akshay's protocol involves brutally honest self-assessment and tailored organization of study schedules. This includes identifying which subjects are more challenging and deserve additional focus. By using color-coded systems for tracking confidence in topics and applying the 'read, cover, write' technique, students can systematically tackle gaps in their knowledge. Akshay also advocates for pairing difficult subjects with easier ones to maintain balance.

The video serves as a motivational guide, emphasizing that routine and consistent practice are essential in eliminating exam stress. Akshay highlights the utility of digital tools like ChatGPT for breaking down tough subjects, enhancing both comprehension and retention. By channeling stress into productive revision habits, students can build confidence and ensure they achieve their academic goals. The ultimate aim is to transform stress into a catalyst for action and improvement.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Understanding Stress In the chapter titled 'Introduction and Understanding Stress,' the speaker begins by acknowledging the common feeling of stress that students may experience as they prepare for their GCSE or A level exams with less than two months left. They share a personal understanding of this stress, even as someone who is adept at managing exams. The speaker reassures students that whether they are just beginning their revision or are already immersed in it, there is still ample time to positively change their academic prospects. The essence of the message is to normalize the feelings of pressure and stress, encouraging students to recognize these emotions but continue their preparation and not lose hope.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Five-Step Protocol Overview The chapter discusses managing stress related to academic performance by improving one's current skill level. It emphasizes that feeling stressed often stems from not being prepared enough to achieve desired grades. Instead of ignoring stress, it is suggested to address it through self-improvement until reaching a level where achieving the desired exam grades becomes feasible.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Part 1 - Acceptance of Current Level This chapter introduces a five-step protocol designed to reduce stress in the lead-up to exams, which the speaker has used successfully for several years. The focus of Part 1 is on 'brutal honesty and acceptance of your current level.' The speaker emphasizes the importance of this acceptance as a foundation for preparing effectively and approaching exams with calmness and confidence.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Part 2 - Organizing Subjects by Difficulty This chapter discusses the importance of recognizing one's current academic level and the necessity of working hard to reach desired grades. It emphasizes the need for putting in extra effort across all subjects to secure top grades, particularly focusing on a two-month period of intensive work and dedication. The chapter encourages students to acknowledge their current standing but also stresses the importance of taking actionable steps to improve.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Part 3 - Utilizing the Specification The section emphasizes the importance of self-motivation and commitment to improve academic performance. It refers to a recent video that motivates viewers to begin and persist with their work. The message caters to those who've acknowledged the need for hard work to feel well-prepared and confident before examinations. Subsequent parts of the series will likely explore methods to efficiently utilize the specification for academic success.
• 06:00 - 09:00: Part 4 - Addressing Difficult Content The chapter focuses on the strategy to improve academic performance by addressing difficult subjects effectively. It begins by suggesting a method to organize various subjects according to their difficulty level and then allocate appropriate time to each. An example from the speaker's own experience during their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCC) exams is given, where they mention managing 12 subjects, identifying English literature, language, computing, and history as particularly challenging.
• 09:00 - 11:00: Part 5 - Building Routine and Conclusion The narrator discusses their approach to study prioritization, categorizing subjects into top, middle, and bottom tiers based on their perceived difficulty and revision needs. Four subjects are prioritized for extensive revision, while others receive minimal attention, creating a balanced and effective study routine.

Want Perfect Grades But Falling Behind With Revision? Watch This (Full GCSE/A-Level Protocol) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 if you feel you're falling behind with your revision with your first GCSE or A level in just under two months time I totally understand Even as someone who's quite good at the exam game I do feel that stress from time to time as well But here's the truth Whether you've just started revising or you're quite deep into your revision already regardless of any stress that you are feeling you still have time to transform your prospects in under 60 days It's totally normal to feel this stress or to feel this pressure to perform And it's probably made even worse by the fact you
• 00:30 - 01:00 may not have done particularly well in your mocks or the general feeling that you're just falling behind The reason why people feel this stress is because their current level at the moment isn't high enough for them to achieve the grades that they really want And so how do you deal with this the best way to deal with this is to not push away the stress that you're feeling Instead is to give yourself reason not to feel stressed So in other words raise your current level until you're good enough to get the grade that you really want in your exam So that's what this video is
• 01:00 - 01:30 for I'm going to be giving you less reason to feel stress in the leadup to your exams through a five-step protocol that I've created and been using for the past 3 or 4 years now By following this I go into about 90 95% of my exams Pretty stress-free and calm cuz I know I have the ability and I've done all the work before which will help me perform in that exam The way I do this is through the protocol in this video today Part one is all about brutal honesty and acceptance of your current level I said in my intro that if you're not at a
• 01:30 - 02:00 current level which is good enough to get those top grades you will feel more stress I feel like myself I need to put in a bit more work in all of my subjects in order to secure my grades at A level As I said before that's perfectly fine But what you need to do from here is to say to yourself that you're going to be working extremely hard for the next two months so that you can reach that level in all of your subject It's all fun and games recognizing the level you're at But if you do nothing about it and you're not willing to work hard to
• 02:00 - 02:30 improve it then obviously you'll fall short of the grades that you really want in a couple months time The most recent video that I posted on here is all about motivating yourself to start and continue doing work And if you feel that you don't want to fully commit to your work right now then you should probably go and watch that But hopefully for the majority of us we've accepted that we do need to work hard There's not really a lot of time left and we want to feel confident before we go into our exams So we can move on to part two Part two three four and five are all about
• 02:30 - 03:00 increasing your level We want to go from here your current level to the level which you need to get your grade And the best way to begin this is through part two Part two is all about organizing your subjects in terms of difficulty and attributing the correct amount of time to every subject Maybe I'll use an example from my GCC to make it a little bit more accessible So at GCC I did 12 subject and the three or four that I found particularly difficult were English well both of them lit and language computing and history So it was
• 03:00 - 03:30 those four which I felt I needed to prioritize over anything else so that I can raise my current level And the ones which I did minimal revision for were math f math French and business So what I had was four at the top four I found hardest four at the bottom which I felt I didn't really need to revise for and four in the middle where I needed to revise but not as much as the priority ones at the top That worked out quite nicely for me because I felt there were
• 03:30 - 04:00 things that I was naturally good at like maths I spoke French at home and business was fairly easy as well But there are also things which I found particularly difficult and I knew I needed to make it a priority If you make something your priority you have to put more time into improving that thing The way that I organized this and you can probably use this yourself is that I paired a hard subject with an easy one So I used to pair math and English I used to do those revisions on the same day because if I needed to spend more time on English given that maths is not
• 04:00 - 04:30 a priority I would have to lend over my math time so that I can go and revise English some more So once we have an idea of what is hard and what is easier for every subject regardless of how hard or how easy you find it you have to go through every single specification You should know by now that the specification details everything that you need to know or everything that could appear in an exam question And as you go through the specification preferably with a highlighter or some sort of marker you have to be honest
• 04:30 - 05:00 with yourself to say "Oh I'm confident with this so probably highlight in green I'm sort of confident with this so maybe in yellow." And I'm not confident with this I need to do some work on it Highlight that in red By doing this you're pretty much pinpointing the things which you find difficult A lot of people go about revising by just looking at the things that they are confident on making them more secure and they can pretty much get 100% on any question on that topic in the exam But what about
• 05:00 - 05:30 the things that they've highlighted in red if you don't go through those things it could well be a question which is worth 5 to 10 marks in a science or maybe a good 20 24 marks in English If you don't go through that content you're you're screwed for that type of question So the best idea is to go through the things that you find more difficult Leave the things that you find easier for a later date You have to go through these difficult things so you can guarantee a few extra marks in the exam You may feel like that this is a lot of work And I'm going to be honest with you
• 05:30 - 06:00 it is but this is absolutely crucial to know what to pinpoint to focus on so that you can raise your level to a sufficient good enough level for your grades in the real exam Moving on to part four Now if I didn't mention before this specification bit was part three Part four is now using what you did in part three and taking action on it You probably may have been thinking that you don't really know how to go about accessing the more difficult content in the harder subject It may be because your notes aren't great or you may not
• 06:00 - 06:30 understand your notes or just some other factor that contributes to you not understanding the content properly and you know that if you don't do something about it you won't understand it at all in your real exam So another way to put it is that we're treating this hard content as content we've never seen before or content we're learning for the first time It may well be because your notes aren't great that you are genuinely learning it for the first time But for most of us we probably have an idea of what this is about but don't fully understand it The main goal for me
• 06:30 - 07:00 when I'm learning new things or just trying to reaccess really difficult things is I want to understand this fully before I move on to anything else Maybe it's because I've been drilling this myself for the past couple of years But I don't feel comfortable moving on to something else until I have the foundation set or I know that thing I'm revising properly I honestly don't understand how some people can go into exams knowing that they don't know something and be happy with that or be satisfied with that That's just pure
• 07:00 - 07:30 laziness So you must make an effort to understand these things fully The way I've been doing this recently is check GPT I feel like if you type in a prompt with enough information that gives an incredible summary You can even copy and paste a specification point into chat GPT and it will give you a really good explanation for it I used to do it before CHGBT through YouTube videos articles anything I can find online textbooks until I get a full and proper grasp of these things that I need to
• 07:30 - 08:00 revise The way I go about memorizing it is through using the read cover write method You read some sort of content You cover it up You try to recite it by writing it down And then if you feel like that's the limit of your knowledge you go back read a thing and correct Doing that three or four times per piece of content really helps you to ingrain it in your head And if you do that two or three times every two weeks then obviously over the long-term space repetition you'll begin to remember or
• 08:00 - 08:30 memorize these things properly And the final way to confirm whether you understood some content is by testing yourself If you can get a question right that clearly means if you're not being lucky that clearly means you've understood what the question is asking and what needed to be put down And once you've understood one topic after you've fully understood the content revised it and memorized it and then done past papers Once you've done all of that move on to the next It may feel like it's taking a long time for your first couple
• 08:30 - 09:00 but trust me over time you get quicker and more accurate when you're learning new things All it takes is just a bit of practice to get used to in the first place I'm moving on to part five Now this is a bit of a closure point to do with all of the details and confidence you need to do well in your exam This video was all about stress turning your stress into confidence so you can get to a high enough level which is good enough to achieve your dream grade I feel like I've said that a lot in this video but there are other things which are also quite important too But the main one I
• 09:00 - 09:30 think is routine If you pair what I've taught in this video today with a good routine so a lot of other videos on my channel I feel like there's no doubt you can get perfect grades in your exams or grades which at least match your potential But yeah if you do feel like you ever feel stressed to do with your exams this video tries to take that stress away but ultimately replacing it with something actionable you can do It's totally normal to feel stress with your exams You don't need to push the
• 09:30 - 10:00 stress away at all What you do need to do is to find ways to overcome it Not by pushing it away but by dealing with the things that make you feel stress So maybe if you don't understand content properly or something else like that So yeah that's pretty much the end of this video I've got a massive Discord down below in my description It's just full of students who also watch content like this and want to do really well in exams But before then I'll see you in the next