Look at number of areas within each subject. Compare these to (a) those which have come up most regularly in past exam papers. Then set out a programme for covering areas you have selected for study. This programme must be completed well in advance of date of exams to allow time for revision. As a general guide, allow about two months to revise a subject.

MOTIVATION Only you can establish and maintain this.

Do not let subjects become boring. Find ways to stimulate your interest, to break down and attack subject matter. Simply reading is difficult when trying to maintain concentration.

Try making concise notes of chapters and sections within them. Or use a text highlighter to pass over important passages - but don't use yellow because it fades too quickly and is difficult to see in some lights. Also, do not use a colour you dislike.

APPLICATION You may have seen or heard of film The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner. That is what you are! And that is what self tuition is like: a lonely activity. All study is ultimately same, but in your case even more so.

You need to give priority to your objective or, unless you are exceptionally intelligent and capable, you are likely not to succeed. Always remind yourself of your ultimate objective

PERSISTENCE So keep winning postalways in view - and remind yourself frequently of where you are heading and what you are going to achieve. Whatever it is you want exams for, keep that as your motivator - and keep applying yourself to that objective. Get used to loneliness and even find enjoyment in it. This is just part of finding within yourself quality of persistence.

Remember that exams are not winning post and is not ultimate objective. Exams are only a means to an end. It is whatever you want exams for that is your ultimate motivator. Persistence in pursuing that is what will lead to success.

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About The Author A K Whitehead Web Site: www.christianword.co.uk Has passed examinations as a result of formal tuition but also many public examinations through self tuition, and even examinations set directly by universities. Conditions Of Use: This article may be reproduced on condition that it is unaltered and that all this information is included.

Divide lefthand vertical into as many subject areas as seems appropriate from your inspection of syllabus and past exam papers. Do this very careful and only after you have become very familiar with exam topics. Also, make allowance for any coupling of topics because sometimes examiners like to link one topic with another. If you have, say, a dozen past papers and a particular linking has only come up once, you are probably save to forget it. But if it has occurred, say, three or four times it needs to go down.

So now you have large set of cells, each of which relates to a particular year and to a specific topic. Place a cross in each cell for year in which a given topic has come up. If there is a pattern, and very often there is, you will soon see it. The relative frequency with which various topic come up will now be easy to see.

It is not that examiners are doing a parallel kind of exercise to determine structure of next examination they set. They might well be unaware of kinds of patterns we are talking about. But examiners do have at least a mental scheduling of relative importance of particular topics and an impression of what have been chosen recently.

Now use spare column on right-hand side, which relates to year you are going to sit exam, to mark those subject areas which seem most likely to come up this next time. These are ones which you need to spend extra time on. The other areas need to be covered as well, but your projections need special care and attention.

In case of some examinations such a pattern may not seem to emerge. But often it will. In any case, it is worth investment of time to find out, and whether it does or not it would be foolish not to inspect as many past papers as possible. You need to see how questions are phrased, how they are divided, sometimes even subdivided, whether there are any special conditions imposed, such as papers which are divided into different sections with different lengths of time allowed for each, and so forth.

Overall, many students just seem to accept constraints of an examination system as a barbed wire fence they can do nothing about. But foregoing might just give you a set of wire cutters!

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