Teach your teen the skills to revise well

Dec 19, 2022
4 min read

Updated: Jul 22

The skills your teen needs to develop so they can revise effectively and do well in exams and coursework are the same skills they’ll need to do well in the future, whether that’s going on to further education or entering the world of work. These skills include:

Listening

In the words of Larry King, the US television host: “Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.” This is a fantastic philosophy for a chat show host, but it’s a worthwhile one for everyone: we can only learn by hearing or reading something new; what we already have in our heads, we already know.

Many people listen to the beginning of a conversation (or explanation) and then stop listening while they try to think of what they’ll say next, or what that first point means. Consequently, they miss much of what the other person said afterwards, and this results in poor communication, lack of understanding and sometimes following up with the wrong action.

Encourage your child to listen actively. Can they recall information after they’ve heard it? Can they summarise the important points made? Are they able to take notes while listening? Can they do this when listening to a video as well as when someone is in the room talking? An easy way to test this (without them feeling they’re being tested) is to chat about something you’ve watched together: have they taken in everything they’ve seen, or is their recollection selective?

Ways you can help: after watching a programme together, ask for their help in understanding what was said, and see whether they can summarise it. If their takeaways are different from yours, you can both chat about why that is.

Reading

Your child won’t need to remember everything they read word for word but, as with listening, they need to be able to read information, understand what’s being communicated, summarise key points and know where to go back to review detail. Skimming an article first, asking what it’s about, then reading thoroughly with a view to answering those questions can be a helpful way to take in information. As with all skills, the more they read, the easier it becomes, which frees up more brain power to focus on content rather than the act of reading.

Ways you can help: where you can, encourage your child to read for pleasure as well as for their school work. This broadens their vocabulary and makes them more accomplished readers. Reading of any sort is valuable, so don’t discourage them, even if you’re not too keen on the content.

Writing

It’s still important that they can express themselves in writing (which is less likely to be handwritten and more likely to be typed). Employers appreciate clear, concise, simple written text. It’s good to hone this style from GCSE: it helps them be clearer about the answers they’re trying to communicate to teachers, it improves their English, and it also helps with job and further education applications.

Ways you can help: encourage them to write thank you letters (or emails) to family members for gifts at Christmas and on their birthdays. It helps them learn to adapt their writing depending on the recipient; how they write to Gran is different from how they might write to a friend, for example.

Remembering

This may seem an unnecessary skill now that we can look anything up online, but your child will need to remember facts during examinations. There are lots of techniques they can use to help, including:

summaries of information
'key points' cards or flash cards with more detailed explanations on the other side (great for you to use with them when testing their knowledge)
mnemonics (a pattern, such as a song, rhyme, acronym, phrase or sentence, to recall something more complicated)
memory maps (taking a familiar place or journey and imagining the things to remember in strange situations along that route)

Ways you can help: play memory games together, such as matching pairs of cards or playing 'I went shopping'. Alternatively, help them create a memorable mnemonic to revise key words or facts.

Researching

Critical if they go on to further education, and used in many different jobs, they need to be able to find things out for themselves. The internet has made that much easier than it was when we were young, but they should use a variety of sources to gather information, not just a Google search. They’ll need to discern what’s factual (proven) and what’s not (suggested). Quoting and referencing the sources they’ve used is a good habit to form.

Ways you can help: is there something the family needs that you can ask them to research? A day trip, a holiday, or comparisons for a new purchase (such as a TV or washing machine). Researching something with a real-life purpose can feel useful.

Summarising

If they learn to summarise well, this skill will serve them both in study and in work in the years ahead. They should practise condensing lengthy, complicated information into a straightforward, short format. This helps them with their own studies, and proves they understand the longer piece and can pull out the most important facts within it. They should practise this across all their subjects.

Ways you can help: read some of their summaries to see whether they encapsulate the original text well. Alternatively, ask them to shorten one or two paragraphs to a few sentences, conveying the overall message.