Matt Monro Forum

All I'm hearing on BBC Radio 1 this week are reports of young people "revising" or "provising". What does that mean? Is that even the correct word? I believe it's for GCSEs, whatever they are. Did any of you have to "revise"? I may have asked about this before, but it seems quite serious for the people listening to Radio 1 this week. Perhaps it's like our SATs or ACTs required for entrance to US colleges or universities.

Hi Paul--the word is revising--and yes I remember revising when I was at at school, even though they were different exams. It can apply to any examination--even a driving test !

Basically, it is just going back over everything you have learnt over the past term/year/ or whatever in preparation for an upcoming exam.

My problem was , I alwas revised on the wrong subject---for example--in geograph, concentrating on revising everything about Africa--and the exam question would be on Asia !!! I used to hate revision-it always seemed such a waste of time !!

Yes, "revising" or, more colloquially-speaking, "swotting", means basically preparing for exams by reading over the set texts and other work done during the year. It's a long time since I did any revision - at least 12 years - and although I was always quite good at exams, the whole process is a bit artificial, and how well you do depends on how you feel on the day.

In the UK this is the time of year when schoolchildren sit for GCSEs (post-16 exams) and "A" (for Advanced) level (post-18) exams (generally pre-university entrance exams), and when university/college students sit for their end-of-year or final degree papers. Each year too there is a media frenzy about how "easier" the exams have become as the pass rate seems to go up all the time; there may be some truth in this as the government is keen to meet its education targets, though different ways of measuring results (e.g. giving higher marks to coursework than to one-off exams) means the goalposts have been moved and one is not necessarily comparing like with like.