1. Start studying immediately.

Keep in mind that the exam covers a lot of material. Even if you are swamped with assignments and exams in other courses, there are a few things you can do each day:

• Read over, revise, and elaborate on your class notes.
• Produce your own succinct outlines or summaries of text chapters and other readings.
• Study the chapter summaries in C & C.
• Test yourself on the "key terms" in each chapter.
• Page through each chapter/reading, reviewing topics, tables, figures, and boxes.


2. Employ the following strategies to improve your memory of the material:

Remember, it is not enough to have understood a lecture or a chapter. You need to make the material your own.

• Think about the material you want to remember as long and as often as possible.
• Spread your study periods out over time.
• Don’t just repeat the information; elaborate, rephrase, and reorganize it.
• Make up and answer your own questions.
• Try to find useful recall cues (e.g., key words, lists, diagrams)
• Think about the outline or structure of the information; try to make names for components of the outline into recall cues.
• Try to simplify and summarize key ideas.
• Don’t just passively review the material; practice retrieving it in sequence, so that each point serves as a recall cue for the next.


3. Test yourself using the publisher's chapter quizzes and the attached sample exam.

After completing each C&C chapter, test your comprehension using the online quiz. The sample exam included here is meant to give you a rough idea of the kinds of questions we will include on the exam; once you've taken the midterm, you'll have an even better idea.

4. Make sure you are not missing notes from any lectures.

Lecture slides are available on CourseWorks. However, these do NOT substitute for notes of actual lecture content. Get together with other students to share notes and review lecture material.

This page was modified on February 26, 2004