How to Learn a Long Text Quickly

Exam season is upon us and many English students are faced with the propect of writing an essay on a novel they haven’t read properly or know well. Even if you have, that might have been months ago. Boning up on the plot, characters, setting, themes and language choices is usually the best way to get prepared. So how can you make the most of your limited time?

Ideal Approach

When you have enough time, these are the best ways to learn a long text. Yes, they take time. You’ll also be much more prepared for exam surprises, and have filled in gaps in your knowledge already.

• Read the entire book. Yes, that’s right. Sounds obvious. But if you have the time to read it, actually read it. There’s so much about a book that you can only understand by experiencing it as the author intended you to. Atmosphere, character, sequence of events – these all help you flesh out your understanding of what the book is actually trying to say, and help you avoid errors such as saying something happens that doesn’t.
• Take notes on plot, characters, setting, themes, and language features. Use bullet points, tables or mind-maps – whatever you find easiest to absorb into your brain. List the main events in the plot, the major characters and their relationships with each other, important aspects of the settings, how and where themes appear in the book, and main language features you might use in your essay.
• Make mind-maps with connectors. Link themes with parts of the plot, with character, with overall structure and historical background. This helps to make sense of the ‘Big Picture’ of the text, which is where you can make connections between different parts of the text, improving your analysis and getting more marks for your essay!
• Discuss the book with someone who knows the book well. This is an acid test of how well you really know the book. Did that major fight between the characters happen before or after the nuclear explosion? Is the author using their own life as inspiration for the book? Might be important!

Quick and Dirty

However, maybe you’ve left it a bit late. Maybe you’ve been so focused on other subjects and assessments, and now there’s only a couple of weeks (or days!) to go before your big exam. How can you make the most of the time you have left?

• Assess your gaps of knowledge against the marking criteria. Look at past papers and suss out how much you already know of what you need to know to answer the questions well. List your gaps of knowledge. This way you can be focused on only those aspects of the text you need to revise.
• Revise plot, character and theme summaries from sites such as litcharts, enotes etc. This gives you some of the ‘Big Picture’ of the text, and is an easier way to learn basic elements of the text without (gasp!) reading it again (or completely!).
• Watch a good visual adaptation of the book. Look for the longest one as it’s most likely to be faithful to the book. Pay attention. Just because it’s a movie, doesn’t mean you can switch your brain off. Take notes of anything you want to remember later.
• Find some sample essays on the book. This can take some searching, but using the title and words like ‘essay’ or ‘theme’ can help. Read and save anything that looks useful for you. Don’t plagiarise! Take and adapt.
• Bring it all together in a mind-map. Condense everything you want to remember into a short document with lots of arrows and connectors.
• Revise, revise, revise. Test yourself on the different parts of your mind-map. Plan possible answers to past exam questions. Focus on the gaps in your knowledge but make sure to refresh your memory on everything.

Finally…

Confidence can go a long way in helping us to improvise and make the best of what we find in the exam. Remind yourself that you will do your best, and that pressure can often bring out the best in us humans. Work with your strengths, and shore up your weaknesses, and know that one exam is not the end of life, the universe and everything. YOU CAN DO THIS.