While A-Level Business is often considered an “easy” A-Level by students, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need to revise for it. In fact, that can often mean that you need to be really careful in your revision to make sure that you actually cover everything you need to rather than assuming that it’s just “easy” and that you don’t need revise it.
Moreover, regardless of whether it’s “easy” or difficult, revision is essential and the best revision methods will vary for each subject. Due to this it’s important for you to know which revision methods are best for A-Level Business.
While doing A-Level Business myself, I went through a whole load of trial and error when trying to figure out the best revision resources for this subject and for me. In this article, we’ll go through some of these, and I’ll explain how to use them effectively.
Table of Contents
Make posters
Getting started in your revision for any subject can be difficult. It was for me too, especially for A-Level Business because I often felt confused about exactly how to revise.
In this period, I found that making revision posters was a great way to “break the ice” and get me started. This is because you’re just making a poster and it can feel like you’re not really doing anything.
However, in making the poster, you’re doing more than you think. You’re making a good start on your revision as you’re condensing the information in your topics enough to fit into the poster. You are also revising it as you plan how to order it and then actually writing it down.
Plus, you can hang your posters on your walls and review every day when you get up and when you’re going to bed. While this may not feel like much, it can be quite a lot of information that you’re starting to memorise if you do this every day.
Use mind maps
Mind maps are a staple revision method and are even considered in the top 10, which you can learn more about in this Think Student article. Especially for A-Level Business, they’re an amazing way to pull the information all together.
This is especially as the exam questions; especially higher-level ones can be requiring you to pull together your knowledge about two or maybe more topics that you have learnt separately. Using mind maps, allows you to break down the boundaries within the separate units you’ve been taught.
Mind maps are also great because they’re really great at helping students to remember. This is because they’re so visual and clear, that you will most likely be able to remember at least the main points of the mind maps that you’ve made while in the exams
Plus, you could even make mind maps while doing blurting in order to revise A-Level Business without access to your notes. We’ll look more at blurting in the next section.
However, you can check out this Think Student article to see more on how to make the best mind maps for your revision.
Use blurting
Compared to other revision methods, blurting, at least in name, is a rather new revision technique. Despite this, so many students swear by blurting to help get them through their exams.
The blurting revision method is where you “blurt” down all you can remember about a certain topic without aid from your notes or anything else and then go back to your notes to see what you missed or got wrong. This revision method is a form of active recall, meaning that you are actively trying to retrieve the information, which can be really effective for trying to remember again and again.
You can learn more about blurting by checking out this article by Birmingham City University.
It could help to use blurting first to try and see just how much information you know initially, before you start revising. Then you could continue using blurting to track your progress as you revise more and more.
Use flashcards
Flashcards are great for your A-Level Business revision as they are so versatile, which is exactly what you’ll need for your A-Level Business revision. This is because there are so many different question types and things being asked of you, from definitions to equations and so much more that you will need to have committed to memory for the exams.
Personally, I found that flashcards, whether physical or online, were great especially for definitions and equations. These were a very simple method for spaced repetition and sometimes getting someone to test me on them.
For revising more complex parts of the A-Level Business course, such as theories, the pros and cons of specific things and even case studies, I personally found that it was easier to only use physical flash cards. While you may disagree, I found this only because it was more complex and meant that I could draw diagrams and simply have full freedom for the layout.
For some tips on making great flashcards, have a look at this Think Student article.
Practise your maths skills
There are an awful lot of mathematical questions in the A-Level Business exams. Thus, you need to make sure you work on your maths skills.
First of all, you need to make sure you know all the equations. This can be done with some of the above revision methods, such as flashcards, posters or even blurting if you’re at the point of trying to remember it from memory.
After this, you simply need to practise, practise and practise even more the kinds of maths questions that will come up on the papers.
You could buy a specialised maths workbook for the A-Level Business course. However, you could easily find this for free by simply looking it up, even if it’s not from your exam board.
To get you started, have a look at this document from Pearson Edexcel, which provides a range of mathematical past questions.
Practise past papers
They say practise makes perfect and this is so true when it comes to revising for any exam. Doing practise papers is so important in your revision and you need to make sure you’re doing it for all your A-Level Business papers, as they all have different kinds of questions.
The exact set out of your papers will depend on your exam board, so you need to make sure that you are very familiar with what will come up when.
The first rule of doing practice papers is doing the within timed conditions. Even if you’re only doing one question or just a segment of the paper, you need to make sure everything is done to the timings you will have in the exam. This is to get you used to the short amount of time you will actually have so that you don’t lose time in the exam.
If you don’t feel ready yet to do a full past paper or even a fully exam question quite so yet, you could start by planning the questions. This is especially for the higher-level questions, particularly the essay-based ones.
Planning essay questions in A-Level Business can be a great idea as they’re only a limited number of topics that can come up in these kinds of questions. Therefore, it’s quite likely for these eventually be repeated, so if you’ve planned all of them, you have pretty good chance of being familiar with something that comes up in the exam.
Use examiner’s reports and model answers
Doing practice questions is so important in revising for A-Level Business. However, it can be difficult to know if you’re on the right track with these practice papers.
One thing you should do is ask your teacher to mark them and use the mark scheme for shorter questions. However, another thing you can do is compare your own answer with the model answer and use the comments from the examiner’s report to improve yours.
As both the examiner’s report and model answers are designed to show what students could achieve if working at a very high level, they both provide some insight into where you will want to be progressing towards.
Therefore, you can analyse both the main comments in the reports and the main features of the model answers to see what to put into your own answers.
Watch YouTube videos
If you don’t feel strong on a topic and your notes from class aren’t that great, one of the best things you can do to consolidate the topic is to watch a YouTube video. There are so many different videos that will go through specific topics and even the equations for you, sometimes even in greater detail than they would have in class.
Plus, while there are so many videos just for A-Level Business students, there will be many more talking about the topic in general or from a different level. While these aren’t directly aimed at you, it may help to see the topic explained from a slightly different angle.
Some of the YouTube channels that I used to help me revise for A-Level Business were Tutor2U and Taking the Biz. You can find links to these channels here and here respectively.