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Message: <blockquote data-quote="average_jo123" data-source="post: 212218" data-attributes="member: 15838"><p><h3><u>Note-taking and flashcards</u></h3><p>The way the course was structured (at least when I studied it) was each week you need to prep for your workshops for the practice modules. In the prep materials they will tell you which academic law chapters you should read up. Then, at the end of the week, you get 15 practice SBAQs for each topic to practice on to test your understanding.</p><p></p><h4><span style="color: rgb(184, 49, 47)"><em>What I did:</em></span></h4> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Again, as above, my downfall for this course was truly how disorganised I was lol. I did for the most part keep up with the reading in preparation for the practice module workshops as well as the academic law - also made flashcards for most topics. But I did slip in certain weeks and once you slip it is extremely hard to catch up. So it's extremely important to maintain momentum throughout the course, which, fortunately, I was able to do for the most part even though I was behind on certain topics and even until the run up to the exams I was still playing catch up and eventually had to wing a few topics - but I strongly advise against this and you want to cover as much base as possible to give you peace of mind going into the exam.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">For the weeks I did keep up with the suggested reading, I basically just had the ULaw manual on one side of my screen and Anki on the other and I would just make flashcards from the content from the manuals.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">For the most part I always kept up with the weekly practice test, even on weeks where I haven't thoroughly reviewed the academic law or even the practice portions. I knew that my sponsor firm was low key keeping tabs on us so I knew I just had to bash out the weekly practice tests somehow, even when I completely bomb them and fail — at least I tried. And I made a mental note to come back and re-attempt them closer to the exams — which I did do, and by the time I re-attempted them 2 months later, I have forgotten every single question, which again, just proves that you don't need to worry too much about 'wasting' practice questions whilst you still don't know the content. Just wing it to check your understanding and reinforce your knowledge again a later date.</li> </ul><h4><em><span style="color: rgb(65, 168, 95)">What I wish I had done differently:</span></em></h4> <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Open up all the prepare sections for the workshops which includes the reading you need to do for the practice module as well as the accompanying academic law module and transfer it into a big table. This will basically form your study plan and once you lay it all out you will see how the course is structured to help you get through the material week by week leading up to the exam. Because I didn't have a big picture, each week just felt like such a tough slog. But in retrospect, I feel I would have been much better off if I had a bigger picture of say ok, I have missed 2 chapters from criminal law reading this week, and I have 3 chapters I need to read by next week and 2 more chapters the following week. How am I going to catch up? How can I spread out the work but still make sure I cover this in enough detail before the exam? Skim the manual — does the material look dense? Or does it look disgestible? Can you afford to push this back or not? Or can you just crack on with it but make notes that are more sparse? This would have given me so much more peace of mind. Instead, I constantly drowned myself in work with no flexibility on when I can afford to slip a bit but find room to catch up later in a manageable way. Don't make the same mistake — either create your own study plan or just stick to the one that ULaw has laid out (which will help you cover all topics if you do just stick to it) and know when you can / cannot afford to give yourself breathing space.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I mentioned above that note-taking, flashcards and how you learn and memorise can be a bit of a trial and error. What's most important is finding what works best for you and the most efficient way to get through the materials and just stick to it. I recall about 6 weeks before the exam a conversation I had with my classmates. We were talking about how it is near impossible to actually know all the material in enough detail and to find enough time to make notes on all examinable areas. One of my classmates said that she found that it was way too overwhelming (especially with only 6 weeks to go) to read the whole manual cover to cover and make detailed notes, as you just get stressed out thinking about every little detail that you might get tested on. Instead, as a last resort to at least get <em>some</em> information in her head, for the topics that she just has no time to cover, she will simply read through it once or twice, close the book and try to blurt out whatever she can remember and at least try to commit to memory the rough outline of what the topic is about and the key concepts, but not the fine print. This was just one example that I encountered of what trial and error looks like. As the course progresses you will find that at certain points you grow more and more desperate lol and inevitably I do think at certain points of the course and for some topics you just have to do what you have to do to get through the material, even if you are not retaining it perfectly or getting it right all the time. You just need to adapt your approach according to your circumstances. I kind of did a similar thing for certain topics during weeks I fell seriously behind, where I kind of just winged it by making super sparse flashcards solely from practice questions. Important thing to note is just that you acknowledge that winging it should be a desperate measure for desperate times and by no means should be your default. And even if you did take certain shortcuts just to get through the week at a certain point, you need to remember to go back to those topics to check you actually understand enough to tackle tricky questions on it which may come up during the exam.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I have seen people share on TikTok that apparently you can use AI to transform material into podcasts? I've not seen how good these AI-generated podcasts are but if it works for you, go for it. But I would approach using AI with a certain level of caution. I have tried to use ChatGPT for my SQE studies but from personal experience I have just found that it gets things wrong a bit too much for me to trust it lol — and I've encountered this problem with both the free version as well as when I paid for ChatGPT premium. For some reason I feel ChatGPT doesn't quite grasp some really nuanced concepts unless I specifically direct it to do so and correct these misunderstandings. I have also had too many instances of ChatGPT straight up hallucinating law to me, which was very frustrating. But I do acknowledge that maybe it's because I'm not using it the right way or using the correct prompts, so take my opinion on ChatGPT for SQE prep with a pinch of salt. I think there is no harm getting ChatGPT to summarise a chapter from your textbook for you before you start reading it in detail to make the content slightly more digestible, but I think the key is you need to then actually read and comprehend the material for yourself and not rely on ChatGPT to do it for you. Then, check your understanding with practice questions and chat to your classmates or your tutors about it — I personally wouldn't rely on ChatGPT to check if my understanding on a very nuanced piece of law is correct.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">My ULaw manual to Anki trick somewhat worked(?) but the main issue with doing this was by the end of my SQE1 prep I had WAY too many flashcards — I had approx 9,500 cards LOL which was humanly impossible to review. And I spent way too much time making the flashcards rather than reviewing them, which completely defeats the purpose of using Anki. Towards the end the only way I could salvage this situation was by tagging the most important flashcards and only reviewing those - but this also turned into another thing that kept me up at night. I was worried that I hadn't tagged or reviewed enough cards and that there were still thousands of cards left unreviewed that the SRA could test me on. All this shows was that there was something seriously wrong with my flashcard-making technique — here is how I would have done it differently:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Start out long form notes of the materials — use the outlines you've prepared using the SRA spec as the headings. Understand the content and write it in a way that you understand. Bullet point it, table it, do whatever to make it easier for YOU to understand it. It will be easier for you further down the line if you have a big picture understanding of the topic and see how one subtopic connects with another. The problem I've found with using Anki solely was that I knew a lot of weirdly specific information by heart lol but lacked understanding the moment you asked me about say the overall process of something. Both big picture and small print are extremely important. You need to have understanding of big picture processes as well as small print details like deadlines for appeals / service of documents under the CPR. I struggled a bit more especially when it came to SQE2 when I realised I lacked understanding in the former. I did make a good handful of flowcharts and tables — but I just wish I had made more to help with retention of my big picture knowledge so everything would click a bit easier.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Once you have your long form notes, then generate flashcards out of your condensed notes. Look at the material line by line, see how it fits into the SRA spec and ask yourself "how can this come up in an SBAQ?". If you can easily see how it can be tested, make a flashcard out of it. When you do this, think GRANULAR. SQE1 questions were so incredibly broad and detailed at the same time it was borderline insane. Once you start doing practice questions, you will see a pattern for the super examinable topics. Flashcard those and make sure these critical points stick. Even for the ones that you haven't been examined in the ULaw question bank or any other question bank that you've attempted, I think the key is really going through the material line by line and thinking critically about how you can really commit to memory this piece of information in the form of a flashcard. This way, your flashcards will be much more focused and condensed, unlike my 9,500 flashcards filled with random crap that was impossible for me to guess even when I was trying to review them lol. For the content that you didn't manage to flashcard, you will at least know that you have covered it in your long-form notes, which you can easily revisit and refresh your memory when you need it. But if I were to do it all over again, I would focus on using my flashcards a bit more strategically and use it to drum in the key granular bits that keeps slipping from my memory, and the big picture stuff I would have reviewed from my long form notes with any spare time I had.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><p style="text-align: left">On the note of thinking critically whilst making flashcards, I would like to caveat that I am only saying this in retrospect. In retrospect, I feel I would have saved myself more time if I had just spent more time critically analysing how I went about flashcards instead of doing all of them in such a mad rush and ending up with 9,000 cards which I can't review properly due to the sheer quantity but also the way I have created them meant I wasn't actually testing myself on stuff that mattered. I feel it might have been more effective if I had been more focused and produced only maybe 900 instead.</p> </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><p style="text-align: left">However, I would like to note that even if you do think critically as you create your flashcards, (1) it will take you more time to do so because you would be putting more thought into it and (2) you should still bear in mind that ultimately it is impossible to anticipate what the SRA might come up with. After I came out from my FLK1 exam I broke down crying profusely because I felt so utterly helpless and disheartened. I felt that for some subjects I had tried my very best to anticipate and prepare myself for what I thought would be examinable content but I just kept getting reminded of all the questions where I knew one very specific piece of information, but not specific enough. It would literally be maybe one sentence from the manual that I knew but the question would test me on a very specific fact that is adjacent to what I know — which meant I didn't know it in enough detail to answer the question.</p> </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><p style="text-align: left">You should also bear in mind that the ULaw manuals are not gospel. Though I believe it is relatively comprehensive, the SRA does not set its questions based on facts you learn from the ULaw manuals. So the truth is, even if you are critically thinking and being strategic with your flashcards, in theory everything is examinable (yes, including parts in the manual which you brush off and think - "there's no way the SRA can make a question out of <em>that</em>" — they CAN, they MAY and they sometimes WILL). There will also be some stuff that may not have been covered in detail by ULaw which the SRA might pick up and test you on. Good news is you don't need to know every examinable detail to pass — you just need to know ENOUGH. Which is why if I could do it all over again, I would preferably have more focused flashcards + long form notes to really help me fill in the gaps of the little details in between that I may be tested on. Overall, I would encourage strategic flashcard-making, but also balanced against not getting to hung up on trying to predict what may or may not come up — because you can't. You just need to have a good balance of both very focused flashcards to help the key points stick and also detailed enough long form notes that you know you can fall back on for the finer details. </p> </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><p style="text-align: left">I do realise that I sound really vague as I describe what I mean by granular and detail of knowledge expected, but I only do this out of respect to the confidentiality agreement I signed. I cannot give specific examples of questions I encountered and the level of detail expected. But you will be able to gauge the level of detail expected once you start attempting more of ULaw's practice SBAQs. From there, just treat the difficulty of questions and the level of detail tested in ULaw's practice questions as the floor, not the ceiling compared to the real thing. I will make a separate post addressing more on my thoughts about using practice questions in revision.</p> </li> </ul></blockquote><p></p>

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