1. Keep your reading up during the term so that you have less to read just before the exam.
2. Brush up on some of the things you learnt a long time ago; they may possibly come up in the exam.
3. Don’t just mug up on the key points you need for the exam and hope that you’ll scrape through with little effort.
4. On the other hand, don’t try to do everything. Swotting up on everything you have done all term means you will have to revise a lot of useless things too.
5. Concentrate on polishing up the most important areas and your best skills.
6. Don’t fool yourself that you’ll pass the exam on the basis of what you’ve picked up during the lectures and classes. You will need to revise!
A. Practice and improve your skills or your knowledge of something, usually something you learned in the past but have partly forgotten.
b. Quickly try to learn the main facts about a subject, especially before an exam (often + on) (informal).
C. If a question or a subject comes up in an exam, that question is asked or questions about that subject are asked in the exam.
d. Learning as much as you can about something, especially before an exam (often + on) (informal).
E. Practising and improving your skills or your knowledge of something.
F. Manage with a lot of difficulty to succeed in something.
G. Something is learnt by absorbing it rather than studying it.
H. Continue to do something.
Ex. 13. Which of these would make most students happy and why?
Breaking up dropping out being thrown out scraping through mugging up swotting up
Ex. 14. Choose the best phrasal verb from ex. 11, 12, 13 to complete this letter.
Cambridge, 20 June
Dear Auntie Meg,
At last my first year exams are over. It’s such a relief! I feel as if I’ve done nothing but (1) …for them for ages. Although I’d (2) … with work quite well during the year, I still needed to (3) … everything that we had covered, of course. Fortunately, everything that I hoped would (4) … in the exam paper did. So I hope I’ve done OK and haven’t just (5) … . Now all I have to do is (6) … one course assignment, which I need to hand in by the end of term.
We don’t (7) … till the end of the month and so I won’t be home till then. We don’t (8) … until the end of September, so it’ll be a lovely long break. I look forward to seeing you soon.
Love,
Suzanna
Ex. 15. Correct the ten phrasal verb mistakes in this paragraph. Either the wrong particles or the wrong verbs have been used.
Dick hardly worked up at all for his exams. He brushed over on the history of the French Revolution, but no questions on the French revolution got up in the exam. He was afraid that he would be thrown off university for failing his exams. However, he did just manage to scratch through them and so he will be in college when we return back next term. He has promised to try to keep through with work next year as he is planning to sign in for a couple of quite difficult courses, including business studies. He’ll have to polish over his French because he can just lift up the language when he gets there, but I think he should study it before he goes because he only has school French.