How "Blurting" Changed the Way I Revise

With exams looming and a load of content to revise, active recall leads the way. Questions, mark schemes, flashcards, I’d do it all, but I still felt that I couldn’t bring out the nooks and crannies of my knowledge.

Recently, I came across this method called “blurting” that has changed the way I revise. I watched one of Unjaded Jade’s videos, where Jade talks about how there are 3 steps to revision- understanding, learning and applying. In the learning stage, it’s often tempting to lose interest in the details of a topic, making revision feel incomplete when applying knowledge.

Blurting is essentially a memory dump. The concept involves:

Going over any summarised notes to jog your memory- this can be flashcards, mindmaps or even bullet points
Creating some prompts-headings/ big areas in a chapter to guide you through what you need to ‘blurt’. You can also branch off key equations, mnemonics etc…
Setting yourself a time limit using a stopwatch or clock, according to the size of the chapter (preferably 3 minutes for a small chapter)
Under each prompt, blurting everything you remember on a sheet of paper in the form of a mindmap, for example.
Referring to your notes or flashcards, use a different coloured pen to fill in any knowledge gaps and identify weaknesses.

To make the most of how I use blurting, I’ve got some useful tips:

Sometimes, you may start to panic that you don’t know everything, so you’re tempted to read through the entire chapter again or keep looking back at the textbook. This leads to ineffective blurting because you end up writing down content that’s not in your long-term memory but directly from the textbook you just read. To avoid this, try to keep calm and believe in yourself. It is only after you blurt that you see what you don’t know and can work on improving those.
Avoid distractions-sit in a quiet place and keep the stopwatch a little away from you so you don’t find yourself constantly checking the time. This ensures you don’t lose your train of thought and can adapt under a time constraint.
Use dual coding (pictures and diagrams) if you can, to help process your knowledge in a visual way as well!
Follow up your blurting with some questions to polish up on your knowledge, particularly on improvement areas.
As part of your regular revision, space this out. For example, you can blurt after 1 day, 3 days, 7 days etc…
Your blurt sheet is definitely keep-worthy, so stick it up in your bedroom or use it as a cheatsheet/refresher before the exam.
If you have extra time, explore the links between topics in that chapter, so you can get used to that thinking process in the exam.

Since coming across this more active form of note-taking, I’ve found it much easier to prepare in the run-up to an exam. Now I go ahead with blurting before I even think about doing anything else for my revision.

I think the blurt method is great for anyone who’s revising and for practically any topic/ subject. Often we miss the smaller topics and don’t spot them until we do the exam. Although it may call for a lot of brainpower, it’s more beneficial in the long-term, if you’re consistent with it. Just making space for it on our revision schedules, will make it far more easier to get started!