18th edition revision

[welshdragon79]

having failed my first attempt at 18th edition exam, does anyone have any tips and tricks on how to study for the exam? being that there is a random 60 questions, from a reported bank of 400 possible, whilst it's an open book exam, we were given a tip from teachers that the 60 question were divided over the 8 sections in specific numbers, which seemed to help a lot, atleast i thought, problem is, whilst the official person keeping an eye over the students could give us a report, it would only give a percentage of correct questions from each of the 8 sections, which given every try has diffrent selection of question, is not much use, i am stuck in the only way to revise is to read and try remember every single reg, which is impossible given how may there are.

 

[nicebutdim]

You don't need to remember regs, but you do need to know how to navigate the book to find them.

 

[newfutile]

As above use the contents and indexes,they usually go in order so start of the exam maybe scope and definitions and towards the end special locations and prosumers.
I always answer those I know for sure and flag the ones I need to look up

 

[tony9i9i9i]

Have you done the course? In a skill centre, where they tell you questions 1-4 are on part 1, questions 5-6 are on part 2, questions 7 -12 are on part 3 etc.
So you know what part of the book you should be looking at by the question number.
Take keywords from the question and look them up in the index, if the word has serval possibilities, if you are on question 7 for example, you can ignore any reference that is not in part 3.
Other than that, stay calm, do not panic, and work through one question at a time, if you get stuck move on, work all the way through and loop back at the end.
I only came back to the trade last year, this video helped me before my exam, he's got great advice on using the table of tables to find info quicker, watch it while paying attention, WhatsApp and Clash of Clans can wait!

 

[welshdragon79]

Have you done the course? In a skill centre, where they tell you questions 1-4 are on part 1, questions 5-6 are on part 2, questions 7 -12 are on part 3 etc.
So you know what part of the book you should be looking at by the question number.
Take keywords from the question and look them up in the index, if the word has serval possibilities, if you are on question 7 for example, you can ignore any reference that is not in part 3.
Other than that, stay calm, do not panic, and work through one question at a time, if you get stuck move on, work all the way through and loop back at the end.
I only came back to the trade last year, this video helped me before my exam, he's got great advice on using the table of tables to find info quicker, watch it while paying attention, WhatsApp and Clash of Clans can wait!

yes, in the middle of doing level 2 and 3 (retrainig /change of career) it is the 1 thing left of level 2 that i need to finnish before goig on to level 3, ive finished doing the book, and just waitig to submit the final 2 or 3 assignments, and then it's just turning up for the level 3 things in person at centres, as with all the other city and guilds exams before it, click through it quickly, answer the ones you know 100%, guess the ones you dont know, or are not so confident in, flag them, then go back to the beginning, and spend time going through the flagged ones, and as with the cases of the open book examas, check the book, it dosent help that some of the questions are like riddles in the way they ask - so you have to break the question down into sections before you can understand what's being asked, yet other can be a basic and straight forward and plain and simple, which colour is L3 of a 3 phase supply, or the mounting height of a socket/light switch, my brother in law who's a sparky of 30 odd years, first did the 16th edition, somehow (mainly through his jobs) managed to skip doing 17th edition, but has done the 18th edition, grunted when i mentioned me having to do it, an said "it not easy atall" but i expect didnt say any more as not to put me off, i expect "reading" t would get easier over the years as the more you may need to refrence it, ubt the city and guilds stuff, it should be made to write things in plain english, no wonder the trade is supposedly 30,000 odd people short now

 

[Thefailsafe2012]

Absolutely hammer as many practice exams as you can, if you haven't already put some tabs/post its in your regs book for the different sections then start doing it as you do the mock exams. All the answers are in there, but like others have said its knowing how to navigate the book which will really help. Practice exams come up easy on a google search!

 

[welshdragon79]

Absolutely hammer as many practice exams as you can, if you haven't already put some tabs/post its in your regs book for the different sections then start doing it as you do the mock exams. All the answers are in there, but like others have said its knowing how to navigate the book which will really help. Practice exams come up easy on a google search!

yep, i had so many of those post-it strips at the begining, that with them going in an out of my bag of stuff they curled up and would lock into each other making page turning difficult, i then had to trim them down to just the 8 sections, and select few pages, as always i'm probably overthinking it, 28 years after leaving highschool/26 after collage, seem i'll have to read it cover to cover, do what online test papers i can do and hope for the best!

 

[tony9i9i9i]

yes, in the middle of doing level 2 and 3 (retrainig /change of career) it is the 1 thing left of level 2 that i need to finnish before goig on to level 3, ive finished doing the book, and just waitig to submit the final 2 or 3 assignments, and then it's just turning up for the level 3 things in person at centres, as with all the other city and guilds exams before it, click through it quickly, answer the ones you know 100%, guess the ones you dont know, or are not so confident in, flag them, then go back to the beginning, and spend time going through the flagged ones, and as with the cases of the open book examas, check the book, it dosent help that some of the questions are like riddles in the way they ask - so you have to break the question down into sections before you can understand what's being asked, yet other can be a basic and straight forward and plain and simple, which colour is L3 of a 3 phase supply, or the mounting height of a socket/light switch, my brother in law who's a sparky of 30 odd years, first did the 16th edition, somehow (mainly through his jobs) managed to skip doing 17th edition, but has done the 18th edition, grunted when i mentioned me having to do it, an said "it not easy atall" but i expect didnt say any more as not to put me off, i expect "reading" t would get easier over the years as the more you may need to refrence it, ubt the city and guilds stuff, it should be made to write things in plain english, no wonder the trade is supposedly 30,000 odd people short now

I feel your pain, I'm not long back to the trade myself, it was 236 parts 1 and 2 when I did my apprenticeship, and after 20 years away did my 18th Edition last October. What can I say, watch that video, he is good, get hold of practice questions, and do as many as you can. Good luck with it.

 

[Fazz711]

Do some of the free online tests.
Get used to using the book.
After doing this I passed mine easy enough.