How to strengthen your weaker areas while studying

24th June 2025 by Anita Naik

Regardless of the year you are in, it always helps to consider where you will be at the end of the academic year. Mocks and end-of-year exams are particularly helpful in highlighting some key areas for growth, including weaker areas that need extra work.

Our brains tend to prioritise working on our strengths, especially during revision, due to a mix of cognitive biases and reward mechanisms. Here's why it happens—and how to overcome it to strengthen your weaker areas and subjects for the 2025/26 academic year.

Why do we focus on our strengths?

Psychological comfort and the "flow" effect are one of the main reasons we focus on what we know. Our brains always prefer tasks that help us feel competent and confident because they release dopamine (the reward chemical), making studying feel easier and more satisfying.

By comparison, struggling with weaknesses triggers discomfort, also known as cognitive dissonance, so your brain tries to avoid them to reduce stress.

Then there's the illusion of competence: Revisiting strengths creates an "I can do this!" feeling, tricking you into thinking you're productive, when, in reality, you're not filling knowledge gaps.

How to train your brain to tackle your subject weaknesses

Step one. Identify weak areas and knowledge gaps through self-testing:

By self-testing practice quizzes or past exam questions without notes, then analysing mistakes using the marking scheme. Track errors in a "mistakes list" to spot recurring patterns such as making small mistakes, misunderstanding exam questions or pure knowledge gaps. This data-driven approach targets exactly the areas that need improvement, not just the areas where you already know you have a weakness.

This technique helps with long-term mastery as struggling with challenges builds stronger neural pathways. Struggling with challenging topics forces your brain to make new neural connections (like forging a path through a forest). The harder the effort, the stronger the pathway becomes.

processing theory suggests that easy tasks, such as rereading notes, create shallow, short-term memory. Challenging tasks trigger deeper processing, making knowledge more likely to "stick."

Step two. Use active recall over note reading:

Using methods like active recall (forcing yourself to retrieve answers from memory, e.g., through flashcards) helps rewire your brain for long-term retention while exposing any knowledge gaps that may exist. This is because when you force yourself to retrieve an answer from memory rather than passively rereading notes, you engage in effortful learning, which strengthens neural connections and makes knowledge more durable.

The mental strain of active recall (e.g., struggling to remember an answer before flipping a flashcard) also signals to the brain that this information is essential, triggering deeper encoding in long-term memory.

Plus, unlike passive review, which can create an illusion of competence, active recall reveals exactly what you don't know. If you can't retrieve an answer, you've identified a weak area that needs work.

Step three. Use the 80/20 rule:

Spend 80% of time on weaknesses and 20% reinforcing strengths. This works because improving weak areas yields higher mark returns than polishing your strengths. For example, fixing a recurring chemistry error could gain you 5+ extra marks on a paper, whereas perfecting an already strong essay skill might only add 1-2.

The Pareto Principle also applies: 80% of lost marks come from 20% of topics (your weaknesses). Moreover, focusing on strengths may feel productive, but it doesn't necessarily deepen learning.

Step four. Pair your weaknesses with strengths:

This is a good way to study and train your brain to focus on discomfort. It means, for example, practising a tough maths equation before reviewing a topic you love. Your brain will always tolerate the struggle if it knows a reward follows.

Try what's known as the Scaffold method. Break a weak topic into smaller steps, using your strengths to support each step. For example, you're good at graphing, but you struggle with interpreting velocity-time graphs.

Pair them: Draw the graph (strength). Label slopes/areas (weakness → but guided by your drawing skill).

Doing this reduces cognitive load by chunking hard tasks and helps you build up your weaker areas.

Step five. Seek help from a tutor:

It isn't always easy to spot why you're underperforming in a subject area. For instance, you may be weak in Physics despite knowing the material, and this could be because 40% of Physics involves calculations, which you may need to strengthen. A tutor can help spot where you need to focus your studying and help you find ways to improve your weaker areas.

Tutors use quizzes, past papers, or targeted questions to identify true gaps (e.g., "You're not 'bad at math'—you specifically struggle with algebraic fractions"). They also review your errors to spot patterns (e.g., "You keep forgetting to convert units in physics—that's costing you 15% of marks").

Tutors can also show you subject-specific strategies you wouldn't self-discover, such as:

For maths weaknesses: Always write down known variables before solving.

For language weaknesses: Use chunking—memorise phrases, not just words.

For essay weaknesses: Reverse-outline your drafts to check the logical flow. This means analysing a finished draft by checking its logic, flow, and structure.