Skip to content

Study by subject

Police and military exams

For police or military entry you learn institutions, ranks, basic criminal law and history landmarks. Lumi asks them back until you can recall them without hesitating.

How to turn this subject into cards

Make one card per institution, one per rank and one per offence with its definition in one sentence. For general knowledge, one card per date and per institution, which you can link to a History card. Physical fitness tests are not studied with cards, but the instructions and the rules of each test can be. The trap is thinking you retain a chain of ranks by rereading it. With Lumi you rebuild it from memory at each session, and that is what anchors it (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). Spread your revision over several weeks and your recall will last longer (Cepeda et al., 2006). Start with the ranks and institutions you confuse most often.

What you need to know by heart

  • The security institutions, their role and the body they answer to.
  • Ranks and their order, for the police and the armed forces.
  • The basics of criminal law, offences, penalties and self-defence.
  • The history and general knowledge landmarks asked in entry exams.
  • The instructions and rules of the physical tests.

It depends on the country

Organisations and ranks change from country to country. In France the national police and the gendarmerie, which has military status, each have their own corps and ranks, such as gardien de la paix, brigadier or commissaire on the police side. In the United Kingdom police forces are local, with ranks such as constable, sergeant and inspector. In the United States police are federal, state or local. In Spain there are the Policía Nacional, the Guardia Civil and local police.

How Lumi helps you remember it

You teach your cards to Lumi, institutions, ranks, criminal law, history. It forgets over time, like you do, then quizzes you right before you would forget. As the exam approaches, the Mist settles over what you know less well and Lumi asks that first. You arrive knowing ranks and notions without notes.

Example cards

Three cards the way you would write them, with the answer Lumi expects.

  • Who leads a territorial police force in England and Wales?

    A chief constable.

  • What are the three branches of the British Armed Forces?

    The Royal Navy, the British Army and the Royal Air Force.

  • What are the most serious crimes called in the United States?

    Felonies.

Example card

Try it, Lumi turns it into fill in the blank questions in your browser.

study-card.txt

Police and military exams · teach this card to Lumi

In England and Wales territorial police forces are led by chief constables. The British Armed Forces are made up of the Royal Navy, the British Army and the Royal Air Force. The United States has an Army, a Navy, an Air Force, a Marine Corps and a Space Force. In the United States the most serious crimes are called felonies.

Lumi’s question

In England and Wales territorial police forces are led by chief _____.

Pick the missing word

1 / 4
All subjects
Preview

Answer right to light Lumi up

Its lamp fades when a fact slips away.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use Lumi for the physical tests?
Physical tests are prepared by training. Lumi helps you with the instructions, the rules and the scoring of each test, which you put on cards.
How do I learn ranks without mixing them up?
One card per institution, with the full chain from bottom to top. Lumi makes you rebuild it, which fixes the order more firmly than rereading (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006).
When should I start revising general knowledge?
As soon as you know the date of the test. Short, spaced sessions beat a few long late ones (Cepeda et al., 2006).

Read next

Active recall, why quizzing yourself beats rereadingReading once then quizzing three times gave 61% of ideas recalled after a week, against 40% for rereading four times (Roediger, 2006).Spaced repetition, how long to wait between two reviewsSpacing beats massing. The best gap between two sessions depends on how far away the exam is, with the benchmarks from Cepeda’s 2008 study.How to make a study schedule before an examA week-by-week study schedule built on Cepeda’s best-gap findings (2008) and Rawson and Dunlosky’s successive relearning.

Sources

  1. Roediger, Karpicke (2006). Test-enhanced learning. Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3). doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
  2. Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted, Rohrer (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3). doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354

Teach this to Lumi

Give Lumi your police and military exams notes, it gives them back as questions at the right moment.

Coming soon on theApp StoreFree with 3 cards a week. No ads.