--- title: "Reviewer Maker: How to Make a Reviewer for Any Exam | Formswrite Blog" description: "How to make a reviewer from your notes or PDF: what to include, a simple layout, and how a reviewer maker turns notes into practice questions." canonical: https://formswrite.com/blog/reviewer-maker-how-to-make-a-reviewer last-updated: 2026-10-08 --- # Reviewer Maker: How to Make a Reviewer for Any Exam In short To make a reviewer, gather your notes for the exam, pull out the key terms, write the facts you have to memorize, and finish with practice questions and an answer key. ## What a reviewer is In the Philippines, a reviewer is the material you use to prepare for an exam. It can be a summary of your lessons, a list of terms, a set of practice questions, or all three. Students make reviewers for quizzes and periodical exams, and graduates use them for the LET, board exams and the Civil Service Exam. The best reviewers are not the longest ones. They are the ones you can finish, so one reviewer per exam topic and one to two pages per lesson is a realistic target. ## What goes in a reviewer 1. **Key terms.** Each term with a definition you can say out loud in one sentence. 2. **Must-memorize facts.** Dates, formulas, laws, classifications and sequences. 3. **Short explanations.** Two or three lines on the ideas that need reasoning, not just memory. 4. **Practice questions.** Questions in the format your exam uses, with the answers on a separate page. If your reviewer has no questions, it is a summary. Summaries are fine for the first pass, but you only find your weak spots when you answer something. ## How to make a reviewer by hand 1. Start with the exam coverage. Your teacher's syllabus, the PRC or Civil Service Commission topic list, or the table of specifications tells you what to include. 2. Take one lesson and reduce it to a page. Delete anything you already know cold. 3. Underline the terms and facts, then move them to the key terms and facts sections. 4. Write one question for each term, then mix the questions up so they do not follow the order of your notes. 5. Put the answers on the back or a separate page, and cover them while you practice. This works, but it is slow. Writing 50 good multiple choice questions with believable wrong answers can take an evening. ## How a reviewer maker speeds it up Formswrite generates practice questions with an answer key from your notes, and flashcards on a paid plan from a PDF, Word file, Google Doc or notes. For a reviewer, the flow is: 1. Upload one lesson or module, not the whole semester. 2. Generate flashcards for terms and practice questions with an answer key. 3. Read the result against your notes and delete anything wrong or off topic. 4. Print it, or study it on your phone. Photos of handwritten notes and scanned handouts are supported because Formswrite includes OCR. See the [AI reviewer maker](/tools/reviewer-maker) for the upload steps. [Make a reviewer from your notes](/tools/reviewer-maker) What you can choose in Formswrite: the source can be a PDF, Word file, Google Doc or photos of notes. The flashcards come as term and definition, question and answer, or cloze (fill in the blank) cards, and the practice questions can be set to easy, medium or hard. Start at medium for a first pass, then raise the difficulty for the topics you answer correctly every time. ## Reviewer maker from PDF: what to expect A reviewer built from a PDF depends on the PDF. A clean module with headings produces a tidy reviewer. A scan of a photocopied page with notes in the margin produces noise. Before you upload: - Remove cover pages, tables of contents and long reference lists. - Split a very long PDF by lesson. - Check that scanned pages are readable to you, because if you cannot read it, neither can the tool. ## A complete mini reviewer you can copy Here is a full one page reviewer for a Science lesson on photosynthesis, in the order you would write it. **Key terms:** photosynthesis (plants make food using light), chlorophyll (the green pigment that absorbs light), stomata (small openings in leaves that let gases in and out). **Equation to memorize:** carbon dioxide + water + light energy gives glucose + oxygen. **Explanation:** Light is captured by chlorophyll in the chloroplasts. The plant uses that energy to build glucose from carbon dioxide and water, and releases oxygen as a by-product. **Practice questions:** 1. Which pigment absorbs light for photosynthesis? Answer: chlorophyll. 2. Through which structures do gases enter a leaf? Answer: stomata. 3. If a plant gets plenty of light and water but no carbon dioxide, what happens to glucose production? Answer: it stops or slows, because carbon dioxide is a raw material. Question 3 is the kind that separates a reviewer from a summary. You cannot answer it by remembering a definition. You have to use the equation. ## The blurting method for self checking After you finish the one page reviewer, close it and write everything you remember about the lesson on a blank sheet, for five minutes. Then open the reviewer and mark what you missed in a different color. The missed items are your real reviewer. You can turn them into flashcards and review them first the next day. ## Reviewers for different school exams - **Quizzes and periodical exams:** one reviewer per lesson, mostly terms and short answers from your notebook. - **Entrance and scholarship exams:** mixed topics, so build a reviewer per subject and a combined practice set. - **Licensure and board exams:** build around the official topic list, and practice in multiple choice, since that is the usual format. - **Teachers making a reviewer for a class:** Formswrite also grades with AI and can run a converted quiz as a live timed game with Formswrite Play, so a reviewer can double as a class review activity. ## A sample reviewer layout | Section | Example for a Science lesson on the water cycle | | --- | --- | | Key terms | Evaporation, condensation, precipitation, runoff | | Facts | The water cycle is driven by energy from the sun | | Explanation | Why clouds form when warm air rises and cools | | Practice question | What process turns water vapor into liquid droplets? Answer: condensation | ## Which reviewer format should you use - **Terms and definitions** for subjects with heavy vocabulary. - **Practice tests** for subjects where the exam is multiple choice. - **Flashcards** for anything you want to review during short breaks. The research behind this is covered in [are flashcards effective](/blog/are-flashcards-effective). ## Reviewer or study guide: which do you need The two overlap, but they answer different questions. A study guide helps you learn a topic for the first time, so it explains and organizes. A reviewer helps you prepare for an exam you already studied for, so it compresses and tests. If you are still confused about a lesson, start with a [study guide](/blog/study-guide-maker). If you understand it and need to lock it in before an exam, build a reviewer. Many students do both for the same lesson, in that order. ## Exam specific guides If you are preparing for a particular exam, see the guides for the [Civil Service Exam reviewer](/blog/civil-service-exam-reviewer) and the [LTO exam reviewer](/blog/lto-exam-reviewer), both with practice questions you can use alongside your own reviewer. ## FAQ What is a reviewer maker? A reviewer maker turns your study material into a reviewer: key terms, flashcards and practice questions with an answer key. It saves the time you would spend retyping and writing questions. Can I make a reviewer from a PDF? Yes. Upload a text PDF or a scanned one, since Formswrite includes OCR, and generate terms and practice questions from it. Check the output against the PDF before you study. Does a reviewer maker contain the real exam questions? No. It writes questions from the material you upload, so it is practice, not leaked or official content. Formswrite is not affiliated with the PRC, the Civil Service Commission or the LTO. How many questions should my reviewer have? Aim for around ten questions per lesson. That is enough to expose weak spots without making the reviewer a second textbook.