Books

[Lewis]

So what books are useful for studying for orals?

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[Lewisscott22]

Seamanship Notes - Angus Ferguson. This has a lot of note-form answers.
The Seamanship Examiner - David House. This is some orals questions and answers.

Other than that, I am using orals reports and compiling a large question bank with my answers.

[alistairuk]

As Lewis says, Seamanship Notes is ideal - quick summary of key points on pretty much everything you're likely to be asked at OOW level - there's a few mistakes in the book (or certainly was a few years ago) & whatever you do make sure you review the current regulations for stuff that's changed since your edition of the book was published.

While the book is useful, do bare in mind that for a lot of the topics the information in the book is the bare minimum that you should know and while it may be enough to get you through a few questions you don't know in depth answers too, don't rely on it as the "end all answer" to the topics you're likely to get asked - giving bare minimum answers to every question is likely to get you a nice long Orals session.

What I (and fair to say most of my fellow cadets did - also did same for Chief Mates) was buy one of those hard back notebooks from Tesco and created our own revision notes using the MGN 69 as a guide. [1-2 page's per item in MGN 69], using Seamanship Notes as a starting point and fill in around the bullet points using your own knowledge (or research).

Also suggest getting another notebook for the Orals prep sessions / revision sessions - if its ring-bound together it's not going to get lost / separated - scribble your quick notes / conversations down in it and then you can use it as a base to update your nice neat and tidy "Revision notes" book.

On a side note: DONT THROW YOUR NOTEBOOK AWAY AFTER YOU PASS - you'll find it very helpful when revising for your Chief Mates as you will have forgotten most of it - and it will make a good starting point for your chief mates notes.

Also recommend getting copies of the Orals Reports from your college (WMA have em all in the Library as I am sure those there will know), You've probably already done so, but form little study groups with your friends (think we ended up in about 18 different groups). Ask each other questions - a good way that we did for our chief mates is to each take a different orals report, go away and find out proper answers to the questions on the paper you've got, then get together in the bar one evening (or a random classroom one afternoon) and take turns asking each other the questions from the report. Let the others answer, discuss it and if they cover all the points you've already noted then good - if not you all learn! Some people put answers that they gave in their reports - don't assume it was a good / correct answer - it could be bull****!

I strongly recommend you get together with people who are at a similar stage to yourself though - I know this sounds really harsh but having "Revision sessions" with people who are way behind you in their own revision / knowledge / effort won't benefit you and at end of the day it's your career you want to get started!

Also attend as many Orals Prep classes as you can - and if they give you a choice (especially the Southampton Pilots) - do Rules of the Road!