The AI works as your private tutor across five phases: it tests you first, finds your weak spots, then teaches to those specific gaps. Copy the prompt below, swap the details inside [ ] for your own situation (or your child’s), and paste it into Perplexity or any AI chatbot.
🎯 How the five phases work
Phase 1 — Test you — The AI writes ten diagnostic questions and is not allowed to give the answers. You attempt them yourself first.
Phase 2 — Diagnose — It marks every question and names the underlying concept you’re missing — not “you’re weak at integration,” but “you can’t do u-substitution with radical expressions” — then ranks those gaps by urgency.
Phase 3 — Re-teach — It takes your three weakest concepts and teaches each one from scratch, as if you’d never seen it, with a worked example.
Phase 4 — Re-test — New questions, harder than the first set, shuffled together so you can’t pattern-match your way to the answer.
Phase 5 — Loop — Still wrong? Back to phases 3 and 4 with a different explanation and fresh questions, until it sticks. Once it does, it goes on a spaced-review list with a date to revisit.
The single most important line is “you will not skip phases.” Without it, the AI will very likely dump the answers and the explanation all at once in its first message — and then you’re back to “help me revise,” with none of the diagnostic value.
💬 The Prompt
You are my [subject] tutor. I'm in [grade / level] and my exam is in [X] days. We are going to work in phases, and you will not skip phases. Confirm you understand before we start. Phase 1: Diagnostic Test. Give me a 10-question diagnostic covering [list the units / topics]. Mix of multiple choice and short answer, calibrated to real exam difficulty. Do NOT give me the answers. I'll send you my answers in my next message. Phase 2: Grade and Diagnose. Once I send my answers, grade each one. For every question I got wrong OR got right for the wrong reason, identify the specific concept I'm missing — not just the topic, but the underlying idea (e.g. not "integration," but "u-substitution with radical expressions"). Rank my weak spots from most to least urgent given my remaining time. Phase 3: Re-teach. Take my top 3 weak concepts and teach each one from scratch, as if I've never seen it. Use a worked example for each. Be concise — no filler. Phase 4: Re-test. Generate 5 new practice questions per weak concept (15 total), harder than the original diagnostic, mixed together so I can't pattern-match. Do NOT give me the answers. I'll send my answers back. Phase 5: Confirm Mastery or Loop. Grade round 2. If I still miss a concept, loop that concept through Phase 3 and Phase 4 again with a new explanation angle and new questions. If I've mastered it, move it to a spaced-review list and tell me when to revisit it based on the forgetting curve. Start with Phase 1. Wait for my answers before moving on.
🔍 Why we suggest Perplexity
Perplexity attaches source links to every answer, so you can click through and check whether what it told you actually holds up.
The real risk when you revise isn’t learning slowly — it’s learning something wrong without realising it, especially with definitions, formulas and dates. Source links give you a way to verify.
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all run these five phases perfectly well. The difference is just that you have to do the fact-checking step yourself.
💡 Tips
The more precisely you fill it in, the more relevant the questions:
- Subject + grade level — So the AI pitches the difficulty right (e.g. S3 Maths, P5 General Studies, DSE Biology).
- The specific units — Don’t just write “Maths” — write “quadratic equations, factorisation, coordinate geometry”.
- Days left — This is what drives how it prioritises your weak spots.
- Paste in the syllabus or textbook contents — The questions get considerably more accurate.
The most common way this fails: giving in and asking the AI for all the answers up front. The whole value of a diagnostic question is the moment you get it wrong — that’s when you find out what you genuinely don’t know, rather than what you assumed you knew.
👨👩👧 For parents
- The first time, sit with your child and demonstrate one round — how to answer, how to send the answers back to the AI.
- The Phase 2 diagnosis is the best report you’ll get on where they’re actually weak. Screenshot it; it’s useful when you next talk to their teacher.
- The Phase 5 review list can go straight into a calendar and become a real revision schedule.
One last thing: AI is the sparring partner, not the one sitting the exam. The questions it writes and the answers it gives still need a final check from you (or a parent). Don’t trust AI blindly — but do learn to use it.
