Where are you studying? If it makes you feel any better I started DL in January with London Met, and decided to hold off on exams until the new syllabus versions were available (to avoid resits), but the revision week I was aiming for was cancelled and now with the summer holidays it means it will be September for the revision week and October for the exams! I've been told it isn't an issue though due to the 18 months available starting from the date of the first exam.
I know what you mean about no one seeming to check your progress, but chances are it means you are doing okay as someone will be checking the progress tests as you complete them (even the online ones).
At the moment I'm using Keith Williams ATPL Question Bank with Explanations CD-ROM from Pooleys to resolve some of the things I didn't get from the text books. It seems many ATPL students bang on about online question banks, but what you really need to understand the subjects are explanations to the questions that you can't answer correctly. The CD-ROM is proving to be quite useful for this.
Hang in there. Once it's done, it's done!