You would have been told this many times and if you haven’t then you will hear it here. Now is the time to be starting to do practice exam questions relating to Unit 3. You are half way through your course and are about to begin a new unit that will introduce you to new concepts. However, you want to make sure that you still remember all the stuff that you have learnt earlier in the year.
The best way to determine whether you are familiar with the material you learnt earlier in the year, is not to re-read the notes (which you should have already made), but to do practice exam questions which will allow you to apply what you learnt.
In order to ensure that you revise effectively here are some of my tips:
1. Treat the questions as if they were real exam questions – don’t have the mindset that these are just practice questions and don’t mean much. Treat the questions you are doing as questions you would get in your end of year exam.
The way you structure an answer is also important and doing practice questions gives you the opportunity to practice structuring an answer, which answers the question in a nice and succinct manner.
2. Read the examiner’s report or solutions guide carefully – This probably applies more so to VCAA questions that you do. Past VCAA exams come with examiner’s report attached to them and they contain a wealth of information which you can use. Make sure that you read the comments made by the examiner’s carefully for the questions that you do, especially if you got the question wrong. The report offer’s insights into what the examiners are looking for in an answer as well as the common mistakes that students had made.
3. Get your teacher to read over your answers – if your teacher is willing to do this then get them to look over your answer to see whether your answer sufficiently ‘answers’ the question. A common mistake that students make is that they don’t completely answer the question that is asked of them. You will get no marks if you don’t answer the question that is asked of you even if your answer contains information which is correct.
4. Seek help from your teachers or tutors – if you have done a question and are not sure why you got it wrong even after reading the solutions, then get your teachers or tutors to help explain the question to you. Don’t just brush it off as something that may not come up in your exam, because you never know what is going to be on your exam. You could end up with a similar question and you will be kicking yourself if you didn’t ask for help when you could have.
If you loved this article, you will LOVE all of our other articles, such as: It’s Not Too Late to Start Revising!, 2U Maths Tips from a Past Student (98 in 2U Maths)! and Tips on Studying for Exams – Learnmate Tutoring.
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