How do you prepare for your subjects?

[keltingmeith]

So, a lot of people come in here and ask, "what should I do to get the top score in subject X, Y, and Z?", to which most of us always reply, "well it depends on what works for you". But here's the thing - while there's no one way to study for subjects that will work, there's probably a million methods of studying you would never have thought of had nobody mentioned them to you. Just because there's no one way to study, that doesn't mean there's not value in discussing how you choose to study.

So, that's what this topic is for - how do you choose to study for your subjects, and what have you found works best for you? Maybe you'll even find a method someone's using for a subject you take, that you think will work even better for you! Maybe your methods don't work for you, but you want to put them out there and let people know this is what you tried and it didn't work as well - because maybe it will work for them, or they have some ideas that might make your method of study more beneficial to you.


I'll get the ball rolling for what I remember that I did for my subjects. My first one is maths - I really hated maths homework. Like, I was the kind of student that could absorb content really well, and knew how to apply theorems pretty much off the bat. So you know how your textbook usually starts off with like, 60 questions that are just designed to test you know the basics? My teacher always forced me to do half of them, and it felt like a waste of time, I hated it. So what I would do is just do them until it looked like I had done all the work (in reality, I had only done a third of it lol), and hand her a months worth of work at a time that she would just tick off because she didn't want to compare to her list for that much work at once lol. Then, I'd spend all my actual study time only answering extended response textbook questions - the kind where you wouldn't know what you were being tested on, and had to figure it out from the information provided. I found these really good, because then when I got to the exam, I'd be able to pull out the technique I had to use every time without much thought.

For English, I knew everything about the texts. I knew the author's intent, I knew the quotes my teacher suggested, I knew everything - but I only ever got Cs. Then one day, my teacher gave us an example essay, and I said to her, "but Miss, I thought an essay was only meant to have three main arguments, why is there so many paragraphs?", and she pretty much laughed me out of the room - turned out I just had grave misconceptions on what an essay should look like. I ended up having a panic attack, and decided to draw a graph - like the one attached to this post. Each turning point would be a new topic sentence, the bit following the turning point would be the quote I'd use for that paragraph, and the bit before the turning point was the link - and the idea was, the more steep the curve, the harder I was meant to push the example, and the longer the period between turning points, the longer the paragraph was meant to be. Those short, slightly hilly turning points at the end that don't even go through the x-axis? Those were essentially one sentence paragraphs, with link, topic sentence, and examples combined. And like, writing these curves once a week basically turned me from a C English student to getting near full marks on text response.


So there's my ways I used to study (don't ask about my other subjects - I either don't remember them, or they're not worth mentioning because I wasn't trying for them, or it's music which only had a practical exam and no written exam, for which all I did was play the songs I was going to perform over and over and over again [which is also just a bad way to prepare for music performance exams, just fyi lol]).

How do you study for your subjects?

[homeworkisapotato]

This is a great idea!

My teacher always forced me to do half of them, and it felt like a waste of time, I hated it. So what I would do is just do them until it looked like I had done all the work (in reality, I had only done a third of it lol), and hand her a months worth of work at a time that she would just tick off because she didn't want to compare to her list for that much work at once lol. Then, I'd spend all my actual study time only answering extended response textbook questions

I do the same thing too! Sometimes my teacher checks through every exercise painstakingly so I scan through the questions and I copy the answers from the answer book if I DO know how to do it. If I don't know, then I'll actually attempt the question. However, there are some exercises at the start of the chapter which basically revise Year 9/10 content which is bleh so I don't bother doing those. I hate how Methods teachers just make you do layouts instead of giving us a bit more freedom. Every student learns differently 

And like, writing these curves once a week basically turned me from a C English student to getting near full marks on text response.

Damn, that's so cool. My way of studying for English is also making everything formulaic. So I would break the components of an essay into little bits and analyse sample A+ essays. Then, I would write down the structure along with tips from A+ peeps, and write the steps to breaking down types of prompts. After I finished reading/watching the texts I would write a lot of notes on it. Then, I would start practicing individual paragraphs to essays. However, the note taking only happened this year and won't happen next year as I already have the documents saved.

For Bio (my 3/4) I would first type up my notes on the AOS from my textbook and combine them with extra notes from other resources such as the AN Bio notes book and the A+ Biol notes. Then, I make these little small booklets for each topic in an AOS (not pretty or anything, just colourful and very condensed info). Finally, I do practice questions from my textbook. I won't say anything on exam revision because this is my first 3/4 and I don't know how well my revision method even is.

Looking forward to reading more responses!

[keltingmeith]

I count 7 people upvoting not sharing their study methods - c'mon guys, we want to hear them! No matter how simple or small you think they might be

When I was learning kanji for Japanese and common ions for chemistry, I used to get these keyring flash card things that I could just fit in my school blazer pocket. Then, when I was just sitting around on public transport, I'd just pull them out and practice them. Typically one side would be kanji, the other would be the word and its furigana, and then for chemistry one side was the chemical formula + charge, and the other side was the name of it.

For music, I would re-write all of the sections of whatever chapter we were studying in the textbook (this was purely for musical concepts, not notation theory), summarising each section. Then I would sleep, and in the morning, re-read what I wrote, but this time highlighting everything that I thought was important - which was usually everything I wrote lol, but I'd colour-coordinate everything - stuff like red was terms I could use for writing, blue was important examples, yellow was words relevant to instruments, and green was notated examples or something like that.

[whys]

I sent this via PM to a few people but I thought there'd be more benefit in posting it here. Raw 50 psych student, and here's my advice:

Psych is one of those subjects where input directly equals output. I’d recommend making a study group with a few people who you work well with. With my study group, we would quiz each other before each sac and we would make a document on google docs about all assessable content and sample questions that could be asked in a sac, and by extension, the exam. It’s also important to remember you don’t always need to be rank 1 to get a 50, I think I was ranked between 4th and 8th in the cohort (our teacher doesn’t tell us our ranks). There was a sac that I only got 88% in and multiple people had gotten 100% so it wouldn’t scale up. I was super upset and I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get in the high 40s. So just remember, a few bad sac marks aren’t the end of the world (obviously still need to do well in most of them though if you’re aiming for 40s).

Also after the exam, DO NOT check suggested solutions if it makes you anxious. I made this mistake and I ended up having a mental breakdown and crying about how I lost ~30 marks on the exam because according to the answers on atarnotes and vce discussion space I got so many questions wrong. The answers online seemed correct and I felt all my hard work throughout the year had gone to waste. It was horrible, and it also affected my preparation for the other 3/4 I was doing because I’d ruminate about psych every day haha. I only started prac exams for food studies 3 days before the exam because I’d think about psych all day. So I’d recommend not checking suggested solutions online because they can only be taken with a grain of salt and are very likely to be incorrect!!

With regards to actual content, know it well. Ask your teacher anything you don’t understand. Even though this is basic advice, it’s really important and not enough people get help when they need it. It’s always good to establish a good relationship with your teacher. Also practice research methods often because usually it will come up on all sacs and is super important in the exam as well. I made cue cards for research methods in 1/2 which I revised during the year before each sac, no matter how dry and boring research methods was. I used quizlet for definitions and I’d always make notes using notes from class, powerpoints, the textbook and online free resources. I know people say you don’t need to know most definitions that well, however I felt more at peace if I learnt them haha, that was more of a me thing to do and it’s not something you need to do well. It’s important to make your own set of notes, not to revise them later, but you consolidate info when you make them which is super important. I didn’t use any company notes. I bought A+ notes, however didn’t use them as they aren’t that useful and included stuff you didn’t need to know, so I abandoned it after a few weeks into term 1.

I did checkpoints throughout the year, which is an amazing resource for sac practice due to exposure to exam style questions. I’d finish the relevant sections before each sac except for one sac (I was lazy and couldn’t be stuffed, my bad). I also used the workbook quite a lot, as we had homework set from it. I did all the learning activities from the jacaranda textbook (our school used this textbook). It’s a lot of time and work, but it’s worth it in the end. I hand wrote all my answers to the learning activities but I would type my notes because it took to much time to write out notes and typing notes made it easier to add diagrams and pictures if needed, and easier to edit and organise. I barely referred back to my notes after making them, however I used it a few times during exam time.

When you get to the stage of doing prac exams (term 3 holidays) always remember to be a strict examiner while marking exams. Mark all the exams you do harshly, otherwise there’s no point to doing the exams. The highest I ever got on a practice exam was I think 91%. The scores on practice exams don’t determine your score on the actual exam!!! I was scared I’d do really bad on the exam since I never did that well on prac exams, while my friends would get high 90s on their prac exams. However, what’s important is you learn from practice exams and implement new feedback into your next exam. After marking exams, I’d go through each one. I had a document for each exam that contained an explanation for each mc question I got wrong and each short answer question I got wrong. I’d annotate my 10 markers so I knew what to do better. I actually only submitted one 10 marker to my teacher to mark, which was the 2018 one, and I did quite poorly. The max mark I got on my 10 markers was 6. I was a harsh marker on myself, which helped ensure I made no silly mistakes on the actual exam and did well on the 10 marker. Never be lenient - you are just limiting the learning you could be doing from each practice exam! I think overall I did 23 full practice exams and around 2-3 extra 10 markers. I did all vcaa exams from around 2014 or 2013 I think. Vcaa exams are your best resource, and I recommend NEAP, ACED and Insight for company exams. I did exams from many different companies and found these three to be the best in terms of quality of questions and minimal errors in the questions/answer schemes. I also did the ATARnotes exam, which was alright but had a lot of errors. First ever exam I did was the 2017 VCAA exam which I used as a checklist for all the things I needed to revise (I never revised the content that I'd learnt after finishing it, I just jumped straight into practice exams), then I did 8 company exams before starting vcaa exams, just a personal preference haha. After that, I’d do a vcaa exam and company exam alternatively. For 2 wednesday’s before the exam, my study group and I (which was 3 people altogether) stayed back and did a vcaa exam in timed conditions after school (obviously not possible given the current circumstances). I think I did 4 exams in full timed conditions. For the others, I’d always take a break before starting extended response because my hand would hurt so much rip.