Haha, yeah I know - I meant when I was writing it in here I thought it was a given, I write soooo verbosely on my SACS to ensure full marks. When I say that though, I wrote (first SAC a few weeks ago) as much as I can on any given topic on my SAC and came up short on almost every answer by a few lines and was so worried that I went over all of them, summarising what I already wrote to put some more length to it and it all ended up convoluted. After I did that SAC I was like WTF how do you get marks and how are you supposed to write answers? A few other people were in the same situation for that first SAC, although they were all confident they did really well (100%) whilst I was almost sure I'd be scraping 70% if I were lucky with the length I wrote. I ended up with 90% and the cohort average (and this is a top 50 school) was something like 60%.
Would you be able to offer any advice mate? Also, how did you learn? It seems like in Legal you can't exactly make notes with definitions, but instead a whole lot of crap you have to dot-point under each heading and somehow remember. At this current point in time, I'm procrastinating for my Psychology SAC study and am downloading YouTube videos into .mp3 to put onto my phone and listen to whenever. Wouldn't be all that great for definitions I wouldn't think but it would give me a solid grounding for those aforementioned 'dot points.' I really want a high score in Legal because you can as long as you put in the effort but I'm finding answering questions difficult, especially when you lose marks (like I did) for not putting in phrases or expressions in your reasoning or definitions - I can't remember what I didn't write because I thought it was a bit silly (whilst happy with my result), but although I wrote this one it was something like not writing 'chain of accountability' in your explanation whilst talking about responsible government.
This is like my answers - convoluted (although not this long!) XD
I'll try to help as much as I can, not that great at explaining tho!!
- went into my 1st sac feeling unprepared, like I was gonna fail. I waffled, I made junk up, I thought I left things out. so imagine my surprise when i got 100%!! lesson: go with your instincts.
- take it one sac at a time. i felt like i was going to flunk each sac right before i did it. and ended up full marking each and every sac. lesson: if you start strong, you'll finish strong.
- ppl i knew that were overconfident, one person in particular, did badly in those sacs and in the exam. its good to be confident in your abilities, but not so much that it gives you a false sense of security. its the last thing you want, really. you have a great attitude, just maintain it throughout the year!
- with notes, just organise them under the study design dot points. your notes will not be small little dot points. they will be slabs of paragraphs and essays, unless you summarise that info. incorporate your definitions into them, so writing them become second nature. perfect your definitions.
- i didnt have q cards, podcasts, or videos. i was a very inactive learner. i just rote learned all content and did questions. with your methods of learning, thats a whole heap more than i did, youve got that bit pretty much covered i reckon. do what works for you.
- dw bout it, writing legal answers is something you will get used to. it doesnt ever come naturally, but with a ton of practice, you can perfect the art
- again, definitions are everything. you may need to define something, and then explain it or use examples or analyse or evaluate it.
i wrote some other stuff but my laptop died and i had to completely re-write this whole post
Frustration.
and 90% is a great mark for legal!! and dw, my legal answers were convoluted, and a LOT longer than your post