HSC Subject Reviews and Ratings

[Caitlynk_22]

Subject Name: Engineering Studies

Level: HSC

Workload: There is a lot of content, not only do you have to know theory (Written work) but you also have to know how to do mechanics which takes up a lot of time. All year 11 content carries onto year 12 which is not so bad. Do not pick this subject if you are not up for a challenge or are only looking for a bludge. Assessments also required a lot of work, sometimes my assignments could reach 2000-5000 words sometimes even more.

Assessment:
Term 1 - Civil Structures - Made a bridge and did truss analysis
Term 2 - Personal and Public Transport - Analysed personal transport (I did a Segway)
            - Half yearlies
Term 3 - Aeronautical Engineering - Analysed planes + how they worked etc.
            - Trials

Exam Thoughts: The 2018 exam paper wasn't something that I'd complain about but it was definitely different from past years. I think there were a lot more questions that needed explanation, contrasting materials etc than there were mechanics questions. In most exams, there would be a large truss analysis question (Not in my paper) as I had one in every paper leading up to the HSC. Overall it is reasonable. You can get a good mark if you study.

Textbook Recommendation:
- Excel Engineering Studies Prelim
- Excel Engineering Studies HSC
- Engineering Studies by John Rochford (We used this one the most)

Recommended Other Resources: I used youtube a lot to help me with Truss analysis questions as well as other mechanics questions.

Year of Completion: 2018

Rating:  4 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade:
Trials - 87/100

Comments: I really enjoyed my time in Engineering Studies although there were times where we had the hard slog of trying to get through the content. Our class was small, there were 7 of us, so it made things a lot easier and we got along much better. We had an excursion to Sydney which was the best excursion I ever had. I won't forget Engineering studies OH and don't leave assessments to the night before, it's always worse when its done that way.

[beatroot]

Bumping this thread !!

Congrats to the class of 2018 for completing their HSC exams. If we can get more subject reviews on this thread, that would be swell!

Doesn’t matter if the subject has already been reviewed— every review counts !

[Mada438]

Subject Name:Business Studies

Level: (Prelim or HSC?)Hsc

Workload:There is a pretty huge syllabus and it becomes like your best friend because literally everything you learn can be found on it. So you do a lot of work throughout the year in order to fully complete it; some of it can go very quickly so it may seem as if it is piling up.

Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)
Operations topic test: 20%
Marketing in class section 4 essay: 20%
Finance topic test: 20%
Trial HSC exam: 40%
(Can't really remember weightings-there were 4 tasks but i don't remember how they added up)

Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)
There's 4 sections-Section 1: Multiple Choice (20 mks), Section 2: Short Answer (40 mks), Section 3: Business report based on given stimulus (20 mks), Section 4: Business report or essay using case studies using one of two provided questions.
All the sections and questions can vary in difficulty depending on who wrote the exam but it is easy to prepare for because all questions are made from the syllabus. So the questions can be worded to sound very hard, but they still incorporate some part of the syllabus, so knowing it makes it alot simpler.

Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
Business Studies in Action: 5th edition
Used moderately-it has some good summaries that can be used to consolidate knowledge as well as some good chapter questions to ensure you know what you're talking about and it also includes some pretty good small case studies dotted throughout which makes things easier. But it can be pretty dense so its good to not rely on it heavily

Recommended Other Resources:A set of notes you make yourself. This can be useful to consolidate your knowledge at all times in a way you know you'll understand.
Copies of the syllabus pinned up throughout your house-you really do need to know the whole syllabus in order to do well in this course, so it is vital to ensure that you always know all the dot-points

Year of Completion:2018

Rating:  out of 5
4.5 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: (Optional)86/100 trials
ranked 8/49 with an overall internal assessment mark of 85
I predict a 83-84 for my final hsc mark (based on my performance in internal assessments and the final exam)

Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.
I really enjoyed this subject and i had a very good teacher which made it even better. Having a good teacher in such a content heavy course can make it or break it for you. I won't lie when i say that there can be times when the amount of content can seem to drown you, but at the end of it, its worth it.
I've already stressed how IMPORTANT the syllabus is, so i won't do that again.
I would recommend a moderate amount of revision from past papers and your OWN notes to ensure you know the content you've already learned while learning new stuff

Seriously a rewarding course at the end of it, and definitely is easily manageable when you understand everything and stay on top of it.

[darcyynic]

Subject Name: English Extension 2

Level: HSC (only offered in the HSC year)

Workload: The workload wasn't as intense as everyone told me it would be. If you begin your Major Work early (rather than leaving it to the last minute) you'll have a pretty light weekly workload. I began writing my Major Work over the summer holidays and had a final draft completed before trials, meaning that the workload didn't feel overwhelming. Extension 2 doesn't necessarily have any content to learn – it's more just about creation – so if you begin early, the workload is quite light compared to some other subjects.

Assessment:

Viva Voce (worth 10/50): basically just an oral presentation/conversation about your ideas for the Major Work. At my school there was simply a panel of two teachers with whom I had to discuss my Major Work. I quite enjoy public speaking, so it was a relatively easy task. The hardest part was putting my concepts into words for the first time.
Report (worth 15/50): a written summary of all of your research and how this research has shaped your Major Work. It needs to be quite detailed and sophisticated. In my personal opinion, it was harder than the Viva.
Draft (worth 25/50): this was my favourite assessment. Essentially, it was just the final draft of your Major Work (with the Reflection Statement included). Not only is it an enjoyable assessment, but also a useful one, because your teacher should provide their final feedback on it before you hand it in.

Exam Thoughts: There isn't an exam because the Major Work is the component marked externally. I thought the making of the Major Work was a highly enjoyable process and I loved every part of it. In the beginning, it was a little hard on the self-esteem as I struggled to write in a sophisticated manner, but as the year went on (and my writing improved) it became one of my favourite parts of Year 12.

Textbook Recommendation: As there isn't set content, there is no textbook. Instead, my reading for the subject consisted of other short stories, writing guides, advice from published authors, and critical theory. Here are some of the most important resources I read:

- Anything by George Orwell.
- Short stories such as Saboteur by Ha Jin, The Wall by Jean Paul Sartre, and The Bet by Anton Chekhov.
- The Philosophy of Composition by Edgar Allan Poe.

Recommended Other Resources: See above.

Year of Completion: 2018

Rating: 5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: I haven't received my HSC results yet, but my internal raw mark was 46/50. My draft was marked at 24/25

Comments: I absolutely LOVED Extension Two English (it helped that my teacher often brought coffee and cake to our lessons.) I think the course really developed my confidence as a writer which consequently improved my short stories in Advanced English and Extension 1. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in language, writing, and creativity.

[kauac]

Subject Name: English Advanced

Level: HSC

Workload: Heavy - lots of practice required (towards the HSC, I was writing and critiquing 1 essay/day - this differs from person to person).

Assessment: 15% Creative Writing Assignment
20% Half Yearly Exam (Paper 1)
15% Module A Listening Essay (in-class)
15% Module B Speech
15% Module C Essay
20% Trial HSC Exam (Paper 1 & 2).
Seemed to do a lot of assessments for this subject. 

Exam Thoughts: Paper 1 (AOS): Short answers on unseen texts, creative writing, essay - reasonable exam, some of the short answer texts were challenging to interpret with the time allocated.
Paper 2 (Modules): 3 essays - also reasonable, but I found it strange that they made the essay questions common across the whole modules instead of writing a question specifically for each text.

Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
Nil.

Recommended Other Resources:
Top Notes - Module B Speeches (Yarris Garrett)
Discovery Creative Task (Anna McHugh) - not relevant anymore, but this company may have produced something for the new syllabus. 

Year of Completion: 2018

Rating:  3.5 out of 5

Comments: This subject can be very time-consuming or cruise, depending on your ability, willingness and writing style.

[kauac]

Subject Name: Food Technology

Level: HSC

Workload: Light

Assessment: 15% AFI Case Study
25% FM Practicals and Report
30% Food Product Development Project and Practical
30% Trial HSC Exam

Exam Thoughts: Section I - MC: this was probably the most challenging part of the exam - many of the questions were very random and kinda irrelevant to the syllabus in comparison to previous years.
Section II - Short answer: Liked this section, everything was fairly straight forward. Interestingly, there were 6 x 6-marker questions this year.
Section III - Divided long response. A random question, but quite manageable.
Section IV - Long response: good, good! A very basic (yet broad enough to write enough) question on our AFI case study company.

Textbook Recommendation:

Food Tech Focus
We used a very recent edition, it was good for getting some ideas of going over specific aspects of content, though it can provide too much information at times. It was more of a supplementary material rather than an all-important textbook, if that makes sense. 

Recommended Other Resources:
Australian Food News Website - provides current examples of food innovation and news to enrich exam responses.

Year of Completion: 2018 (Compressed)

Rating:  4 out of 5

Comments: Food tech is a great subject if you are into food or nutrition. Do expect to be drenched with the business side of the food industry - legislation, developing food products, manufacturing processes - some of which I found interesting, other parts, I did not. In some cases, I found prelim food tech more interesting than HSC.

[kauac]

Subject Name: Mathematics

Level: HSC

Workload: Moderate

Assessment: 15% Topic Test: Locus/Parabola and Geometric App. Of Calculus
25% Half Yearly Exam
20% Topic Test: Trigonometric and Logarithmic Functions
40% Trial HSC Exam

Exam Thoughts: 10 MC, 90 Marks of questions of increasing difficulty. Man, I found this exam very hard! I was a bit disheartened walking out of the exam, as I just didn't get many of the questions.

Textbook Recommendation:

Maths in Focus - it was ok, I have been told that is textbook is not great, though.

Recommended Other Resources:

Past papers  .

Year of Completion: 2018

Rating:  4 out of 5

Comments: Maths requires a lot of regular practice, rather than just revising in time for a test/exam. It also requires a moderate degree of problem solving and "improvising" - something I struggled with, but exposing yourself to a variety of exam sources and difficulties will help to build this skill.

[kauac]

Subject Name: Biology

Level: HSC

Workload: Moderate

Assessment: 15% Secondary Sources Research Task
20% Practical Task
30% Practical and Research Task
35% Trial HSC Exam

Exam Thoughts: 20 MC, Short answer, 25 marks option (I did Communication).
I thought the exam was fairly nice, MC difficulty was definitely raised a bit. The option was generous (though I have heard other opinions), short answer was good, except for one poorly worded question.

Textbook Recommendation:
Heinemann Biology - used this A LOT. I really liked how it structured its information according to the syllabus points, and that it had many of the secondary source investigations included (if I decided to be a bit lazy and not research these myself  ). Module exam-style questions were helpful.

Recommended Other Resources:

Notes from others - this was my go-to resource when writing my own notes, as it hard sometimes to work-out how much depth I should use.

Year of Completion: 2018 (Compressed).

Rating:  5 out of 5

Comments: I loved HSC Bio, and it was 100% better than prelim. It is a subject where all the modules are interconnected, and there were constantly areas of study that really interested me beyond just getting a good grade. Using a variety of ways to memorise information is helpful - my go-to was diagrams and acronyms, but there are many other ways to get the info into your brain. 

[nishta]

Subject Name: Legal Studies

Level: (Prelim or HSC?) Prelim

Workload:

A relatively heavy workload. I know a lot of people dropped out soon after Term 1 began, because they weren't ready for the intense work load. Or, they fell behind. It is really easy to fall behind if you don't make consistent notes, so if you feel unsure about a topic or are even a LITTLE bit behind - work through it. Don't leave assessments to the last minute (especially not prelims!).

Assessment: (Outline the various assessments which make up the subject and how much each counts for)

I had a first assessment in Term 1 that was on the first few dot points of the syllabus. It was a fairly basic test - multiple choice and an extended response on the application of law. Becuase we were so new to the course, many of us didn't get great marks. But it's amazing to see the improvement between that first task to where we are now!

The second assessment was a hand-in research task. It was the most in-depth research I had ever done. My teacher chose for us to evaluate the legal and non-legal measures of a contemporary issue, where we did surrogacy. You had to be reallllly analytical - if you just rehashed information you can find with a quick google search, that's a C at best. The best responses needed thorough research and justified analysis.

Exam Thoughts: (What's the structure? How hard was it?)

Prelims! oh my goodness. The structure in hind sight was as expected: multiple choice, short answer, and extended responses. In short, a lot of writing. I got a lot of things wrong, especially in the multiple choice, because my knowledge wasn't as fine-tuned as it should have been. But a killer extended response can easily pull through those extra needed marks, so don't forget to do really well in those.

It wasn't hard per se - you just had to know the content well.

Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)

We used the Pearson textbook. It was all right, adequate as a textbook can be. The general principles and basics are really crucial for you to understand, but I wouldn't rely on the textbook. My teacher gave us notes the whole way through to supplement the textbook, and sometimes just disregarded the text entirely. Since it was published in 2011 or something, the stuff was really out of date. For example, gay marriage wasn't legalised at that point, so it talked about "a movement towards marriage equality" rather than discussing the result of that movement. You definitley have to use your own research and notes.

Recommended Other Resources:

LCMs are still really important (Legislation, Case law, media articles). This ties in with the extra research on contemporary issues you need to do. Markers always look for contemporary issues, so don't talk about something from the 80s, when a better recent case can be applied.

Year of Completion: 2018

Rating:  out of 5

5/5 soooooooo good

Your Mark/Grade: (Optional)

1st

Comments: Give your overall opinion of the subject, content, assessment etc. and a recommendation, plus anything else which you feel is relevant.

I cannot recommend legal enough. It would be the best decision you have ever made. I came into it in Year 11 planning to drop it, but the first lesson made me stay, and I even want to do a law degree now! I recommend it to everyone because I love it so much; the content is great, and you get a really great insight into the functions of society.

However, it's not for everyone. Do you like writing? Like, a lot? Essays? Do you enjoy research? Making lots of notes? Are you prepared to memorise a bunch of stuff?

If you said yes to the above, then hooray! Legal is great for you 

Also, if you do legal, make sure to pay attention to the prelim content. It's helpful for the hsc course!

[DrDusk]

Subject Name: Physics

Level: HSC

Workload: I wouldn't say there is too much workload, a lot of memorization though sadly. Concepts aren't that hard to pick up however may be abstract and so your ability to think outside the box in Physics largely dictates your workload. For my HSC I never hand wrote answers for any past paper and I never completed the worksheets we got in class.

Assessment: At my school, we had...
- 25% Practical Assessments x1
- 25% Half Yearly
- 20% Research Assignment(was practical based so it counts as a practical technically)
- 30% Trial HSC Exam


Exam Thoughts:
- 20 Multiple Choice
- 55 marks overall for the core topics
- 25 marks for the option topic
Took the 2018 HSC paper, and came out disappointed at the kind of paper NESA made. There was no questions that required critical thinking or thinking outside the box. Each question was an endless regurgitation of content which you were required to put into an essay form as if this subject is English. Sadly for me I'm not as good at writing essays as opposed to mathematical questions

Textbook Recommendation: Physics in Focus, its a good book. However I did not use a single textbook for Physics in my study. Get the matrix Physics books, they will be everything you need for this subject!!!

Recommended Other Resources: Matrix Physics Textbooks. They are a MUST. By only reading these books you could get a band 6 as they contain absolutely everything you need!

Year of Completion: 2018

Rating: 2 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Expected 92+

Comments:
Largely a disappointing course. What they teach us is not even Physics, rather it is a version that has been watered down to such a large extent into feeling like a HSIE subject. Instead of deriving equations and performing mathematical arguments, were stuck regurgitating material into an essay format that really doesn't allow some people including myself who will be taking Physics in UNI to shine and become exposed to the real side of Physics. Still a fun course definitely, the exams may be disappointing BUT the theory and content is SUPER FUN! Especially when you get to the quantum side of it.

[DrDusk]

Subject Name: Software Design and Development
Level: HSC

Workload: On the contrary to what everyone's opinions are on SDD, it is not an easy subject. There is quite a bit of workload, especially due to the sheer amount of theory and the Major Project which takes a lot of dedication. Pseudocode is fundamental to any SDD exam and because it relies on your problem solving ability, it is hard to master. I personally spent a lot of hours improving my ability to problem solve for algorithms in a software exam. I've done every one from 2000 - 2017 atleast 3-4 times, so there is a fair amount of workload.

Assessment: At my school, we had...
- 15% Social and ethical issues Assignment
- 20% Half Yearly
- 15% Major Project Part A
- 25% Major Project Part B
- 25% Trial HSC Exam


Exam Thoughts:
- 20 Multiple Choice
- 60 marks overall for the core topics
- 20 marks for the option topic
I found it quite an easy paper, but that is due to the amount of study I put behind this subject. The general consensus was that it was a tough paper. NESA seems to be focusing more on the problem solving side of SDD recently, i.e. the algorithms and charts, hence you MUST be able to do these for a band 6 mark. The option topic for this year(programming paradigms) was the easiest it has been in years so we were lucky on that part. The larger algorithms were definitely much more tedious than previous years and definitely more difficult as they put forward quite unique scenarios that required the use of multiple loops

Textbook Recommendation: The Sam Davis SDD textbook. For theory you can literally just memorize and regurgitate his exact words in the book and get full marks for a question in the HSC, taking into account you have related it to the scenario. That is what I did.

Recommended Other Resources: Independent Trial Papers, you NEED to get your hands on those. The algorithms they provide are REALLY good practice for HSC as they tend to be much harder and thus prepare you.

Year of Completion: 2018

Rating: 5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: 96

Comments:
Software is a very fun and engaging course. It is sad to see many people drop out after the first few weeks just because they find it boring. Yes the first chapter of software is really boring as it is just social and ethical issues, but it gets MUCH better. After the first one or two chapters you start getting into the hard core software design and development which is really fun. Regardless of the scaling and peoples opinions Software is by no means an easy course and it requires a lot of determination especially for the Major project and Algorithms in exams. Definitely give it a shot!

[Glasshouse]

Subject Name: Legal Studies

Level: HSC

Workload: Very heavy! But.. if you track your workload week by week and break it down into little chunks... it will be a lot easier to cope with.

Assessment: In my HSC year (2018) for Legal Studies I studied; Human Rights, Crime, World Order and Consumers.
Personally I loved crime the best... I think everybody does tho...lol  the others were very interesting except consumers got a bit dry. I'll explain what each assessment was like.

Sooooooooo...... Term 1 of Year 12 Legal Studies: Human Rights. For this assessment we had to choose a contemporary human rights issue (I chose arbitrary arrest and detention) and we had to write an essay on this issue with relevant cases, statutes, media articles etc. Then we had to make an 'engaging' table about the legal and non-legal responses to this issue and we also had to write an in depth report on one of these responses and assess to what extent it was effective in trying to eliminate arbitrary arrest and detention.
I really enjoyed this task as I included a case study of Otto Warmbier (american citizen who traveled to North Korea and was arrested for 'crimes against the state'. He really just took a picture off the wall... but yeah, story for another day). Mark for that assessment: 93% || Rank: 1st in class

Term 2 of Year 12 Legal Studies: Brings me to my most favourite topic..... Crime! So for this topic our teacher basically gave us free reign over what we wanted to study. We had 10 weeks to complete (so a full term) and I think I used 9.5 weeks to get the whole thing done. We were assigned to study ANY recent criminal case in NSW that had been resolved and the accused had a final outcome achieved. So basically the accused couldn't still be awaiting a final trial, or on bail or held on remand... etc. etc. I chose the case R v. Xie which was one of the best cases for legal as it literally covered every single aspect of the criminal justice system. We had to research the whole case and write up a report covering every side of the crime. This included proving the mens rea (the accused had the guilty mind to kill) and actus reus (the accused physically carried out the act of killing) as it was a murder case; then we also had to prove the reasons for the crime, criminal investigation process, criminal trial process, court proceedings etc. It was a very detailed assessment also including an appendix with crime scene photographs and an extensive bibliography. In short, this assessment probably helped me the most in regards to my Trials and actual HSC as I knew the case inside and out and used it in every crime essay. Mark for that assessment: 100% || Rank: 1st in class

Term 3 of Year 12 Legal Studies: World Order. I also really liked this topic (just not quite as much as crime tho ) because it was very current affairs based. So basically, our teacher chose this topic as an option (there are many other choices) but if you have the chance of persuading your teacher about what topics to do... I recommend steering him/her into choosing world order! Currently, there is a lot going on in the world. *wow obvious statement* but what I mean by that is that topics such as North Korea, Donald Trump, global warming, nuclear warfare, Russia, China etc. are explored in detail and give you a lot of scope for the assessments etc. For the assessment task we had to do a 50 minute timed response to an unseen question. I found it a bit tricky but basically just memorised every theme and challenge from the textbook in order to prepare for any question that could be thrown at us. I can't remember what the question was but mark for that assessment was: 92% || Rank: 1st in class

Term 4 of Year 12 Legal Studies: Consumers. Brace yourselves, it gets rather boring. Some cases were interesting (like a lady who found a decomposed snail in her ginger beer whilst out dining!!) but the rest of it got very tedious. No, I'm exaggerating. It wasn't that bad. It's just more business based and focused. But we didn't actually do an assessment for this topic, which I found made me really struggle with consumer essay questions in the HSC. Why this happened was because when the Trials rolled around, we hadn't even started learning about consumers. In the Trial, for the options essay we had to write BOTH world order questions which was an absolute killer. Anyways, we crammed it in before the holidays and I basically taught myself everything about consumers.
Trial Mark: 88% || Rank at end of year: 1st in class

Exam Thoughts: The basic structure in a Legal Studies exam looks like this:
- Section One: Multiple Choice (Crime and Human Rights)
- Section Two: Part A: Short Answers (Human Rights) || Part B: Crime Essay
- Section Three: Options Essays

Overall, I found the exams to be challenging. The reason for this is that Legal Studies requires you to learn and retain a LOT of information and they can literally test you on any random point or section of the syllabus. In saying that though, I found that keeping up with the weekly work and staying on top of it really really helped me to cope in the exams and gave me something to fall back on as I often managed to remember little pieces of information that we had learnt whilst doing the homework. Lame as that sounds... doing your homework actually helps you.... WOW!!!!!! 
Basically, stay on track of what your doing. Have a plan of attack for each section of the exam and it's fine. 

Textbook Recommendation: Pearson: Legal Studies - I used this every single day. (well every single day I had a legal studies lesson) as our homework was based off this textbook. It's really helpful and has loads of information but I also liked to sometimes use Cambridge Legal Studies textbook (I had it on PDF file) just to fill in the gaps and to get extra information from time to time. In the lead up to trials and the HSC I really really loved the Excel textbook for legal. It was awesome. Had a breakdown of every single point in the syllabus and explained it in detail. HIGHLY RECOMMEND THE EXCEL TEXTBOOK!

Recommended Other Resources: - NSW Legislation website, NSW state library, AtarNotes  , BarNet Jade and the Supreme Court of NSW court documents.

Year of Completion: 2018

Rating: 5 out of 5

Your Mark/Grade: Still awaiting HSC result. Final Rank at end of year: 1st in class

Comments: I absolutely loved Legal Studies. It is like no other subject and is highly relevant to today's society and what is going on in the world. I had a lot of friends say to me in the year "Oh I wish I had done Legal Studies! Sounds like such an interesting subject" and let me tell you... it sure is! Just be prepared to have to retain quite a lot of info, but... as I said before, if you break it down into small daily or weekly chunks and write your notes bit by bit, you won't have a ton of stuff to cram and memorise in the week leading up to exams.
I can't recommend Legal Studies enough! It is so totally different to any other subject I did and I truly loved doing it. If your considering choosing it as a subject I encourage you to DO IT!!! You definitely won't regret it (except when its late at night and you've spent hours hunched at the computer reading about a murder case and you suddenly need the loo... that was the only time I ever regretted choosing the subject.... LOL haha  ).
Go for it! Give it your all and you can smash Legal Studies out of the park!

ATVB on your HSC journey!!
xo

[Jfernando312]

Subject Name: Legal Studies

Level: HSC

Workload: A lot of workload, essay writing - but more so revolved around not just knowing syllabus dot points but knowing contemporary examples/evidence - legislation, cases, treaties. If you can research the best evidence and use it to adapt to any given essay then you will be fine. For crime and human rights - there's not doubt you need to know your content for the multiple choice and short answers. Personally I think updating your lcmdt is the big workload as that's the key to writing an essay, alongside knowing the crime and human rights content. But really, it's testing your flexibility and critical thinking to argue your point.

Assessment: Well for legal, my first assessment was for my consumer law option - we had to basically film a video of ourselves or do a magazine article informing consumers on various remedies/redress options for contemporary issues such as deceptive and misleading advertising and basically evaluate how we would in an essay. It was actually pretty decent since we could use the same information from our video in the essays, pretty funny filming myself tho. Our second assessment was a hand in as well for crime and human rights, so the crime essay question was on young offenders and the human rights was a short answer on the contemporary issue human trafficking. Since it was hand in it was pretty easy to smash although I do admit it would have been good to do some handwriting practice but you know corona and all. The third assessment we had was an in class family law essay on law reform on two contemporary issues with one page of summary notes that basically just had my evidence on it. I did changing nature of parental responsibility and same-sex relationships. Overall, I came second in the assessment tasks most of the time and third for my trial exams. The assessment tasks I would say were weighed pretty equally - like 20% and trials was like 30%.

Exam Thoughts:
So the legal studies exam is 20 multiple choice on crime and human rights for 20 marks, you have to do human rights short answer worth 15 marks, you have a 15 mark crime question (that could be on literally any syllabus dot point in the crime syllabus!) and two options essay you get to select. For my class, we did family law and consumer as our options.
I thought the 2020 legal exam was pretty good considering the year that we have had, some multiple choice were a bit effy but the options essay was pretty broad questions and good - I attempted the one about family law/consumer law finding it difficult to encourage compliance, using domestic violence, parental responsibility for family, product certification and deceptive advertising for consumer. The crime question was okay since I was kinda expecting it to be the criminal trial process because they never did that before in previous years, but the "moral and ethical standards" like I had seen that question before from like papers ages ago and online and I was like whattt but overall it was pretty good but that doesn't mean they wont be really really specific to one dot point next year! I tackled the exam with the options essay first, crime essay and then did the short answers and mcq last because I felt they were easier than the essays but yeah its really up to you how you approach

Textbook Recommendation: (What did you use? How much did you use it?)
So my class used Cambridge Legal Studies Textbook. To be honest, I only used the textbook when we had to do in class review questions for each chapter but I reckon the textbook is really useful for multiple choice and short answer questions because its really detailed and has all the terminology for your responses. I scavenged the textbook from time to time for terminology for my consumer and family law essays even.

Recommended Other Resources:
- I would recommend utilising abc news, Sydney morning heard and like any news paper and using contemporary examples from the news for your essays to show your application to the real world
- the notes on these atarnotes website is great too to learn to create your own
- also art of smart practice questions helped me have the flexibility to adapt to any crime question
- do lots of practice questions/trial papers -- expose yourself and see how you can adapt any evidence to any question and argue your point

Year of Completion: 2020

Rating: 5/5
Your Mark/Grade: Tbh I don't even know

Comments: If you like writing, reading and researching and actually learning about how society functions then go for it! This course content is really interesting and makes me wanna do law. Another tip is to use PEARRJAM criteria to evaluate, which means to make a judgement, knowing that and having the best examples of the law today is the best achievement ever!