Methods/Specialist 2008

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this year's exam was so hard that all the exam practice i did was useless. there was a lot to do and little time to do it in so everyone was forced to just use their logic and analytical skills that they had gained throughout the year and apply it to different scenarios.

I found that too. Practise helped me in exam 1 and helped me in a few questions in exam 2 (mostly multiple choice) but they weren't as useful as what I was hoping. Practise exams help build confidence, but I agree that you shouldn't go nuts with it. After about 15-20 or so, you probably aren't going to get much better unless you spread it out over a very long period of time.

How were the questions this year? difficult/tricky/looong?

[midas_touch]

I tend to think of practice exams as a way to ensure I don't have any holes in my knowledge...I often find that once I do know something, I'm quite confident with it without the need of past papers; but, sometimes I forget a small area in the course ('big picture syndrome' if you will).

Yeah thats how I felt as well when I did my VCE exams. Doing dozens of exam papers is pretty pointless imo. After doing 5-10 papers, it really becomes a matter of trying to get rid of silly mistakes due to misinterpreting/misreading the question (provided u know the material like the back of  your hand by this stage).

[Mao]

How were the questions this year? difficult/tricky/looong?

this year wasnt easy, and a little tricky, requiring problem solving skills as well as mathematical knowledge, extended response is as usual, long...

[AppleXY]

Yeah, I thought so. If they made it piss easy last year it's almost a guarantee it'll be piss hard this year. lol

[fredrick]

hopefully it will be piss easy next year 

[bebobebo]

i think it was just the trickiness that made a lot of study useless. in 2006 the exam was piss easy so it came down to doing a lot of exams and knowing the basics well. what also compounded my troubles was the fact that i had an ear infection and left the exam three times to vomit. i applied for special consideration but didnt get it for whatever reason so 43 raw is quite good considering...

[AhaShake]

Dammit, how many times do I need to tell you? Efficient work is better than hard work. 50 exams isn't going to help much more than say, 10 exams. If you plotted the graph of "number of exam papers completed" vs. "study score" it would asymptotically approach 50. Your biggest gains would be your first few papers.

I'm saying this now because I don't want you to ever look back and say, "shit, I didn't make my goal: now I can't be confident about doing the actual exam!" That is wrong, you can be confident having only done as little as 5 exam papers. Just keep up consistent study habits: this is so much more valuable than high-volume cramming.

I'm sorry coblin but I think that is wrong.

For all my subjects that allowed it (chem, physics, methods, further), I did as many exams as I could. I didn't 'cram' as you suggest, but rather did 1 or 2 (3 or 4 for further generally) each day for a fair while. Doing practice exams is the best way to help, and I don't think that saying that doing 50+ is useless is good advice at all.

If a student is able to do 50+ without cramming and spreading it out and all that, then they should, because they are the best thing for studying. I did none of them in full exam time, and often I'd leave a question or just do it very quickly, even checking the answers as I went. Nonetheless, I did atleast 25 for physics, 30 for chem, 50 for further and 30 for methods, and I think I got pretty good scores for them.

Just for clarification, further exams generally took 20/25 mins, physics/chem 45 at max and methods around 35 mins for the 1 hour, and 1 hour for the 2 hours.

[Collin Li]

AhaShake, I explained my reasons for making that post. It was to lift the burden of expectation from him. He does not need to do that many past exams to do well.

[sheepz]

Where do you all get the past papers from? Do you buy ALL 50 of them? o.0

[Toothpaste]

Where do you all get the past papers from? Do you buy ALL 50 of them? o.0

For methods (also specialist), my school burns them all on a CD and gives it to us.

[sheepz]

OMG THATS SO LUCKY!! i highly doubt my school gives out a lot of it :X Hopefully someone will post up theirs if they have a copy on the computer =D