Methods 3/4 Advice

[tahlea2209]

Hey everyone,
So I completed units 1/2 methods this year, woah! I averaged around 80% for my tests and 'flunked' my exam with 65% (my teacher told me that I just need to practice my exam skills and that I knew the content well) I was just wondering if anyone had any advice for methods 3/4? For learning content, revising and applying it.
Anything that you found helpful for 3/4 please post!
Thanks,
Tahlea

[Ionic Doc]

Hey I don't have any actual advice, but you should definitely check these links out, they've definitely helped me in methods

1) https://atarnotes.com/forum/index.php?topic=170867.0
2) https://atarnotes.com/maths-methods-advice/
3) https://atarnotes.com/methods-exam-three-weeks/

 

[affaaa]

imo this year a thing i really messed up on is that the tech exam has like no time for u to recheck and i was one of the fastest ones in my class.
my advice is probably to try to do questions quickly and move on if you get stuck as you would have no time to finish

[ArtyDreams]

I dont have toooo much advice, but here are some things that may help
 
If you know and understand the content, doing practice exams in a range of different conditions is the most valuable before the exam. Learn the content quickly, and preferably aim to finish the course as soon as possible next year, so you can start doing practice exams well in advance. Even when you are doing textbook questions (after you've learnt the topic well ofcourse) try and time yourself (i.e, if theres a question, try give yourself 5 mins to do it and see how far you get), as you get more comfortable with the topic, work on those questions even quicker.

Do as much as you can in timed conditions, and try and replicate the exam situation. The more exams you do, the more practice and better you will get at completing questions quickly and accurately

Also, for the TA exam/SACs, make sure you know your CAS calculator really well. Charlie Watson on Youtube has some great CAS tutorials if you are struggling.

[Sine]

Hey everyone,
So I completed units 1/2 methods this year, woah! I averaged around 80% for my tests and 'flunked' my exam with 65% (my teacher told me that I just need to practice my exam skills and that I knew the content well) I was just wondering if anyone had any advice for methods 3/4? For learning content, revising and applying it.
Anything that you found helpful for 3/4 please post!
Thanks,
Tahlea

How everyone learns is obviously going to be different but for most people, I think something like the following would be good to follow. Or helpful to at least think about and generate your own opinions.

Learn the topic (from the textbook/other resources/videos) ----> Textbook Questions ----> Practice exam questions -----> Practice exams

and alongside any section, you can use other resources such as online videos/help from others etc

So with learning the topic I think this is important to do before you jump into actual questions because to do well in methods you really need to have more of an understanding than just the ability to complete most textbook questions (which are generally quite simple/repetitive) because once you get to the exam-style questions that proper theoretical knowledge will be useful to complete these more challenging questions. You also want to learn via first principals so that means not just memorising the theory/formulas but actually understanding it - e.g know where a formula comes from, knowing a rough proof of the formula which may improve understanding. Although you don't need to know proofs for the exam.

Once you get to textbook questions you have a few options you can decide to do every single question, some people do this but not everyone has the time. The other option would be pick and choose parts of questions making sure to cover all the aspects of the chapter.

For exam-style questions/practice exams I think this is a very important aspect of the process - many people say that the number of practice exams you do is proportional to the final study score - I don't necessarily 100% agree with this but there is truth to it. But, you need to be analysing the practice exams that you complete not just finish them. You need to correct them, find out whether you have gaps in your knowledge so that you can go back and fill those gaps. Find your mistakes whether it be due to bad understanding/thinking or just careless errors and try to make a conscious effort not to make those errors again.

During VCE I had an entire exercise book which I logged my methods exams (also had an exercise book for spec/chem) where I noted down the exam I had completed and wrote down any careless mistakes I made in those exams. E.g. maybe I forgot to include dx on an integral, forgot to label my graph, forgot to sub in a value and completely answer a question etc Then closer to the exam I would go through that book and revise what mistakes I had made so that they were in the back of my mind to not make those mistakes again. Through reading time when you are looking at a question you should be firstly thinking how to complete it but also thinking about whether you have made a mistake on a question like this before - if you have you should identify the mistake and make sure you don't make it in the actual exam.

[colline]

- It's really important to not just do short practice questions but to get really comfortable with long application tasks.
- I found that getting SACs from different schools help a lot because you don't want to just get used to the type of questions the teachers from your school writes.
- Creating your own questions is a good method of applying what you learnt to VCE level.
- I doubt anybody does this, but go through your CAS manual. It's amazing how much easier your life would be if you could use all the functions on there.
- Have a logbook to keep track of all your mistakes.