surviving methods 3/4 sacs without a tutor

[kristiann]

Hi guys, so Im doing methods 3/4 this year but am doing a lot worse than i expect (57% for the first two sacs). This is ok considering this is only a tiny bit below the average, but its a lot below what I had expected. Now sure, Im by no means talented at maths but i am ok at the subject, and all last year was getting 80% with average effort. Now, I have a few questions as a student trying to lift their game and be somewhat competitive

I did all of the textbook work, understood all of the concepts and completed all of the school assigned revision tasks without much of an issue (2 revision sheets and 3 practise sacs). I came out of the last sac confident that Id gotten most of the stuff right, and felt confident that id be getting in the 70% range. Yet, I still made a tonne of mistakes that gave me a 57%. This was mostly calculation errors, but a lot of these were large ones that id probably make again.

A lot of friends have said that I should get a tutor, but I already have a tutor for jap and eng lang, so I don't really want to because thats time consuming and costly. So, what should I be doing to help lift my scores? I was aiming at the start of the year to be ranked somewhere between the 50th and 75th percentile and to get a study score somewhere between 30 and 35 raw?

thanks guys, any help/advice much appreciated

[thushan]

Hi guys, so Im doing methods 3/4 this year but am doing a lot worse than i expect (57% for the first two sacs). This is ok considering this is only a tiny bit below the average, but its a lot below what I had expected. Now sure, Im by no means talented at maths but i am ok at the subject, and all last year was getting 80% with average effort. Now, I have a few questions as a student trying to lift their game and be somewhat competitive

I did all of the textbook work, understood all of the concepts and completed all of the school assigned revision tasks without much of an issue (2 revision sheets and 3 practise sacs). I came out of the last sac confident that Id gotten most of the stuff right, and felt confident that id be getting in the 70% range. Yet, I still made a tonne of mistakes that gave me a 57%. This was mostly calculation errors, but a lot of these were large ones that id probably make again.

A lot of friends have said that I should get a tutor, but I already have a tutor for jap and eng lang, so I don't really want to because thats time consuming and costly. So, what should I be doing to help lift my scores? I was aiming at the start of the year to be ranked somewhere between the 50th and 75th percentile and to get a study score somewhere between 30 and 35 raw?

thanks guys, any help/advice much appreciated

You know where you are making errors.

Work out why you are making these calculations errors. Are they careless mistakes? If so, the best way to go about preventing careless mistakes is to, during the SAC, redo the question with your answer covered to see if you get a different answer, or work backwards to see if your answer is consistent with the question (eg. if you differentiated a function in a SAC, antidifferentiate your answer to see if you get the original expression).

If you have recurring calculations issues, use your textbook questions to give yourself the chance to work more slowly, being more conscious of your careless mistakes.