How is this?

[Tomanomanous]

Sorry for making all these annoying question threads, but you guys are really good at answering my questions and I've already begun to rethink how I'm going to be doing my VCE studies (nerdism is rubbing off on the somewhat-nerd)

Anyway, at my school I do Further maths, and I have finished all the coursework from the Heinemann VCE zone textbook (would've preferred Maths Quest - but oh well...) and I am going to start doing past exam papers from VCAA. I just want to know how my plan for revision for the exam sounds.

Monday Class (100 minutes): Do a past analysis exam (or whatever they're called -- the all wordy extended one).
Tuesday Class (50 minutes): Do textbook exercises on anything I need to build skills on.
Thursday Class (100 minutes): Do a past analysis exam.
Home: Do the multiple choice exams (1-2 a week).

How does that sound for a plan from now until the start of term 4? I want some opinion or feedback on how I could improve this. I'm going to be doing the whole reading time stuff, and making enough time to read over my answers.

[paulsterio]

its hard to really recommend a study plan of sorts, but with reading time, especially in further maths where there are a few explain questions, i'd actually say try and actually read through the paper first, the core and the modules, work out which questions you dont know how to do yet, ponder about them, start to plan your time, how much time you'll spend on the core, how much more on the first/second modules, and also work out which youd like to start with, if theres a module you particularly enjoy, start with that, as to ease into the paper somewhat

and i guess with further maths, checking is 100x more important that in methods or specialist purely because theres so many mistakes that can be made and because they can be costly
so do plan to leave time to check but you should develop a strategy

for example, i know that no matter how careful i work, ill make mistakes, so what i do is i go through the exam at top speed, and then go through the exam a second time at that speed, which picks up 90% of my errors, and then i have a strategic search, where i have a mental checklist of mistakes i know i make and i eradicate them, its worked well for me since last year, and since, i havent made any more careless errors in methods/specialists

the other method, which some of my friends use, is to work slowly yet carefully, and only have a glance over at the end, some people just don't make mistakes

[Tomanomanous]

its hard to really recommend a study plan of sorts, but with reading time, especially in further maths where there are a few explain questions, i'd actually say try and actually read through the paper first, the core and the modules, work out which questions you dont know how to do yet, ponder about them, start to plan your time, how much time you'll spend on the core, how much more on the first/second modules, and also work out which youd like to start with, if theres a module you particularly enjoy, start with that, as to ease into the paper somewhat

and i guess with further maths, checking is 100x more important that in methods or specialist purely because theres so many mistakes that can be made and because they can be costly
so do plan to leave time to check but you should develop a strategy

for example, i know that no matter how careful i work, ill make mistakes, so what i do is i go through the exam at top speed, and then go through the exam a second time at that speed, which picks up 90% of my errors, and then i have a strategic search, where i have a mental checklist of mistakes i know i make and i eradicate them, its worked well for me since last year, and since, i havent made any more careless errors in methods/specialists

the other method, which some of my friends use, is to work slowly yet carefully, and only have a glance over at the end, some people just don't make mistakes

Ahhk! I'll try and do it your ways to see if I'm an error sort of person. I notice in further maths, compared to methods, there is a huger margin for making those silly little mistakes which you often facepalm about. So, yeah. Thanks!

Yeah, I'm going to begin planning out my time and 'speeding myself up' for the exam. My maths teacher says maths exam are a 'speed test', so yeah..

[paulsterio]

mhmm, basically thats about it i guess, and youre right, further maths theres basically NO margin for error, if you drop one mark on the exam, thats like 50 gone, in methods you have a margin of 1 or 2 marks you can drop before calling a 50 off, so be careful of that

and plus, theres a lot of darn good people doing further, so competition is tough, especially if you come from a non-mathsy school, like at my school there are people who have gotten like 100% on every further SAC

but i agree, theres a lot of facepalming in further i think but good luck though, you're in year 11, so i guess you have heaps of time to do your further