Ok so here I am got nothing better to do so I thought I might make a Further Maths tips and tricks thread for all the people who want to get a high score in this subject. I’m not going to waste time going through the boring things like the actual course subject matter. I am going to assume that you already know the course and these tips will help perfect your exam technique
First, I'd like to share my own experience. Firstly, I’d like to point out that I will NOT be giving advise on how to make a Bound Reference as I didn’t end up using one AT ALL during the year or the exams. I just made a dodgy one the night before the exam because all my friends made one (It was like 10 pages long of photocopied summary sheets). What did help though, and I can’t stress this enough, was making a list of all the things that I tended to get wrong during my trial exams, and figuring out ways to avoid making them. If you are consistent with this technique, soon your list will grow and you will find that you will be subconsciously aware of the potential mistakes that are lurking behind every exam question before you even make them.
With that being said, don’t think for one second that enough preparation will enable you to breeze through the exams without any trouble. My plan at the beginning of the year was to get so prepared that it was impossible to get nervous in the exam. I thought that if I could do many questions and learn every trick, I would be able to anticipate every trick VCAA could throw at me...BIG MISTAKE!! So when Exam 1 came, there I was just casually breezing through the first 15 minutes, when suddenly it hit me...I couldn’t do a question the first time I read it. So I skipped it. At that point my worst fear was becoming a reality: I was panicking and a million negative thoughts were running through my mind. One question later, it happened again …and again in the next module. So here I am with 30 minutes to spare and 3 questions left unanswered. Luckily for me, I realised that there was ample time to finish them (the best cure for panic during an exam!) and ended up calming down and doing them.
This experience helped me approach exam 2 differently. You must tackle the exam confidently, but at the same time, acknowledge the fact that there will probably be a few stumbles and things that might not go your way. Every exam has its hurdles and how you go about overcoming them in your trial exams will be very different to the actual exam. You will not have that sense of security that you have at home on your own desk with a cup of tea on the side… but by all means, I am not saying don’t study a lot, because it certainly does help! Just keep in mind that the actual exam will be your biggest challenge- not the late hours spent preparing for it. Looking back at it now, casually sampling exam questions from my computer probably didn’t help. Be sure to complete your trial exams in as much of an ‘exam-room’ fashion as possible. Get a small desk (and an uncomfortable chair
), set a timer and work on speed. And be sure to attempt every question, even the easy ones! I made the mistake of skipping the annoying questions like graphing three median lines and guess what? I made one very basic mistake on Exam 2….on a three median line question.
Ok now to the tips. One thing I’d like to share-but won’t include in the list-is that I am a big fan of answering questions after skimming through the exam during reading time. I think I ended up answering about 6 core questions in my head during reading time in Exam 1. The main benefit of this is to get a head start and some confidence knowing that you’ve just cut the exam shorter by about 15 min worth. Although, the reason I am not including this in the list is that I would not recommend this to everyone. I personally knew that using reading time to actually read the ‘harder’ questions was unnecessary for me…not trying to be cocky here, I just like to do questions each at a time or else I would be thinking about a question in the back of my mind for the entire exam. That’s just how I am… so if you feel you would benefit from reading, go ahead!
General Exam Tips:>Always read questions twice. The first time to get a general idea of what the question is asking. The second time for a more comprehensive understanding, taking note of any bolded words or units of measurements. e.g. “in cm” or “to two decimal place”.
>Read all related questions to a text. e.g “
The following information relates to Questions 5,6 and 7.”
This is very important. The reason for doing this is so that you have an idea of what you are to do with the information. For example, say if a huge table of values for two variables is the information given for two related questions. Your first instinct in the exam is to quickly mash it all in your List editor on your calculator. Then as you actually read the questions you realise that it is asking for questions that do not even require the List app, such as: “What is the lowest data value?” or “What is the range?” This can cost you valuable time.
>Read all possible answers in MC questions.This makes it harder to make a careless error. By reading all answers given, you can eliminate the obvious ones and lessen the chance of falling for one of VCAA’s tricks.
>Check for mistakes RIGHT AFTER you do a question (if you have time)My experience was that it is easier to spot a mistake right after you do a question, rather than once you finish the entire exam, as you are still in the optimal state of mind (or the ‘zone’) for that question. Once I finished the exam, I found that my alertness dropped and I tended to just skim through the questions and rarely found any mistakes. But of course if your behind schedule, it’s better to leave the checking for after you finish.
Core>Look at the given graph when asked to determine Pearson's Coefficient 'r'I found that when I was given the coefficient of determination, r^2, I tended to always circle the positive value of r (which of course the calculator always gives when you find the square root of r^2), while the graph on the other side of the page had a negative slope meaning that r was negative. Of course it also didn't help that VCAA always places the wrong answer before the right one
another reason why considering all MC answers is so important.
Module 1: Number patternsModule 2: Geometry and trigonometryModule 3: Graphs and relationsModule 4: Bussiness-related mathematicsModule 5: Networks and decision mathematicsModule 6: Matrices---> this is just for now, I’ll keep adding ones for specific modules..
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