Revision

[ldee]

Hey guys,

How is everyone going with their revision? I'm kind of lost on what to do, there isn't a lot of practice exams or even questions out there. I've made notes throughout the year on key concepts, and all I've really done to revise is read through them every so often. Compared to my other subjects, my study for SD has been minimal, so I'm not too confident in my ability to score a 40 right now.

How is everyone else going? Any suggestions on what / how to study?

Thanks.

[Lasercookie]

Compared to maths and sciences, there aren't a lot of practice exams, but certainly there's more than enough.

First place to start is VCAA. Have you done last years exam yet? What about the sample questions?

Don't just do the exams, actually sit down and analyse evaluate where you can improve, where you struggle, whether your answers are as clear and straight to the point as they could be etc. afterwards. Then there's Mark Kelly's solutions and the VCAA assessor reports to go through.

That'd be the current study design done with. Then there's all the previous VCAA exams to do. It's easy enough to pick out which questions are relevant and not, you'll have a a fairly good understanding of what the current study design consists of by now. I was only really going to leave it at VCAA 2007 onwards and multiple choice from 2002 onwards, but going by Paul's suggestion I'll just go for it and just do all of 2002 onwards.

Along the way you should be picking up your weaknesses and exploring those areas in depth - simply rereading notes probably isn't enough, you might want to jump and google and find out more etc.

After that, current study design practice exams produced by the companies. Same thing with these, research what you're unfamiliar with, learn how to tackle particular types of questions. You could do the old study design ones of these if you're keen, but I'm not going to bother - they don't stick closely enough to VCAA as it is, so it'd be worse with older ones.

Personally, I'm doing a bit of prioritising, so I'll be going a bit light on the SD revision over the next week (probably just do one exam, go over some of the content and some of the worksheets for various topics) before really going all out on it. That's just the way my exam timetable has worked out though.

[ldee]

Thanks for the advice. I was planning on doing the 2011 VCAA paper and sample questions a bit later, seeing as they will be the most accurate form of preparation but I suppose doing them now will help me recognise flaws in my knowledge.

What other companies provide papers besides VITTA? We completed most of theirs during our final few weeks of classes, and I can't seem to find any more.

I will definitely check out the earlier VCAA exams though.

[Lasercookie]

Yeah, VCAA are the most reliable source, so I wouldn't delay them before it's too late.

There's also CSE/IARTV and Insight that make SD exams.