Legal Studies 3/4 advice?

[michak]

Sorry to bump, but do you think it's worth writing/typing out notes for legal or am I better off studying notes provided from the AN guide/A+ notes guide?? What did you all do/plan to do?

I wrote notes from different sources. My notes came from the textbook, A+ notes, TSFX notes and engage education notes. There is so much info in legal so i believe you really need your own good set of notes. In these notes i would put some topics into tables, as its much easier to learn. This should include any topic where you need to know strengths and weaknesses, or similarities and differences.

[hjm2]

Sorry to bump, but do you think it's worth writing/typing out notes for legal or am I better off studying notes provided from the AN guide/A+ notes guide?? What did you all do/plan to do?

Definitely make your own notes, and do it from the beginning of the year.

Print out a copy of the study design and make comprehensive notes for each dot point of the "key knowledge" and forget about all the other crap in the textbooks that pops up that doesn't fall under a dot point.

Don't forget to read over the "key skills" as well because that will tell you specifically what type of questions can be asked for that particular area of study - eg: strengths vs weaknesses, similarities and differences, critically evaluate etc.

Its just imperative that this is done throughout the year and not in the term 3 holidays!

As for typing or handwriting...I would handwrite notes as things tend to stick a bit better.

Getting Legal A+ Notes is a must, the best investment I ever made!

Hope this helps!

[meganrobyn]

1. Absolutely keep your own set of notes. Be like a magpie: take the best bits from everywhere and gather them together.

2. Type them up. You can't edit them (easily) if they're handwritten, and you want to keep improving and refining them. Also, if they're handwritten you can't send them to teachers, tutors or friends for feedback. You can write them out by hand a million times when you're learning for the SACs and exam!

3. Structure the notes the way you would the content in an exam or SAC question. In other words, clearly know what your core definition is, what your detail is, what your example is, what your strengths and weaknesses are, etc. Use sub-headings.

4. So what content do you cover with all of this? Use the Study Design to help you, as others have said, but also download all the old VCAA exams and sort the questions out topic by topic (that's something I *always* do for my tutor students) - this tells you the types of questions that are frequently asked, the task words used and the usual mark allocation. One mark is 3-5 lines of writing approx, and 1-2 mins writing. Textbooks will frequently have way too much information, or way too little. They also have *extensive* examples, but you don't really get that much for examples in the examination - maybe 1 mark per example, as an illustration? Obviously if the content itself IS a case study, that's different!

5. In terms of resources, I authored StudyON and the CPAP Study Guide, so I obviously endorse them! StudyON gives snapshot summaries of every topic, and has over 500 questions with worked answers. So its focus is revision and practice rather than background learning. So the CPAP Study Guide has much more detail, but we've tried to make it very exam-focused, so it doesn't have pages of 'context' on something that you won't use in the exam. Something we're doing this year with CPAP as well is selling a booklet of the past three years of SACs (that were sold to schools in 2009-2011) with the full marking guide and sample answer booklet. For revision. Anything with sample answers and mark allocations can really help in terms of checking your notes against them.

In my experience marking, significant marks are lost because people don't read the task word and/or respond to the question. Focusing on *questions* is one thing you can do to give yourself a boost. Once you have the content down, obviously!