Seeking advice on: time to spend on each practise paper

[aestheticatar]

Hey guys,

I always use my full 15 minutes reading time. Though, I finish practise papers much before the given writing time limit. Am I supposed to be checking my answers over and over again for the whole 90 minute writing time, during practise? I'd prefer to move on to my next planned activity during the day rather than checking my papers an 'excess' amount of times. I was planning to spend the full 90 minutes writing time only for the most recent VCAA papers, a few days before the exam. However, I would like to hear some of your views as I value such guidance/advice. Perhaps it would be more beneficial to spend the whole 90 minutes writing time checking over my work during practise. Apologies if I offended anyone or came off as arrogant; just time is such a scarce source for me at the moment.

What do you think?

Your advice is much appreciated. Thanks in advance

[vcestudent94]

Don't bother checking over. As soon as you finish, correct and see what you got wrong. You should aim to get everything right the first time through so you don't need to rely on checking and getting complacent during your first run. Better to go slow and steady and get everything right than rushing and finding a lots of mistakes.

[Stick]

Don't bother checking over. As soon as you finish, correct and see what you got wrong. You should aim to get everything right the first time through so you don't need to rely on checking and getting complacent during your first run. Better to go slow and steady and get everything right than rushing and finding a lots of mistakes.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

When I was studying for Further, I tried to get the exams done as quickly as I could since this would allow me to simulate a sense of pressure at home, and so I never checked over my work (or did reading time, for that matter). When you're in the exam, try to use the all of the time available to you to work through the paper once. It's a heck of a lot harder in Mathematics to find mistakes later on.

[aestheticatar]

Thanks for the reply guys! Will definitely take your advice into account.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

When I was studying for Further, I tried to get the exams done as quickly as I could since this would allow me to simulate a sense of pressure at home, and so I never checked over my work (or did reading time, for that matter). When you're in the exam, try to use the all of the time available to you to work through the paper once. It's a heck of a lot harder in Mathematics to find mistakes later on.

Question, why didn't you use reading time in practise though? I tend to feel a lot more confident and alert after reading through the paper in reading time. In the end, it personally helps me work even faster and ensures I am minimising the amount of silly mistakes that I make.

What were your reasons for skipping reading time entirely during practise? I hope it doesn't seem like I'm criticising your technique because I definitely have no intent. I'm just wondering as I'm willing to adjust my techniques for my own benefit during practise and on the real exam.

Thanks again

[Yacoubb]

Personally, I vary my routine. I actually do the whole 15 mins of reading time. During this time, I really begin to mentally approach how I'm going to do each question. During writing time, I actually try and pace myself over 1 hour and 10 minutes. This gives me 20 minutes to check over the exam, for questions I'm not sure of, or think I need to check over. For me, I find that pacing myself makes me get the question right the first time, and so you don't need to check over the whole thing. As many people have mentioned, its about trying to get it right the first time. I'm saying this from my POV because I've sort of experimented with different ways of doing this, and I've found that pacing myself and going over each question the first time and getting it right the first time really makes it better.

Exam 2 is sort of similar - again, first time, I go through the whole exam and I find that its great because the first time you go over the exam, you actually make sure you try to get it right, minimising your chances of error.

Hope this helped!

[Stick]

Thanks for the reply guys! Will definitely take your advice into account.

Question, why didn't you use reading time in practise though? I tend to feel a lot more confident and alert after reading through the paper in reading time. In the end, it personally helps me work even faster and ensures I am minimising the amount of silly mistakes that I make.

What were your reasons for skipping reading time entirely during practise? I hope it doesn't seem like I'm criticising your technique because I definitely have no intent. I'm just wondering as I'm willing to adjust my techniques for my own benefit during practise and on the real exam.

Thanks again

I was lazy.

[Zealous]

Question, why didn't you use reading time in practise though?

I was lazy.

Haha part of the reason I don't do reading time also =p.

Another way you could look at it is like this. Without reading time, I feel you learn to jump straight into solving a question. Usually the hardest part of doing a question is finding a way to start solving it, so without reading time you are pressured to figure out a way of doing a question with reasonable haste. Hopefully that made sense =)