How hard is specialist?

[m@tty]

I'm doing specialist next year and all I've heard is that its hard and time consuming. I would like your opinion of the difficulty. Is there anything braintwistingly hard? Will it take all my time?

thanks

[TrueTears]

If you have good mathematical foundations, you should not find it too hard.

[m@tty]

Thats good.... I am looking forward to it as Methods this year isn't exactly challenging.

[TonyHem]

If you're good at Maths, then take it.

[NE2000]

I'm doing specialist next year and all I've heard is that its hard and time consuming. I would like your opinion of the difficulty. Is there anything braintwistingly hard? Will it take all my time?

thanks

It really shouldn't. If you find Methods easy (as you have indicated) then the bits on graphing and differentiation shouldn't cause any problems. The kinematics and mechanics stuff generally isn't that bad. And if you are good at maths in general then you would hopefully understand the trig, integration and vectors after a while. And that (and a little bit more) is about it for spesh.

[m@tty]

thanks

sorry everybody for my previous post, I did not intend to sound cocky.

[NE2000]

I heard specialist maths has alot of worded type questions?

From what I've experienced thus far it is similar to Methods in that the tech free will be fairly non-wordy short answer questions, the multiple choice won't be that wordy either and the extended response can be worded or non-worded just depending on the question itself.

[m@tty]

Will it take a lot of time outside of class?
How much time does it take?

[/0]

Specialist is mostly problem solving and little theory.
How much time you take depends on how much practice you want with problems. As long as you do the questions your teacher sets for you then you will have covered the 'theory' part. The majority of spesh problems you encounter in exams and tests will follow predictable patterns, and as long as you do the set questions you should be able to handle these. However, there will always be those problems which require more analytical thinking. You can handle them having only done the set questions, but it's better to have practice beforehand with extended-response questions. Probably doing 5-10 extra analysis-type questions per topic will prepare you well (this doesn't include exam/sac revision time) throughout the year, but remember that

[TrueTears]

Specialist is mostly problem solving and little theory.
How much time you take depends on how much practice you want with problems. As long as you do the questions your teacher sets for you then you will have covered the 'theory' part. The majority of spesh problems you encounter in exams and tests will follow predictable patterns, and as long as you do the set questions you should be able to handle these. However, there will always be those problems which require more analytical thinking. You can handle them having only done the set questions, but it's better to have practice beforehand with extended-response questions. Probably doing 5-10 extra analysis-type questions per topic will prepare you well (this doesn't include exam/sac revision time) throughout the year, but remember that

I disagree, it is better to just do the whole book rather than set questions, teachers miss out on important questions.

[hyperblade01]

Depending on how much time you have though doing the whole book could be impractical.. some things can be skipped BUT with extended response questions you should do all.

If you've done year 11 spesh (GMA) then like half of what you do in year 12 is already done

[zzdfa]

imo its best to just learn the concepts then go do trial exams x40
there are very few exam style questions in the textbooks, most of them are routine computation problems, not really problem solving.

actually disregard that, we used maths quest last year so my advice is probably wrong if you use essentials

[/0]

Specialist is mostly problem solving and little theory.
How much time you take depends on how much practice you want with problems. As long as you do the questions your teacher sets for you then you will have covered the 'theory' part. The majority of spesh problems you encounter in exams and tests will follow predictable patterns, and as long as you do the set questions you should be able to handle these. However, there will always be those problems which require more analytical thinking. You can handle them having only done the set questions, but it's better to have practice beforehand with extended-response questions. Probably doing 5-10 extra analysis-type questions per topic will prepare you well (this doesn't include exam/sac revision time) throughout the year, but remember that

I disagree, it is better to just do the whole book rather than set questions, teachers miss out on important questions.

We are, of course, assuming that the teachers have picked the important questions. While doing the whole book would be a strategy suited to people like you, it is not suited to everybody.

[TrueTears]

Specialist is mostly problem solving and little theory.
How much time you take depends on how much practice you want with problems. As long as you do the questions your teacher sets for you then you will have covered the 'theory' part. The majority of spesh problems you encounter in exams and tests will follow predictable patterns, and as long as you do the set questions you should be able to handle these. However, there will always be those problems which require more analytical thinking. You can handle them having only done the set questions, but it's better to have practice beforehand with extended-response questions. Probably doing 5-10 extra analysis-type questions per topic will prepare you well (this doesn't include exam/sac revision time) throughout the year, but remember that

I disagree, it is better to just do the whole book rather than set questions, teachers miss out on important questions.

We are, of course, assuming that the teachers have picked the important questions. While doing the whole book would be a strategy suited to people like you, it is not suited to everybody.

Assuming is not good. Especially when you have such bad teachers.
By personal experience, the teachers certainly have missed out on a lot of the good questions.

[rhjc.1991]

Specialist is mostly problem solving and little theory.
How much time you take depends on how much practice you want with problems. As long as you do the questions your teacher sets for you then you will have covered the 'theory' part. The majority of spesh problems you encounter in exams and tests will follow predictable patterns, and as long as you do the set questions you should be able to handle these. However, there will always be those problems which require more analytical thinking. You can handle them having only done the set questions, but it's better to have practice beforehand with extended-response questions. Probably doing 5-10 extra analysis-type questions per topic will prepare you well (this doesn't include exam/sac revision time) throughout the year, but remember that

I disagree, it is better to just do the whole book rather than set questions, teachers miss out on important questions.

We are, of course, assuming that the teachers have picked the important questions. While doing the whole book would be a strategy suited to people like you, it is not suited to everybody.

Assuming is not good. Especially when you have such bad teachers.
By personal experience, the teachers certainly have missed out on a lot of the good questions.

The great TT vs /0 argument...