Hi and thank you for offering this free Q&A!
Firstly, how would you suggest to manage studying consistently throughout the year? Our teacher has recommended revising the content we've learned regularly, but how do you suggest we manage this with such a big workload? And what sorts of things do you suggest doing to revise this work?
Hi Amedlia.d99, and welcome to the forums! No worries at all
A top question! I mentioned in one of my earlier replies that this was probably the biggest thing I did wrong when I did Psych - not revising regularly enough. It is a tough one with such a big workload. Honestly, how I did it was simply just reading over my summaries that I'd made earlier in the year, when we covered a topic, and very occasionally doing a couple of questions on an earlier topic. But certainly don't overwork yourself trying to revise earlier stuff the whole time - if you learn it well you will remember a lot of it when it comes to studying for the exam anyway
Also, how do you tackle the exam at the end of the year? Would you suggest doing it in order, and how much time should you be spending per mark?
Good question. The exam format has changed very slightly since I did it, but I simply did it in order, skipping any questions that I was stuck on and coming back to them at the end. I find keeping it simple is best, and it's definitely best to do MC questions first
With the 10 mark question that is on the exam and is new to the study design, how do you suggest we handle this? Where could we get practice for these questions?
Yeah, this is a bit of a tricky one. You can practice on past VCAA exams because they had a section C and the last question was usually worth 10 marks (particularly check out the 2016 one as I think this year will be quite similar in terms of combining research methods and content). I would suggest you try and allow heaps of time for it on the exam (think 20-25 minutes or even more). Practice writing a lot for these questions as you have to give a high level of detail to get a really good mark
How would you suggest revising for research methods? Do you suggest maybe doing a concept map to link terms together? And how should we prepare for the poster ERA?
For research methods, I put together a flowchart/concept map type thing to link all of the different elements together, so I think you're spot on there
Also practice writing hypotheses (always include Independent Variable, Population, Operationalised and Dependent Variable - acronym IPOD) and picking out extraneous variables, as they are very common question
The ERA has been added since I left school, so I can't tell you how I prepared for it unfortunately
My advice, simply off reading the VCAA brief would be to keep it simple and concise, and simply tick off each part (sorry I can't be more help with this)
Any other tips on managing and prioritising the workload during year 12, as well as dealing with multiple sacs in a week would be useful also!! In particular, how do you suggest we timetable our September school holidays to effectively revise for each subject?
My main piece of advice is to work solidly and consistently throughout the year, as it can be quite difficult to catch up if you fall behind. In terms of dealing with multiple SAC's together (which seems to happen a lot), my strategy was simply to start studying for them a bit earlier than usual - so I might start looking over stuff a week before the SAC rather than a few days before. You just need to make sure that you have enough study time that you are confident. Also, don't be afraid to do homework or study on Friday nights when you need to
Finally, during the September holidays my main focus was practice exams. I didn't have a specific timetable, because some days you just don't feel like doing Maths, for example, but I tried to do one or two practice exams a day if I could, so that I'd done maybe four or five for each subject by the end of the holidays
I hope this advice helps you and good luck!