Hi there Yussif,
That's a very normal feeling!
In general, you need to understand, learn, then remember the content.
Different study techniques for SACs work for different people. To work out which ones work for you, I'd consider the following:
- What type of learner are you? Do you learn best by looking at pictures, doing activities with your hands, by listening, or a combination of all? You might find
this quiz helpful in discovering your learning style. Find what works for you.
Here are some things I find helpful in preparing for a SAC (these are what work for me, but these may or not be helpful for you):
- To-do lists - writing a list of everything that needs to be done to prepare (e.g. complete practice questions on page 16 about the dimensions of health, review notes on variations of health status).
- VCAA study designs contain dot points of all the key knowledge you need to know for each subject. A Google search of 'VCE *insert subject here* study design' will take you to these. With the study designs, you can identify your strong and weak areas of understanding and organise your study more effectively IMO.
- Flashcards (either physical or Quizlet): good for when you need to memorise / remember things such as definitions, though I wouldn't rely too heavily on memorising as VCE is (slowly) moving towards applying your knowledge. Flashcards are great for learning vocabulary for languages.
- Making note of errors and learning from them: for example, if you keep forgetting the name of a key word in biology, you can make note of this and make it a priority to review it.
- Testing yourself: you can do this when reading a textbook, by asking yourself questions such as, "What is X topic all about?" or "How does ____ work?". Then you can proceed to try to answer the questions without your notes. This aims to test your understanding of the content and helps you to process what you have just read.
- Be prepared early: it can be quite difficult to cram in the content the night before the SAC and know everything. Allow yourself some time to really learn and practise retrieving the information.
- If possible, expose yourself to the content before class. Learning about a topic? Have a read about it in your textbook or look at any resources your school has about it. If time permits, you could even make notes (if you do make notes) or do practice questions.
- For subjects like maths, once you have understood the topic (either yourself or with help of someone else or a resource), you can apply it through textbook questions / past SACs and exams. Practise is usually very handy in improving in maths (as long as it is done where you identify and fix mistakes and gaps in your understanding), but try to get questions varying in difficulty.
- For subjects like English, it is generally about reading and understanding your texts plus practising and getting feedback on your writing. How do you read and understand your texts? In short, some people I know read the book once, and then find key quotes, themes, characters and chapters in the second reading. It can be hard to understand texts on your own sometimes so approaching an English teacher to clarify anything or even looking up chapter summaries on the internet can be useful (especially with Shakespeare for most!).
The articles section of the forum might be of use to you. There is also a list
here of many articles to do with studying.
tl;dr: find study techniques (different for different subjects), gain an understanding of the content, apply it through practice, ask for help when necessary.
This is just my two cents but I hope it helps
All the best for Year 11!
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