Hello guys im sure all of you people know that there was a syllabus change but this leaves me to wonder that there will be a lack of resources for my cohort (2021 year) as we won;t have as much past papers to complete, i know this has impacted the science subjects a lot and somewhat maths. Can i still use past papers or have they basically gone useless?
Question regarding syllabus change. (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Accurate
- Start date
50% of the HSC chemistry course from before is still the same. So I would say still use the past papers but you need to be able to just pick out which questions are relevant to you or not.
For finding questions that relate to the new content in the syllabus for the HSC specifically (because prelim is a bit different) you can also use the VCE exams. The questions there are a good way to practice as well (but same as the old past papers you need to be able to pick out the relevant questions)
Physics is still sort of similar for the most part but yeah once again same as above you can still use the past HSC papers and VCE exams
Also, adding to that NESA has not thrown the students completely in the deep end for the science subjects with no resources at all. There are like documents they released already this year for physics and chem that have like 80 pages of questions and detailed answers to reflect the types of questions in the new syllabus
Thank you. Also do you reckon its a good technique if i print out the syllabus and give well written responses to each of the dotpoints for the syllabus then just memorize them and use them in the exams.
So you will find this out when you get to chem and physics for year 11 and 12, but most of the answers you will be giving won't actually be things you can memorise
It's mainly like you need to know or memorise the content but the questions are often not just simply rewriting that memorised stuff because they are based on calculations, answering things based on experimental scenarios, interpreting data provided etc.
But in saying that I would strongly recommend you make notes for the syllabus dot points still, but you will see how you are meant to make those notes when you experience the content yourself
It's mainly like you need to know or memorise the content but the questions are often not just simply rewriting that memorised stuff because they are based on calculations, answering things based on experimental scenarios, interpreting data provided etc.
But in saying that I would strongly recommend you make notes for the syllabus dot points still, but you will see how you are meant to make those notes when you experience the content yourself
Oh come on it hasn't changed thaaaat much. The sample paper they provided is still 70% writing essays.
Adding 50 more formulas for e.g in Physics, doesn't make the course harder. There's absolutely no emphasis on critical thinking or gaining an understanding.
I would still be inclined to say memorization would get you a good mark, as has been proven by many.
I would say for chemistry that is not necessarily true, there is not much essay writing as like the old syllabus, particularly, shown in the organic chemistry and last module about spectroscopy which are two areas largely based on predicting chemical reaction pathways and interpreting spectral data, which you can't memorise because the molecule will be different (so reaction pathway to make a certain product is different) and for spectroscopy that means the graphs are different.
Maybe that is true for physics because I haven't looked into that deeply for the HSC syllabus. But still my point was based upon the person saying they can just memorise answers for all dot points and rewrite that stuff. Obviously for history like questions you can do that but for something that you need to do a calculation your notes shouldn't be like memorising things it should be based on what things you need to remember to approach different problems, rather than pure memorisation the person mentioned
Damn it though i was seriously hoping to use those hundreds of trial and prelim papers on the THSC website to help me out through the Senior years but most of it has gone useless due to the damn syllabus change. Also picking out things and answering questions from them is good but then again it really won't feel like exam conditions, if you just pick out the things you need and discard the rest, you cant really time yourself. Past papers were how so many people got up to the Band 6 lvl anyways
To be honest i never really did past papers in that exam timed conditions for my subjects other than math. The more important thing is not doing full papers all the time because you won’t really have that much time to just do full 3 hr papers until you get to trials and post trials period. It’s a better idea to focus on things your bad at in those exam questions rather than doing the whole paper where you might be just redoing things over and over that you already know. What people mean in hsc with past papers is not always to sit full exams, but to continually do questions that resemble or are from papers
Well I know Science has a lot of changes and using past papers ima have to select questions and ignore some but since you mentioned mathematics, do you still reckon Im going to have to do the same thing as Science or can I complete a Trial paper in exam conditions without anything in the back of my mind that says i have to ignore some questions.
Yeah the maths syllabus for advanced maths looks exactly like the same but they just added in some small topic to do with stats and probabilities but those types of questions are fairly easy
That's nice, and what about for EXT 1?
Not too sure about that but the formula sheet looks similar