How to prepare for hard questions in exams? (1 Viewer)

[KevDa5'9"]

I do not go to tutor for exams however, my classmates do. There are hard questions in exams that I have never seen before so most of the marks I lose come from these questions. My classmates, however, have their tutors that show them these questions beforehand so they are able to do them. Is there any way that would allow me to be better prepared for these hard questions? Like a way or method of preparation that would inevitably allow me to run into these questions before I actually do the exam?

Thank you very much

 

[imaiyuki]

i'm in your situation too

what i do is i first go through topics a few weeks before they are taught at school by doing every 4th question in mif and fitz as well as the chapter reviews

then when they're taught the teacher sets cambridge exercises which i try do on time (hahahah rarely happens)

then i do howard exercises from the free howard 4u textbook, every 4th for the easy sectionn, every 3rd for medium section and every 2nd q for hard section

then when the test comes up, i like to do every 4th terry lee exercise as a challenge, and then go through cambridge review, mif challenge and then finally rummage through secret stash of kurt and du worksheets and tests haha

then past papers

(this is chimerical and i am not nearly this proactive)

but if you're not going to tutoring, you must put in the work yourself even if it means slaving away at multiple textbooks

hope this helps

 

[KevDa5'9"]

i'm in your situation too

what i do is i first go through topics a few weeks before they are taught at school by doing every 4th question in mif and fitz as well as the chapter reviews

then when they're taught the teacher sets cambridge exercises which i try do on time (hahahah rarely happens)

then i do howard exercises from the free howard 4u textbook, every 4th for the easy sectionn, every 3rd for medium section and every 2nd q for hard section

then when the test comes up, i like to do every 4th terry lee exercise as a challenge, and then go through cambridge review, mif challenge and then finally rummage through secret stash of kurt and du worksheets and tests haha

then past papers

(this is chimerical and i am not nearly this proactive)

but if you're not going to tutoring, you must put in the work yourself even if it means slaving away at multiple textbooks

hope this helps

Seems like a good system so I will try to incorporate it into my study routiine.

Thank you for the advice.

Best of luck with your studying.

 

[JeydinNewWon]

Hi there!!!

I was in the same boat as you while doing Extension 2 last year. I was so nervous all the time and I cried after my first exam as I did so bad (yikes!). I lost my marks to hard questions I never even seen and it’s not fair when other kids get tutors who exposed them to those types.

But that kept me motivated to continue working a bit harder. While I did have the tutor, he basically didn’t even have “access” to these specific questions; so we really just went through the textbook and I’d ask him questions if I had any trouble. So most of the study ended up being independent. The textbooks I used were: Fitzpatrick, Cambridge, Terry Lee. While these are available for a purchase, they are really solid resources.

How I would study is I would go through the Fitzpatrick book first for FOUNDATION. This is building up the fundamental knowledge and essential skills for Extension 2. If there’s any question(s) I didn’t know, then I would look at the answers, actually digest the solution. I finish the whole topic chapter and after I do the whole exercise again after until I could do every question with 100% confidence.

After this, I would move to the Cambridge book and do the questions of the same topic. I would use the same strategy to ensure I got every single question (Development + Foundation). What makes Cambridge harder was I did not have access to full worked solutions (might be available with another copy), so for the questions I couldn’t answer, I’d go back and revisit them and try to figure out a solution on my own. Yes it may seem really pointless but honestly it won’t take long to see a solution. This is speaking from someone who thought they would fail Extension 2.

Finally, Terry Lee was always used as a Challenge book after mastering 100% confidence in the other books. These questions are designed to be really hard and are based off harder Trial questions from other schools. They give full worked solutions which is really promising, so yes, I recommend using this book before your exam or for consistently challenging your mind. In conjunction, I also constantly scoured the web for past hard Trial questions and papers and would do them. Most hard questions on your assessments will be derived from these questions because teachers are lazy and like to copy already made questions and because they are really challenging for clueless students (I ended up doing 30 whole Trial papers + 10 HSC papers for my year.)

Extension 2 might seem hard but it’s all in the hard work like any other subject. It’d probably be the hardest subject in terms of the amount of study and workload you need for it. But if you put in the effort, you will power through. This is coming from someone who got 71% last rank on their first task to first place final rank and coming out with 94 as final Extension 2 mark.

Hope this helps you! Good luck with your studies!

 

[Qeru]

I do not go to tutor for exams however, my classmates do. There are hard questions in exams that I have never seen before so most of the marks I lose come from these questions. My classmates, however, have their tutors that show them these questions beforehand so they are able to do them. Is there any way that would allow me to be better prepared for these hard questions? Like a way or method of preparation that would inevitably allow me to run into these questions before I actually do the exam?

Thank you very much

Try selective school past papers you will definitely 'run into' hard questions there. They also usually have worked solutions like on thsc so check up on their methods.

 

[idkkdi]

i'm in your situation too

what i do is i first go through topics a few weeks before they are taught at school by doing every 4th question in mif and fitz as well as the chapter reviews

then when they're taught the teacher sets cambridge exercises which i try do on time (hahahah rarely happens)

then i do howard exercises from the free howard 4u textbook, every 4th for the easy sectionn, every 3rd for medium section and every 2nd q for hard section

then when the test comes up, i like to do every 4th terry lee exercise as a challenge, and then go through cambridge review, mif challenge and then finally rummage through secret stash of kurt and du worksheets and tests haha

then past papers

(this is chimerical and i am not nearly this proactive)

but if you're not going to tutoring, you must put in the work yourself even if it means slaving away at multiple textbooks

hope this helps

So in the end you still do tutoring work, albeit “questionably legally” lol.

 

[pikachu975]

I do not go to tutor for exams however, my classmates do. There are hard questions in exams that I have never seen before so most of the marks I lose come from these questions. My classmates, however, have their tutors that show them these questions beforehand so they are able to do them. Is there any way that would allow me to be better prepared for these hard questions? Like a way or method of preparation that would inevitably allow me to run into these questions before I actually do the exam?

Thank you very much

The difficulty of HSC exams is sorta similar each year so doing past HSC exams and trial papers should be fine. I didn't really have tutoring for maths or do some special study routine to get good at the hard questions (which I used to be really bad at), and I was even struggling with the easiest 4U topics at first and contemplated dropping out. In my opinion you should not just view solutions to hard questions and be like "ok makes sense" because that doesn't really help at all. You're not gonna get the solutions while you're doing the exam and look at them and be like "makes sense" then start writing your own answer. I think developing the way you think and method of approaching questions is important. I don't really have examples since it was a while ago, but you could be like, "Okay how did they get the first line of their solution, what possible HINTS could I look for that would give me that same first answer". This would help you approach future questions and get the first line of the answer, which is often the hardest since hard questions are usually hard to start. Of course, doing more and more hard questions (e.g. q16 of past HSCs) will definitely help as well for pattern recognition, but developing your mindset and the way you come up with solutions helped me a lot.

 

[idkkdi]

I do not go to tutor for exams however, my classmates do. There are hard questions in exams that I have never seen before so most of the marks I lose come from these questions. My classmates, however, have their tutors that show them these questions beforehand so they are able to do them. Is there any way that would allow me to be better prepared for these hard questions? Like a way or method of preparation that would inevitably allow me to run into these questions before I actually do the exam?

Thank you very much

unless u go to like ruse, nsb, grammar etc.

all the 'hard questions' are probably in text books or papers lol.

 

[idekkedi]

So in the end you still do tutoring work, albeit “questionably legally” lol.

The only people who think that is questionable, are questionable themselves.

 

[Qeru]

The only people who think that is questionable, are questionable themselves.

His back