4u cambridge questions are too hard (1 Viewer)

[potpal]

So my school uses the 4u Cambridge textbook, which explains stuff really badly and I usually don't understand the theory when I'm self studying Worse thing is every lesson the teacher doesn't explain much and just goes straight to exercises. The Foundation questions are easy but the last half bunch of Development questions is hard and I keep having to learn everything from worked solutions (sometimes they also don't make sense and I don't see the questions type anywhere else but the textbook itself). Enrichment questions are just oof I don't even dare to touch them.

I've heard from a lot of people that Cambridge is a good textbook though but it's just overwhelming for me at this point. Are the textbook exercises necessary to get a high band? Are there any other ways I can self-study without feeling like dying!?

 

[scaryshark09]

Firstly, don't worry if you feel completely overwhelmed by the difficulty of 4u in the beginning. Trust me, most people feel it, but you get over it after a few weeks or months.

I was in a very similar position to you, and I found learning through YouTube videos was a good way. (eddie woo and mcgrathematics were good)

You definitely aren't gonna learn everything, and there will always be questions in Cambridge that you can't do.

The idea is that after you learn content and do textbook questions, you develop foundational knowledge that will set you up for when preparing for exams.

It is definitely fine to get some (or even a lot) of questions wrong, but make sure you are finding out how to do the questions after.

Before exams, you should do plenty of practice papers and analyse your mistakes to ensure you don't make similar mistakes later. Here, you are using the foundational knowledge learned earlier in the year, and applying that to exam-style questions.

If you do all this, you can definitely achieve 90+ (even a lot higher), and although the Cambridge textbook seems hard at the beginning, I definitely recommend continuing to use it. You might also like to couple this with another textbook (maybe others have suggestions in regards to this).

Hope this helps, and good luck!

 

[Sam14113]

So my school uses the 4u Cambridge textbook, which explains stuff really badly and I usually don't understand the theory when I'm self studying Worse thing is every lesson the teacher doesn't explain much and just goes straight to exercises. The Foundation questions are easy but the last half bunch of Development questions is hard and I keep having to learn everything from worked solutions (sometimes they also don't make sense and I don't see the questions type anywhere else but the textbook itself). Enrichment questions are just oof I don't even dare to touch them.

I've heard from a lot of people that Cambridge is a good textbook though but it's just overwhelming for me at this point. Are the textbook exercises necessary to get a high band? Are there any other ways I can self-study without feeling like dying!?

Look everyone's going to have a different opinion on this but here's my two cents:

The Cambridge Textbook is designed to have an incredibly wide range of questions - from the most basic to the hardest. The intention is to be able to cater for students at different levels. The HSC is designed very similarly, and its intention is to be able to differentiate between students at different levels. As such, there's nothing to be worried about if you can't get those harder development and enrichment questions - many students are in your position! That's by the design of the system! That being said, the point of taking a maths course is to improve your maths, so here's what I would recommend:

When you learn something in class, have a go at the Cambridge textbook questions from the beginning and see how far you can get. Have a go at some of the challenging ones towards the end of the development section, but don't worry if you can't get it ... but keep track of how far you get (eg. maybe you were able to get 60% of the development section). Then, keep trying to improve upon that each time you do a different exercise. Hopefully by the end of the year you'll be getting through almost all of the development section comfortably, and are able to have a go at some of the enrichment questions.

Also if you feel that your teacher isn't explaining enough, there are some pretty good resources on the internet to help. Eddie Woo youtube videos are a favourite of many (I didn't love them, but I know many people who did) and someone on BOS recently recommended Mcgrathematics youtube [looking above maybe it was @scaryshark09], which seems to be quite good. The Steve Howard Textbook can also be found online for free and its explanations are better than those from Cambridge, though still not amazing in my opinion. Lastly, there's always someone here on BOS who can help you out with specific questions if you need

Anyway good luck - don't feel demotivated if you can't get the questions towards the end of the exercises - it's by design.

 

[potpal]

Thank you guys so much I really appreciate it! Reading this makes me feel a bit relieved and less stressed now haha I’ll keep trying

 

[Sam14113]

Also

Firstly, don't worry if you feel completely overwhelmed by the difficulty of 4u in the beginning. Trust me, most people feel it, but you get over it after a few weeks or months.

I was in a very similar position to you, and I found learning through YouTube videos was a good way. (eddie woo and mcgrathematics were good)

You definitely aren't gonna learn everything, and there will always be questions in Cambridge that you can't do.

The idea is that after you learn content and do textbook questions, you develop foundational knowledge that will set you up for when preparing for exams.

It is definitely fine to get some (or even a lot) of questions wrong, but make sure you are finding out how to do the questions after.

Before exams, you should do plenty of practice papers and analyse your mistakes to ensure you don't make similar mistakes later. Here, you are using the foundational knowledge learned earlier in the year, and applying that to exam-style questions.

If you do all this, you can definitely achieve 90+ (even a lot higher), and although the Cambridge textbook seems hard at the beginning, I definitely recommend continuing to use it. You might also like to couple this with another textbook (maybe others have suggestions in regards to this).

Hope this helps, and good luck!

I thought I'd also mention in response to 'other textbooks' I did mention Steve Howard before, which is freely available online. I'm not thrilled with his exercises though ... they seem to vary greatly in difficulty (I found his complex numbers exercises generally very easy with a couple of stupid exceptions, and I found some of his proof by induction to be more challenging and tedious, for example) and also he has a very distinctive 'style' which he writes his questions in, making them not as generally relevant. However, they are good after you've done something like Cambridge for a couple of extra little techniques etc, especially his 1000 questions.

I personally didn't really use other textbooks during my HSC prep (partially because I was too busy making no progress in English ) but I've heard some good things about Mastering HSC Mathematics, though it also gets hard towards the ends of exercises like Cambridge. I'm told Maths In Focus is the 'easiest' of them but I know nothing about it so don't take it from me. Also keep in mind that some of the questions in the Cambridge 'enrichment' sections are actual past HSC questions (such as the 2016 'derangements' question showing up in the induction chapter, with some slight changes), so as much as you may want to go for something easier, the aim is to eventually be able to solve at least some of the enrichment questions. As I hinted at in my first post, you don't necessarily need to be able to solve all the hardest questions of the HSC, but I think keep that as a goal to aim towards and hopefully by the end of the year you'll be able to get there, even if it takes you longer than you'd actually have in an exam.

 

[clive guo]

dont worry scaling carries you but i guess it depends what mark you are aiming for

 

[pikachu975]

So my school uses the 4u Cambridge textbook, which explains stuff really badly and I usually don't understand the theory when I'm self studying Worse thing is every lesson the teacher doesn't explain much and just goes straight to exercises. The Foundation questions are easy but the last half bunch of Development questions is hard and I keep having to learn everything from worked solutions (sometimes they also don't make sense and I don't see the questions type anywhere else but the textbook itself). Enrichment questions are just oof I don't even dare to touch them.

I've heard from a lot of people that Cambridge is a good textbook though but it's just overwhelming for me at this point. Are the textbook exercises necessary to get a high band? Are there any other ways I can self-study without feeling like dying!?

No the textbook questions aren't necessary. Our school taught us using Terry Lee's textbook which was pretty basic then I pretty much studied off past papers till the end.

So basically I'd recommend just learning the concepts/basics then moving to actual relevant stuff (trials/past papers).

Also don't give up, I remember struggling with Graphs and Complex Numbers at the beginning which were 2 of the easiest topics so I was like why am I struggling????

 

[WeiWeiMan]

So my school uses the 4u Cambridge textbook, which explains stuff really badly and I usually don't understand the theory when I'm self studying Worse thing is every lesson the teacher doesn't explain much and just goes straight to exercises. The Foundation questions are easy but the last half bunch of Development questions is hard and I keep having to learn everything from worked solutions (sometimes they also don't make sense and I don't see the questions type anywhere else but the textbook itself). Enrichment questions are just oof I don't even dare to touch them.

I've heard from a lot of people that Cambridge is a good textbook though but it's just overwhelming for me at this point. Are the textbook exercises necessary to get a high band? Are there any other ways I can self-study without feeling like dying!?

What topic

 

[Drongoski]

So my school uses the 4u Cambridge textbook, which explains stuff really badly and I usually don't understand the theory when I'm self studying Worse thing is every lesson the teacher doesn't explain much and just goes straight to exercises. The Foundation questions are easy but the last half bunch of Development questions is hard and I keep having to learn everything from worked solutions (sometimes they also don't make sense and I don't see the questions type anywhere else but the textbook itself). Enrichment questions are just oof I don't even dare to touch them.

I've heard from a lot of people that Cambridge is a good textbook though but it's just overwhelming for me at this point. Are the textbook exercises necessary to get a high band? Are there any other ways I can self-study without feeling like dying!?

This depends on your current knowledge level and foundation. It is just possible that your grasp of the fundamentals of maths is not that solid: so you cannot understand the book's explanation - hence you'd think the book explains it badly. The authors may assume you already have prior knowledge of certain concepts which, if you do not, may find the explanations hard to follow. Perhaps other typical 4U students at this stage may find the Cambridge explanations equally hard to follow. On the other hand, if you are finding it harder than your peers, then maybe this is an indication your current foundation is rather poor,

Can you cite a couple of paragraphs from the book(page and paragraph numbers) you think are badly explained?

 

[Chiprr]

Look everyone's going to have a different opinion on this but here's my two cents:

The Cambridge Textbook is designed to have an incredibly wide range of questions - from the most basic to the hardest. The intention is to be able to cater for students at different levels. The HSC is designed very similarly, and its intention is to be able to differentiate between students at different levels. As such, there's nothing to be worried about if you can't get those harder development and enrichment questions - many students are in your position! That's by the design of the system! That being said, the point of taking a maths course is to improve your maths, so here's what I would recommend:

When you learn something in class, have a go at the Cambridge textbook questions from the beginning and see how far you can get. Have a go at some of the challenging ones towards the end of the development section, but don't worry if you can't get it ... but keep track of how far you get (eg. maybe you were able to get 60% of the development section). Then, keep trying to improve upon that each time you do a different exercise. Hopefully by the end of the year you'll be getting through almost all of the development section comfortably, and are able to have a go at some of the enrichment questions.

Also if you feel that your teacher isn't explaining enough, there are some pretty good resources on the internet to help. Eddie Woo youtube videos are a favourite of many (I didn't love them, but I know many people who did) and someone on BOS recently recommended Mcgrathematics youtube [looking above maybe it was @scaryshark09], which seems to be quite good. The Steve Howard Textbook can also be found online for free and its explanations are better than those from Cambridge, though still not amazing in my opinion. Lastly, there's always someone here on BOS who can help you out with specific questions if you need

Anyway good luck - don't feel demotivated if you can't get the questions towards the end of the exercises - it's by design.

My school learns content out of the In Focus textbook and does those questions but we are also given the Cambridge textbook. The difference in style of questions between the two is crazy to me and makes Cambridge feel super hard since we don't have access to the worked solutions.

We now have access to Atomi which I will definitely use but finding that Steve Howard textbook is actually incredible and having solutions to a wide range of difficulty and style questions will be super helpful. I'll have to check out Mcgrathematics at some point but all of these resources will definitely help out as I go through the year.