In year 9-10 I was top 5.3 kid. My grades in year 10 was a B and for the final exam I didn't study cause I didn't like trig, i feel like didn't studying. Anyways, got a c grade for semester 2 cause you know how final exams have lot of weighting. And our school did this system where A= ext one, B= advanced, C= Standard. And I was in the mid cut line and in the end, teacher convinced me to do standard and i didn't bother fighting back as he said I'll be top of the cohort. Year 11 started and I would say I was doing good with no studying. Then average and now i feel like im struggling. Its literally the maths i learnt in year 9 and 10, feel like i forgot all my analytical skills and just stopped. As a result, year 12 first task although it doesn't have big weighting, im got bad. Im suppose to be at the top of the cohort but I am not. I do wanna say, I do ext english and from year 11, ive been just doing english, english and english that my maths skills died off? idk does this happen?!?!?! how can i get it back
depends, i still feel pretty good about my 3u and 4u skills, but the thing is that i was consistently spending at least a couple of hours a day on them for a year straight. so naturally its pretty stuck in my brain even 3 months after hsc (i am also taking a maths degree so it will be refreshed in a month anyway). meanwhile year 7-10 math where i was a lot more lazy and basically just did the textbook questions in class and that was it, i dont remember what i even learned lol (probably wasnt much).
heres my personal experience of something similar:
- in year 11, started physics
- did the homework questions assigned by the teacher, maybe a couple outside of it
- struggled with some questions, worked out the path to solve them through checking the answer and seeing which method worked, and felt confident i could solve the problems on the exam
- read over notes, memorised the formulas, laws and all that
- did exam, felt decent with almost all the questions
- scraped 50%
the question is, why did i barely scrape 50%?
1. i basically did the bare minimum - homework questions, probably took an hour or two every couple of days, wasn't really consistent, a decent amount or self led study. i also maybe didn't prioritise the subject as much as others
2. even though i could eventually find the solution to the questions i struggled with through brute forcing a way to get to the answer, i didnt really understand why the answer worked, or how i would think of the way to get to the answer
3. i memorised all the formulas and how to find another variable given another, and that's necessary, but i didn't think very much about why they worked, or what the intuition is behind them
4. i knew the laws or principles off by heart, but i didn't really know how to apply them to any given situation
this is how i fixed it :
1. do as much preparation as possible for exams - start with homework questions, then as many past hsc/trial/assessment task questions as is possible for the given topic - and don't wait until the assessment notification, start when u learn the topic
2. don't blindly use formulas at the beginning when you learn them - instead, attempt to derive everything where possible, or at least give yourself a good reason as to why exactly the formula makes sense (eg for probability of events that are equally likely, we say that each event has probability 1/n where n is the number of events, this makes sense as the sum of all the probabilities will then be 1 as is needed - notice how we didn't derive anything persay, but we gave ourselves a good reason). then once u know why, feel free to use the formulas as given
3. show working out in as much detail as possible (at least to begin with), including brief asides as to why the next line makes sense - this helps you to actually understand how each step flows to the next
4. always read ahead by at least one chapter - this way, at least the vocabulary or ideas will make some sense to you when your teacher is teaching
5. anytime you see a new law or principle, imagine a common situation where it makes sense in your mind, so you can always think back to why it makes sense by imagining that situation
not all of the above points are relevant to math, but essentially all i am trying to communicate is that you need to put in more work than just doing textbook questions, you really need to understand the why and do a variety of questions, this ensures that no matter the situation given, you can apply your knowledge as necessary. try to get into a more productive mindset where you aren't just dismissing standard as year 9-10 math, make sure you are really sure that you know all the content in the syllabus, and put in the effort to be at the top of the cohort, it shouldn't be easy to do so after all.
also make sure you spread out your time evenly. naturally it's tempting to just put all of your hours into the subject that you like the most like english in your case, but sadly the hsc is an consistent game ultimately; for example, i got 99 in software trials but 77 in physics trials, then i had to sacrifice some of my software time to improve my physics grade for the hsc, which paid out for me big time as i got 95 external for both (which is much better than 99 in one and 77 in another when it comes to atar). so don't just study english all day, try to just put in at least a hour for math each day to improve the grade, its definetly not too late given its a low weighting first task that you didn't do well on.
