Hey, our subjects are almost identical so I think I can help you here! Now, I don't claim to be some sort of expert on these subjects; everything I list is simply from experience. I hope it helps you
English Advanced: The #1 trick for English is to submit past papers. Hell, even essay plans are useful as they outline how you'd tackle a question, certainly useful in developing a cohesive and sustained thesis; getting these marked by a teacher is essential to ensuring continued improvement.
Always scour the Rubric, especially for the AOS. Essentially, most of the questions are drawn from here and if you know it pretty thoroughly it's doubtful you'll be surprised by a trickily-worded question. This also lets you focus your studying so that you become more targeted and effective at consolidating what you need to know.
English Extension: Now I dropped EE1 halfway through Year 11 but from memory, the subject focuses more heavily on developing deep and profound theses that should be a cut above the ordinary kind you usually see in Advanced. All I can say here is to really know your texts. Read them. Read them again. Again and again. This will help keep the content fresh in your mind and give you a larger pool of quotes to draw upon in an exam; you might be able to make it through Standard or even Advanced without reading your texts, but I'm telling you straight, definitely not in EE1.
Business Studies: The syllabus is your friend.
DO NOT base your notes off a textbook because these often include a lot of superfluous 'junk' that will not be tested. If I had a dollar for every time I included some worthless bit of info because I thought it *might* be in the exam.
For the extended responses, practice makes perfect. You need to hone your essay-writing skills because the type of essay required here is different than in say, English. Dispense with the flowery language and get right to the point. Be sharp, precise, and thorough. For the reports, this is even more important as the truncated structure automatically positions you to be concise.
Legal Studies: For Legal, you need to be in tune with the happenings of the outside world, particularly during the HSC. What I would give to be a year younger so that I could capitalise on the ongoing legal kerfuffle happening over in Victoria re: young offenders; you have a great opportunity to use this information to your advantage. When I was doing my HSC, the young offenders furore was just starting to break and was in its very early stages. Nevertheless, I remember reading about the state Opposition's plan to adopt a 'law and order' campaign to crack down on young offenders. Keep in mind this was only days before the HSC and what do you know, I ended up using it in my exam. Being contemporary is absolutely critical.
You also should get into the habit of substantiating your claims with a solid bedrock of facts. For Legal, the acronym is
LCMDIS (
Legislation,
Case Studies,
Media Reports,
Documents,
International Instruments,
Statistics). Including a healthy mix of all of these will ensure you get great marks for your essays which are a huge component of the course.
Ancient History: Know your sources. I remember in my Ancient History classroom there was a huge poster "Keep calm and cite your sources". This was obviously funny, but also helped hammer home the importance of using evidence. Of course, you can always do a solid and make up quotes and attribute them to real-life historians if you're in a pickle. However, for archaeological sources, you simply
MUST know them. That is that.
Modern History: Modern is a little different from Ancient in that it does not explicitly require that you incorporate sources into your essays, personality section excluded. Nevertheless, it's always a good idea to include them if you can. Modern, like many of these HSIE-based courses, is all about evaluation. Therefore, practising the way you structure an argument and make judgements will be very helpful. Again, good notes are especially critical since you need to know more specific dates (down to the month) instead of just a yearly approximation as is the case with Ancient.
In any event, your fate is in your hands. Use this advice to get ahead.
Happy hunting!
