Too Big? (1 Viewer)

[Fire_and_Ice]

I have a serious question- does anyone think that the Modern History course is waaayyyy too huge? Because I am in the middle of my trials and we are only half way through Arab-Israeli still!
My teacher is freaking and so am I!

I think that the National Studies are all too big- I study Germany 1918-1945 and it took us forever- not because it was too hard, but because there was so much to cover.

Any thoughts?

 

[sif not 99]

lol u should try to do ancient history

 

[Mia]

i totally agree fire and ice

we did indochina which took an age
ww1 which was fucking easy
and bloody germany arrrgghhhhh, too much!!!!!

oh well at least we get a choice of Q's in the exam

 

[SkAnDi]

Same!

There's so much to recall, i hope in the HSC they asked broad based questions so that even if you don't study that much you have a chance to answer it fully

My class at school had done

WW1
Germany 1918-1945 (Speer)
Cold War

WW1 - Was fairly easy because there's really only the own knowledge section that you need to cover.

Germany - Was a bit of a gamble for me, we got told that there were two q's, prior to 1933 and after. So i just gambled and learnt "Fall of the Weimar - Contributing factors"

Coldwar - I was absolutely FUBARed, i just gave up after term 2 in class, so i just studied from my friend's notes... and made up a whole heap.

I had like 50 minutes to write that essay, after page 3 and 35 minutes to go or so i was like "hrm... don't know what to write now" (it was about the Arms Race and how it contributed to tension)... managed to spin another 5 pages of BS that hopefulyl will be taken as "knowledge" hehe.

But yeah, i agree, there's so MUCH to know if you want to learnt it all. Espcially in Cold War, it's HUGE!!!

 

[philbert_frog]

skAnDi: So very true....

Modern is large, no matter how much u say Sif, I'm sorry but comparing it to Ancient doesn't make matters any easier

I found the best way to deal with it is to compartmentalise every section of the syllabus into sections.

ie. WW1: u have total war (which covers all home front topics); trenches; stalemate (reasons, attempts); and post war (treaty, League etc..)

under those headings you can pretty much cram all your notes, and it makes it seem a lot less to cover, and helps you reference topics for name-dropping in essays (or mini-essays in the case of WW1)

btw: National Studies are huge, but follow the guidelines above and it should make things easier

w/ the Germany question there are five main topics that I can see: weimar (up to 1923), "golden years", fall of weimar/rise of nazi's, nazi's in germany and nazi's at war + your personality

Cold War: arms race, containment, gorbachev/fall of USSR, detente, crisis, Cold War II etc... (this is by far the biggest topic - nearly 50 years of world history and so many interrelating concepts)

 

[sif not 99]

yeah well i will complain
my coping mechanism for putting up with the amount of work in modern history is to just think about how much more work is in ancient

 

[mjor]

i agree the course is too big... our class made the mistake of spending way too much time on WW1.. when really you can only use your own knowledge for about 10 marks in the paper. Then we spent most of the rest of the time on Germany, and now we're trying to cram in Spear and Indochina in at the last minute... i think they should cut down the size of national studies and it would be OK

 

[Ishmael]

The HSC is too huge.

I have found Modern rather small/easier compared to some other subjects (SOR II & Ancient History, for example).

This might be because at my school we have done the 1914-1918, then the Weimar/Rise of Hitler, Leni Riefenstahl and finally Indo-China.

Though it is quite a bit, i've found Leni and Germany to be easier to learn because they are all related. I don't know if anyone else found this...?

Ish

 

[sif not 99]

yeah so true ish
modern isnt that bad at all

 

[Arch-man]

Mod. ain't that bad when compared to other subjects.

My Mod. teacher has been away for over half of this year as it is, so it's taken me forever to get through the course, because all we've had to learn from are question sheets and textbooks (WW1 & Germany '18-'45 - he was here for most of Indochina, thank God).

Seriously though, if you think Mod is bad, Ancient & Extension histories are worse.

 

[bacco|007]

agreed

The thing that has got me peeved is that for WWI about 4 marks out of the 30 are for any 'other' knowledge you have (used in question 2)

 

[Lazy]

Moderns piss easy if you know what your on about.
We done Russia and the cold war as our options and there pretty easy. All you have to remember for the cold war are a shit load of dates. If you can remember them you'll have it easy

 

[lane]

How much of your opinion do you guys normally indirectly give in an essay or do you just cite events chronologically?

 

[sif not 99]

well u need quite a lot of your own opinion since to get into the top bands im pretty sure they want ya to evaluate and analyse, that sorta thing which pretty well implies some of your own opinion needs to be included

 

[Arch-man]

I tend not to do things chronologically, as I forget things really easy. I prefer to do it in groups, which seems to appeal to me more. But then again, that's me.

 

[Lazy]

Yeah just dont let your opinion cloud your judgement. You can say anything you like As long as you can back your statement up