Today’s article will be a recap on some strategies I have talked about over the last month or so, as well as providing some additional tips. Why? I wanted to provide some overall guiding strategy that Year 12 students could use over the next month or so prior to their HSC. Also, I have found, from my own personal experience that repetition is always valuable!
So, what you should you be doing over the coming weeks as the HSC looms?
The first and most vital step, which can easily be overlooked, is to sit down with your exam papers, and evaluate your performance. While this sounds obvious, a number of students I have worked with over the last fortnight did not do this, for the simple reason they hated looking through their own exams! Regardless if you dislike evaluating your performance objectively, it is an imperative (an overwhelming majority of 98+ UAI students I interviewed related that this was a key in them significantly improving their performance from trials to HSC). So, if you haven’t yet sat down, and evaluated your performance, your areas of weakness, and importantly your study & exam technique for each exam, you should! Why is this so important? If you do not objectively evaluate your whole performance, including, study, exam technique, and actual results, you are prone to repeat these for the HSC (which as you know is worth a large proportion of your overall mark!) For proven study and exam techniques for specific subjects, read Secrets of HSC Success Revealed.
After you have evaluated your performance, what should you be trying to do next? My suggestion is to create a Wall Chart or Map. Why? You only have 1 month to achieve a number of things – you need to memorize your notes, write practice essays, complete practice papers, and work on weak areas, for a minimum of 10 units! Without a set plan, actually achieving all of this will be extremely difficult! The purpose of creating a wall chart is to identify exactly (in great detail) what you need to achieve for each subject in the time remaining. How should you create this wall chart? Get a piece of A3 or A4 paper for each subject, and write the mark that you are aiming for at the top of the sheet. Then, write a to-do list of everything you need to achieve (e.g. specific essay questions, specific past papers, specific topics that require notes etc), and then prioritize this list based on immediate importance. (Read Secrets of HSC Success Revealed to find out how to prioritize this list to get the most out of your time!). Use each subject’s Wall Chart as your guiding light. Whenever you study the subject in question, work on the highest prioritized item that remains incomplete.
Once you have completed your wall chart, your next aim should be to finish your notes for all of your subjects. Success in the HSC is directly proportionate to two factors, your knowledge, and your ability to apply it. Your notes are the key to building a strong knowledge foundation for you to ace your final exams. Prior to any exam, but in particular the HSC you should not be studying from textbooks and class notes. Why? These will have too much information, some of it irrelevant and inappropriate; it will not be tailored to the syllabus, and unfortunately is not conducive to memory retention. Hence, your notes should be the foundation from which you study from. As a result, it should be a priority to complete your notes, and where necessary go back and improve them. You should aim to have these completed asap, the earlier the better! Once you have completed your notes you should use memorise them and use them to help you construct essays and complete past papers.
The final overall step in your HSC preparation should be writing practice essays and completing past papers. As I have mentioned, success in the HSC is proportionate to both your knowledge and your ability to apply it to the question. I have lost count of the number of times I have worked with very intelligent students, who have an extremely excellent command of the subject matter for a particular subject, but who have failed to actually tailor it to provided question. You need to answer the question! Writing practice essays is a great way to ensure that you do this. It gives you an opportunity to develop the skill of taking your memorized content and applying it in new ways. (See Secrets of HSC Success Revealed for a proven strategy that I and other 98+ UAI students used to drop less than 2 marks all year for essay writing). Finally, working on past papers are absolutely vital, and considerable time should be dedicated to practice exams. They will help you identify common questions and variations, and help you tailor your knowledge to actual questions. Importantly, they are also a great way to boost memory retention (however, as a warning they should only be undertaken once you have a strong knowledge base. See previous articles for more detailed reasons!).
What will I be covering in the next couple of weeks? I will be touching on study hours for the holidays, proven exam techniques and much more, so stay tuned. If you have any questions, feel free to email me!
Cheers,
Rowan
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