Memorizing essays (2 Viewers)

[youix]

Just wondering.. If I memorise the essays for personalities only, would it be useful? Reason because they normally ask you rise to prominence in first question and the second is pretty much similar except with a quote and more about the personalities life.

 

[RecklessRick]

Just wondering.. If I memorise the essays for personalities only, would it be useful? Reason because they normally ask you rise to prominence in first question and the second is pretty much similar except with a quote and more about the personalities life.

Part A I would say there's no harm. If they ask straight "outline rise to prominence" you're set, and if they ask for three important events you can just pull them from your prewritten answer. Part B I would recommend against rote learning essays as a strategy, let alone rote learning one essay. Even considering the past 3 years, those questions are all a world apart. A prewritten evaluating the significance of an individual would by no means cut it for a question asking the extent to which an individual constructs their own significance.

Who's your personality?

 

[youix]

Part A I would say there's no harm. If they ask straight "outline rise to prominence" you're set, and if they ask for three important events you can just pull them from your prewritten answer. Part B I would recommend against rote learning essays as a strategy, let alone rote learning one essay. Even considering the past 3 years, those questions are all a world apart. A prewritten evaluating the significance of an individual would by no means cut it for a question asking the extent to which an individual constructs their own significance.

Who's your personality?

Trotsky

 

[RecklessRick]

Trotsky

I don't know enough about Trotsky to pronounce on whether he somehow defies the laws of reason and fits all questions with the same essay, but this sounds like a bad idea. There's still a couple of weeks before the Modern exam, plenty of time to not commit ATAR suicide in.

 

[youix]

I don't know enough about Trotsky to pronounce on whether he somehow defies the laws of reason and fits all questions with the same essay, but this sounds like a bad idea. There's still a couple of weeks before the Modern exam, plenty of time to not commit ATAR suicide in.

Thanks a lot. I haven't started studying yet as I'm focusing on other subjects but just wondering.. How do you study for Modern? Do you memorise all the content? Idk if I can memorise everything within two weeks

 

[RecklessRick]

Thanks a lot. I haven't started studying yet as I'm focusing on other subjects but just wondering.. How do you study for Modern? Do you memorise all the content? Idk if I can memorise everything within two weeks

For personalities it's not so much about memorisation (as the markers don't necessarily care for tonnes of quotes) as it is about understanding the debates and forming views around the key themes. You are correct to an extent in saying that there aren't a huge number of things they can ask for personalities (as there is for any of the sections) and these primarily centre around why personalities gain significance, how they gain that significance, and historical perspectives on the personality. I don't know about Trotsky, but I'd imagine there are key historians who have conflicting view points on these issues and as long as you can understand these, you're golden. What will differentiate you from everyone else who tries to rote an essay the night before is to have a little bit of nuance to your argument, not necessarily having the most quotes of everyone in the state. That's the same in the other sections really (with the exception of core), though there is a difference in that you actually do need to know stats and chronologies etc. For those other sections, there are a number of approaches. I was considering the viewpoint of another member on this forum who I disagreed with around a week ago and have now been converted. It's a decent idea at this late stage in the game to condense your notes for conflict and nationality down to conceptual essay plans (specific ones) on the dot points of the syllabus and the "major issues." This approach means that if you're strapped for time you can exclude dot points or ideas which are unlikely to come up, such as those that were on the exam last year.

Hope that helps.

 

[RecklessRick]

I did forget to mention, you do need to memorise for core, there's no way around that.

 

[teridax]

I did forget to mention, you do need to memorise for core, there's no way around that.

This. But you don't have to know every single minute and pedantic detail there is; just know key dates and some illuminating facts and stats for each dot point. This was all fitted within 4 pages and it served me well for trials

 

[mkristie]

while the personality study is probably the section that most allows you to come in with a prepared essay, just be careful. for my trials, i prepped for a rise to prominence/three most significant events question and got stuck with a historical context/background question instead which basically rendered my prepared essay useless. so just keep that in mind!