past papers (1 Viewer)

[SASH_06_X]

so everyone says that past papers are the MUST for all the HSC exams. But how do you actually set about doing them? Once you finish them, do you mark them using the marking guidelines, and how do you get feedback on your mistakes and know where you go wrong? This is especially important to me in subjects which require extended responses(English, Business, Geo etc).

 

[jimmysmith560]

Essentially, it would be a good idea to revise the content of a subject to ensure that you have a thorough knowledge and understanding of the content, allowing you to then complete past exam papers and effectively apply your knowledge of the content to exam questions. As you complete more past papers, you can then identify areas of improvement and address them by going back to the content and completing additional past papers.

In terms of the specific aspects of assessing your performance in past papers, the marking guidelines can help, especially since they set the expected standards regarding response depth and focus. You can also use the syllabus of the subject to ensure that you discuss the correct concepts in your response, and subsequently use your notes and/or your textbook to make sure that you have discussed the particular concepts accurately. This is applicable to Business Studies, where there is a heavy focus on the syllabus, and this is reflected in Section III and Section IV in that you must correctly identify and discuss concepts to maximise your marks.

Receiving feedback from your teachers is a good way of assessing your progress as you continue to prepare for your HSC exams. You can definitely request feedback from your teacher targeting your Section III and Section IV responses, as well as for subjects like English, where teacher feedback can greatly assist with improving the quality of your writing. This is something I personally did with English Standard back when I did my HSC, and have made sure that my younger sister, who is taking English Advanced and starting year 12 soon, does as well.

You can also post threads on BoS, as other users may be happy to provide you with useful feedback.

I hope this helps!

 

[SadCeliac]

so everyone says that past papers are the MUST for all the HSC exams. But how do you actually set about doing them? Once you finish them, do you mark them using the marking guidelines, and how do you get feedback on your mistakes and know where you go wrong? This is especially important to me in subjects which require extended responses(English, Business, Geo etc).

step 1: always listen to @jimmysmith560, he knows what he is talking about <3

step 2: this isnt a step but read below

For me, what I'm doing is keeping a running google doc of all the questions I find difficult that I got wrong in a past paper (especially for math) once I mark it. Basically while marking, I take a screenshot of a question I got wrong as well as its respective solution. I also take care to make sure I understand their solution and where I went wrong before moving on.

My idea is that a) hopefully this list gradually has less added to it, and b) before the HSC I can go through this list and retry questions I previously found hard - if I can do them, I take it off the list, if not, I revise.

This same idea can probably apply to things like chem/phys/bio, not sure how it would apply to english, and no idea how it would apply to anything else (I don't really do any humanities)

ENJOY HOPE THIS HELPED A BIT!! even though you said you need help with eng/geo/busi

 

[carrotsss]

My process is:

- Do the paper closed book
- Mark the paper, strictly adhering to the marking criteria (in the case of essay-type subjects getting a teacher to mark it instead helps)
- I go through every single mistake I made and write a full line on why it happened. This forces you to consciously acknowledge the error instead of brushing it off and significantly reduces careless errors
- I go through every single question I couldn't do because of a knowledge gap and thoroughly revise it, and write ~a third of a page of summary about that topic based on the textbook (make sure you don't just copy the solution, again you want to be consciously acknowledging it and improving). This part is very effective because within a few papers you will have pretty much covered the whole syllabus, and you can rapidly and effectively identify all of your content gaps

The last 2 steps are very important because mindlessly doing papers really doesn't do much, the steps are a fair bit of extra effort but in terms of studying efficiency its a massive improvement. Also it's fine to do your first few papers open book just make sure you're checking the textbook/notes and actually digesting the information rather than pretending you understand the solution.