Curveball test questions (1 Viewer)

[Octavius]

Does anyone know how I can fully prepare for curveball questions (ones where marker aims to catch you off guard) in tests? Do I just make sure I completely understand topics? Are there other things I would need to do?

 

[jimmysmith560]

That would depend on the subject(s) in which curveball questions are a concern.

For maths, ensuring you know all the important concepts (including formulas and such) is an essential first step that allows you to avoid any content-related errors (such as using a particular formula incorrectly). Once you are confident about your knowledge of those, the next step is to begin preparing. Preparations of the sort should involve completing as many relevant practice questions as possible and could constitute a combination of both past paper and textbook questions, so that you are able to maximise your exposure to different types of questions, allowing you to become familiar with varied approaches, which ultimately prepares you more for curveball questions.

For English, as you mentioned, you must have a thorough understanding of the relevant modules and themes. Doing so involves going over your analysis notes (including techniques and quotes as well as their effects) in addition to the texts you've studied and making sure you emphasise the links these have to the relevant issues/themes raised in each module. This is particularly beneficial for writing essays and other types of written responses as it will allow you to address questions much more directly and prepares you more for curveball questions. Additionally, this will help you as you commence year 12 since you will be more comfortable with analysing prescribed texts, leading to higher quality essays.

For science subjects, I believe there are two different approaches because science subjects differ from each other:

• For science subjects like Physics and Chemistry, I believe you should follow an approach similar to that of maths as those are subjects where calculations and applications of specific formulas are tested. Therefore, knowledge of the content (such as the relevant laws of physics as well as relevant chemical equations) is essential and once you feel comfortable with all concepts/topics, your focus should shift to practice questions for both subjects, where a combination of textbook and past paper questions would also be helpful for the same reason they are beneficial for maths.
• For science subjects like Biology, I believe knowledge of the content itself is much more emphasised than your ability to apply those concepts to questions (as opposed to Physics and Chemistry, where your ability to apply your knowledge to different types of questions is crucial, meaning solely being familiar with the content may be insufficient). I believe this is due to the possibility that curveball questions don't appear as often in Biology as they do in Physics and Chemistry.

For HSIE subjects like Business Studies, curveball questions are quite uncommon, since the questions are developed directly from the syllabus and the only thing that a student needs to do in order to perform well in this subject is to have a thorough knowledge of the content according to each syllabus dot point, as well as relevant case studies to support their responses where applicable. After we completed our business trial exam in 2019, my classmate realised he was tricked by one of the questions, which required an answer in terms of the promotional mix, whereas the information he used to answer the question was from the marketing mix, meaning he ended up losing marks for that question.

This brings me to my last point, which is to ensure you correctly read and interpret all questions as not doing so may likely lead to mistakes and marks being deducted. Make sure you take your time to carefully read the question and completely understand what the question requires from you. This applies to all subjects.


I hope this helps!

 

[Octavius]

Thank you so much jimmysmith560!

 

[jimmysmith560]

Thank you so much jimmysmith560!

No worries, all the best!