HSC trials? (1 Viewer)

#RoadTo31Atar

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How is everyone gonna study for the trials?

Or how have you studied in prev hsc years and was it good/bad?

Curious what you guys are doing since this is very different to normal exams.
 

vinlatte

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How is everyone gonna study for the trials?

Or how have you studied in prev hsc years and was it good/bad?

Curious what you guys are doing since this is very different to normal exams.
I just completed my trials, it was extremely exhausting, especially the 3 hour exams. :<

For english, memorise a few quotes that can be applied to different themes. Practicing timed writing also helps, mainly the 2019 exams and ask your school if they also have copies of last year's trials.

For any other subject, there is the nesa quiz online to test multiple choice. It will randomly generate mc questions from past hsc exams. Just note, the site tends to glitch and place the wrong graph for a question, but this only happens if you keep retaking too many exams in one session.
 

jazz519

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Did HSC a few years back but my school actually had 3 sets of trials (yeah I know its crazy as most only have 1)

When I did trials I made sure all notes were done at least 1 month prior and I would have understood all the dot points that were understanding or calculation based at that time. So that was mainly for chemistry and physics. I was doing exam practice already on specific questions relating to content we covered at that time, but I stepped this up leading into trials.

Try do as many past trial papers as you can, because it will show you questions that keep reoccurring. Also, at least 1-2 times do this in the timed conditions. As doing a 3 hr trial without any sort of previous experience is going to be difficult to balance out your time and speed in answering questions. That's likely to make you lose marks on silly mistakes or rushing answers. Check marking criteria and note what things to improve on.

For maths not really much you can do in terms of notes other than key things to remember. So for that study was just solely doing past exams.

For my subjects that were memorising based like English and business studies, I didn't really do many past papers. But I tried my best to memorise my essays and stuff at least 2 days prior to the exam, so that I wasn't doing any all nighters before the exam.
 

lach792

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Did HSC a few years back but my school actually had 3 sets of trials (yeah I know its crazy as most only have 1)

When I did trials I made sure all notes were done at least 1 month prior and I would have understood all the dot points that were understanding or calculation based at that time. So that was mainly for chemistry and physics. I was doing exam practice already on specific questions relating to content we covered at that time, but I stepped this up leading into trials.

Try do as many past trial papers as you can, because it will show you questions that keep reoccurring. Also, at least 1-2 times do this in the timed conditions. As doing a 3 hr trial without any sort of previous experience is going to be difficult to balance out your time and speed in answering questions. That's likely to make you lose marks on silly mistakes or rushing answers. Check marking criteria and note what things to improve on.

For maths not really much you can do in terms of notes other than key things to remember. So for that study was just solely doing past exams.

For my subjects that were memorising based like English and business studies, I didn't really do many past papers. But I tried my best to memorise my essays and stuff at least 2 days prior to the exam, so that I wasn't doing any all nighters before the exam.
For business studies, what sort of questions did you memorise your essay for?
 

jazz519

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For business studies, what sort of questions did you memorise your essay for?
Oh for that I didn't memorise any essays. Just basically had notes on each dot point and I memorised that and tried to put an example with those from a real company so if it did come up in essay I had a case study
 

vinlatte

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Did HSC a few years back but my school actually had 3 sets of trials (yeah I know its crazy as most only have 1)

When I did trials I made sure all notes were done at least 1 month prior and I would have understood all the dot points that were understanding or calculation based at that time. So that was mainly for chemistry and physics. I was doing exam practice already on specific questions relating to content we covered at that time, but I stepped this up leading into trials.

Try do as many past trial papers as you can, because it will show you questions that keep reoccurring. Also, at least 1-2 times do this in the timed conditions. As doing a 3 hr trial without any sort of previous experience is going to be difficult to balance out your time and speed in answering questions. That's likely to make you lose marks on silly mistakes or rushing answers. Check marking criteria and note what things to improve on.

For maths not really much you can do in terms of notes other than key things to remember. So for that study was just solely doing past exams.

For my subjects that were memorising based like English and business studies, I didn't really do many past papers. But I tried my best to memorise my essays and stuff at least 2 days prior to the exam, so that I wasn't doing any all nighters before the exam.
Woah 3 exams?? But why?
 

#RoadTo31Atar

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Did HSC a few years back but my school actually had 3 sets of trials (yeah I know its crazy as most only have 1)

When I did trials I made sure all notes were done at least 1 month prior and I would have understood all the dot points that were understanding or calculation based at that time. So that was mainly for chemistry and physics. I was doing exam practice already on specific questions relating to content we covered at that time, but I stepped this up leading into trials.

Try do as many past trial papers as you can, because it will show you questions that keep reoccurring. Also, at least 1-2 times do this in the timed conditions. As doing a 3 hr trial without any sort of previous experience is going to be difficult to balance out your time and speed in answering questions. That's likely to make you lose marks on silly mistakes or rushing answers. Check marking criteria and note what things to improve on.

For maths not really much you can do in terms of notes other than key things to remember. So for that study was just solely doing past exams.

For my subjects that were memorising based like English and business studies, I didn't really do many past papers. But I tried my best to memorise my essays and stuff at least 2 days prior to the exam, so that I wasn't doing any all nighters before the exam.
This is kinda what I'm planning to do by having the notes done beforehand addressing each syllabus dot point for the subjects that need it and mostly focusing on doing practice questions to prepare. The only downside to this plan is that it will take a lot of time and effort, do you remember how long you studied per day during this period(s for you)?
 

shashysha

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probably finish notes of this weekend for physics (done most notes for subjects throughout year) then revise and do practice papers or questions. i'll also make a few essay plans for each module in english since we'd want a flexible essay plan for trials and hsc itself
 

jazz519

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Woah 3 exams?? But why?
First set of trials was around term 2 week 6ish, 2nd one was term 3 week 2, 3rd one was term 3 week 7. So yeah pretty full on, however, my school did go really fast through the content. Most subjects the teachers finished content like week 4 in term 2.

Well I don't know the reason why lol hahaha. My principal was always looking to due new things and experiment to see if it improved marks etc. In the moment it was hell, but I guess 3 trials was pretty useful as we did get exposure to a lot of exam practice. Maybe would've been less stressful if it was 2. I think one of the reasons might be they wanted the ranks to reflect what people will do in an exam, cause take home tasks and practical tasks can be kind of misleading as people can have access to online resources and tutors
 

SplashJuice

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Woah 3 exams?? But why?
My school does this too and the reason is it's to simulate the HSC and make sure the assessment ranks for everyone is properly done because it reflects what you're probably going to get in HSC. This ensures the assessment ranking is fair and nobody ends up dragging everyone down because they performed well in 1-2 hr exams and then choked the final 3 hour one.
 

jazz519

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This is kinda what I'm planning to do by having the notes done beforehand addressing each syllabus dot point for the subjects that need it and mostly focusing on doing practice questions to prepare. The only downside to this plan is that it will take a lot of time and effort, do you remember how long you studied per day during this period(s for you)?
During that time as sad as it sounds lol I was probably studying all day. Don't think I had many breaks aside from when I got home ate, then dinner and maybe 1 hr here and there on Facebook, Skype etc. But that was partly due to me wanting such a high ATAR and at the time I had all 1st places aside from ext math, so I was scared to lose the ranks so I didn't take any chances. I think though a healthy amount if you are not like aiming for 99 ATAR would be to aim to do half a paper a day on weekdays if you don't have much hw, then on weekends try do like 1-2 a day.
 

Cherrybomb56

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During that time as sad as it sounds lol I was probably studying all day. Don't think I had many breaks aside from when I got home ate, then dinner and maybe 1 hr here and there on Facebook, Skype etc. But that was partly due to me wanting such a high ATAR and at the time I had all 1st places aside from ext math, so I was scared to lose the ranks so I didn't take any chances. I think though a healthy amount if you are not like aiming for 99 ATAR would be to aim to do half a paper a day on weekdays if you don't have much hw, then on weekends try do like 1-2 a day.
just wondering how much papers did you do on weekends and weekdays when aiming for that 99 ATAR?
 

jazz519

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just wondering how much papers did you do on weekends and weekdays when aiming for that 99 ATAR?
At the start of Year 12 not any cause you don't know enough content to do the papers. During that time I was just making notes and doing practice questions from content being learnt by using stuff from the tutoring I went to. So naturally over time by doing all those exam style questions, when it came to doing the full past papers, I had already come across most types of exam questions. I made sure I was consistently doing that hw. Later on leading up to trials and HSC, it would be 1 paper a day on weekdays if I didn't have hw (but sometimes my school hw was to do some parts of an exam paper). Weekends didn't have much tutoring cause I just went to intensive holiday programs so I only had about 2.5 hours on tutoring for math/English each week. So I had a lot of time to do maybe like 2-3 papers a day. Keep in mind though that I didn't always write my answers in chem and physics, so sometimes I would do the question in my head for written short answer and then compare what I would write vs the marking criteria. Pretty fast way to get through more papers but only something you should do after you have confidence in keeping to a time limit that includes writing.
 

catha230

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@jazz519 Hi, do you have any tips for physics in terms of memorising the content as well as preparing for the long responses (6 marks and above). I am very confused on how to answer the long responses properly to get full marks. Really appreciate your insight!
 

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Some notes for physics are in here :)
 

jazz519

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@jazz519 Hi, do you have any tips for physics in terms of memorising the content as well as preparing for the long responses (6 marks and above). I am very confused on how to answer the long responses properly to get full marks. Really appreciate your insight!
I haven't really looked too much into the new physics syllabus to be honest. I did physics in 2016 when it was the old syllabus, and I've heard of there now being like 8 and 9 markers which we didn't have in the past. Most of our long responses were on society and environment kind of things or history style questions, where you could just memorise a prepared answer or points to discuss.

For memorising I had already made a set of detailed notes, so I would just read through those before the exams. I did that for all my subjects as I found that was the best approach for me, but this will vary per-person. For actually practicing that content, same thing as chemistry did a lot of past papers.

For long responses I tried to always draw diagrams of things, so for example if I had a question on the photoelectric effect, then I would draw the set-up of the photoelectric effect and maybe the graph as well with the labels of things like threshold frequency and work function. I also used headings so it isn't just one massive slab of writing. This can help in a lot of subjects where you have 5+ markers so it trains you on answering to the marking criteria and easier for the marker to see you have addressed things. If there is a verb like evaluate, you need to also make a judgement.
 

lach792

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First set of trials was around term 2 week 6ish, 2nd one was term 3 week 2, 3rd one was term 3 week 7. So yeah pretty full on, however, my school did go really fast through the content. Most subjects the teachers finished content like week 4 in term 2.

Well I don't know the reason why lol hahaha. My principal was always looking to due new things and experiment to see if it improved marks etc. In the moment it was hell, but I guess 3 trials was pretty useful as we did get exposure to a lot of exam practice. Maybe would've been less stressful if it was 2. I think one of the reasons might be they wanted the ranks to reflect what people will do in an exam, cause take home tasks and practical tasks can be kind of misleading as people can have access to online resources and tutors
do you reckon getting through the content so fast was good?
 

jazz519

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do you reckon getting through the content so fast was good?
It probably depends on the student and how fast they can learn. I have always been able to learn things quickly so the fast speed was good for me as I got more time to practice later. However, I can also see how it can be overwhelming in terms of having to learn things quickly, so maybe some students didn't like it. It is good in the sense that you can do a trial exam with all topics in it, as I know from tutoring over a few years that sometimes schools don't put the last module in their trials. I wonder if that results in a poorer performance in terms of the HSC for that last module as students don't have much practice or understanding of types of questions from that module

However, aside from that it didn't affect me that much, as I had actually already learnt ahead as I went to tutoring and studied a lot in the Christmas break. I was one module ahead of the school at that point just from the work in the holidays and I self-learnt the next one by myself as well during that time.

That is a piece of advice I tell all my tutoring students to make the most of the Christmas holidays. You should have some relaxing time during those holidays and probably don't need to go as extreme as me, but just a few consistent hours of study a day like 3-4 can be really beneficial down the line. A couple of my friends also did similar kind of work during that holidays and we all ended up with 98s and 99s
 

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