The First Day of School and HSC Preparation

The Higher School Certificate (HSC® Exam) is a challenging year. In addition to the complexity of knowledge and skills required to perform well on any subject, the competitive nature of it makes HSC® Exam a tough year. After a long break, now it's time to go back to school! Let’s explore different methods utilised by successful students to either have a good head start in the competition, or catch up with contents you didn’t understand or haven’t revised yet.

 

  1. Start From the Beginning

If you are like me, to make sure you know every bit of your textbook or the curriculum, you always have to start from the beginning to wherever you have been up to. These remaining 7 days are still enough to revise and practise the contents you already learnt.

You can organise the content based on the number of pages in your textbook, i.e., first 10 pages for the first day and next 10 pages for the second day. You can revise the content based on any other method you want, for instance, read four sections in your textbook every day. It also can be in the same order which you learnt your content in school, say revising all the contents of the first two weeks in the first day and the next two weeks in the following day and so on.

Like anything in life, if you want to get good at something you have to practise a lot. You can re-do exercises in your textbook or even look at past exams.The best practice is HSC® Exam past papers. Depending on your confidence in the subject, you can try old practise papers, if you feel reasonably confident in your knowledge and skills, even though if some questions are no longer part of the curriculum. If you are less confident, you can try past papers that are written based on your current HSC® Exam curriculum. For very confident students, you need to try anything that you can get your hand on, for instance, hard questions on the internet (but make sure you check the answers with your teacher).

Finally, if you already have a good understanding of your subject, in addition to practising the contents you learnt, it is a good idea to get a head start. That will allow you being ahead of your cohort and have more time to revise and practise before your mid-term exam.

 

  2. Targeted Revision

Identify your weakest points in your subject, for example, you may have a problem with trigonometry. Proceed to revise those particular sections and spend some time to make sure you understand them. There are many ways to strengthen your understanding in your subject:

 

• Practise past papers and homework sheets from different difficulty levels.

• Read multiple sources to get a different perspective, and that will give a better grasp of the content, for example, if you find special relativity a bit difficult to understand it read various textbooks on that topic or watch videos from reliable sources, such as MIT, for a better comprehension.

• Take notes of your problems in the subject then discuss them with your friend and ask your teacher.

  These primary revision techniques are only effective when you find your suitable method of learning. There are ways to boost your learning ability, to name a few:
 

• Speak loudly. That will allow you to hear what you are reading and helps you to remember the content better.

• Have a break between your study, for instance, 10 to 15 minutes break for every 1-hour study. After every break, have a quick review of what you studied 1-hour ago without looking at your textbook or your notes.

• Have a map or drawing of the content you learnt by showing the connection between different topics.

• This method is more useful for science related subjects and mathematics: Have a study group, or, when you read content make sure you consider other views and convince yourself why those views are incorrect or less plausible.

• The most important one is practice. The more you practise, the better you will get.

 

Getting the HSC® Exam preparation before the first day of school is different for each person. The balance between the type study method that suits , study time, and revision technique depends on your HSC® Exam goals and commitments.

 

All the best in your HSC® Exam preparation! - Mahan