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Tips? (1 Viewer)

Alkenes

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People say study 'smart' not hard for HSC.
For chem and physics, are we supposed to memorise every single thing?

Like give us some tips on how to study 'smart' :)



Thanks
 

ninetypercent

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dont procrastinate
follow the syllabus
read to understand not to memorise
etc
basically use common sense :p
 

madharris

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If you study physics and chemistry regularly (including practice questions), you won't need to try to memorise as you will do it automatically over a small period
 

OzKo

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Memorisation isn't a practice I would recommend using during the HSC unless it is for something like remember English quotes.

If you get in your head that memorisation is the best way to study, you will really struggle in university. Essentially think of this as an investment, so change your study approach to make sure you understand everything like the previous posters have stated, and that will make it easier for you to recall bits of information in exam conditions.
 

Nooblet94

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Memorising is the stupidest thing ever for anything other than quotes/names of things. Sure, you might get decent marks, but you're going to do a lot better if you actually LEARN (learning at school? what kind of madness is this!?!) what you're doing, rather than just swallowing the textbook and puking it onto the page during an exam.

For example, there's a bunch of people in my grade who go home and just read parts of the physics textbook until they can remember it all. These people get decent marks, especially for the long response-type questions but when it comes to actually applying the concepts in a scenario that isn't explicitly referenced in the syllabus/textbook they get screwed over and then complain when I beat them after doing much less "study".
 

Galapagos

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Memorising is the stupidest thing ever for anything other than quotes/names of things. Sure, you might get decent marks, but you're going to do a lot better if you actually LEARN (learning at school? what kind of madness is this!?!) what you're doing, rather than just swallowing the textbook and puking it onto the page during an exam.

For example, there's a bunch of people in my grade who go home and just read parts of the physics textbook until they can remember it all. These people get decent marks, especially for the long response-type questions but when it comes to actually applying the concepts in a scenario that isn't explicitly referenced in the syllabus/textbook they get screwed over and then complain when I beat them after doing much less "study".
This is good advice. Don't memorize - learn. Huge difference. If you go for the memorization technique, when you get to uni you'll probably bomb out, bad.

Example of learning vs. memorising:

In bio I learnt about 4 body systems: digestive, excretory, circulatory and respiratory. Now, I could have just memorized every name and process without actually understanding/learning why it works the way it works. A lot of people obviously did this in their night-before cram, and only just managed to pass.

I, however, spent perhaps 1 hour a week going over what we'd been taught about body systems, not only writing up my study notes, but creating practice exams that I knew would be twice to three times as hard than the real exam would be. Why on earth would I put myself through that? Well, this is the difference between learning and memorizing. The exams I created for myself were very application-based; I'd say "Describe the purposes and processes involved with the excretory system and name all organs involved". Sure, there is a little memorization there, but to actually be able to describe why and how your kidneys work, that's another skill entirely.

This is what you need to do in chem and physics.
 

someth1ng

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The only part you should memorise (or rote learn) in Physics and Chemistry is the names/concept titles, the history of Physics/Chemistry such as the Westinghouse vs Edison (or AC vs DC) controversy etc.

In terms on concepts such as calculations, you should know perhaps not always why it works but at least how to use it to give you the correct answer - ideas such as Einstein's mass-energy equivalence formula is very difficult to truly understand at high school level but you must know how to use it in and when to use it.
 

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