Need advice for trials. (1 Viewer)

[feeo_o]

Hey guys.

For Modern History, I'm not doing too bad, but not that great either (around 78% right now) and I have a couple of questions in regards to studying for this subject.

My trials are in about a week, and I've been studying for Modern History by reading over the textbook and teacher's notes. However, I've found that almost nothing is sticking in my brain and I can't really practice many essay questions now, maybe a couple. Also, I've made essay plans for a few past HSC questions which I have found to be reasonably effective ... I guess that's better than not doing any essays at all. Anyway, I recently visited the HSConline website and found that they have summaries for all my topics as well as some revision questions. Do you think I'll be able to perform alright (~70%) by studying from HSCOnline (reading the notes and answering the revision questions)?

Also, for the personality section, part a, is there a serparate specific way we should structure this part? As in, should it be structured the same way as a usual essay question or is there a different structure?

Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

 

[Spiritual Being]

Hey guys.

For Modern History, I'm not doing too bad, but not that great either (around 78% right now) and I have a couple of questions in regards to studying for this subject.

My trials are in about a week, and I've been studying for Modern History by reading over the textbook and teacher's notes. However, I've found that almost nothing is sticking in my brain and I can't really practice many essay questions now, maybe a couple. Also, I've made essay plans for a few past HSC questions which I have found to be reasonably effective ... I guess that's better than not doing any essays at all. Anyway, I recently visited the HSConline website and found that they have summaries for all my topics as well as some revision questions. Do you think I'll be able to perform alright (~70%) by studying from HSCOnline (reading the notes and answering the revision questions)?

Also, for the personality section, part a, is there a serparate specific way we should structure this part? As in, should it be structured the same way as a usual essay question or is there a different structure?

Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

You have to remember that it's all relative i.e. your rank in our cohort, which is used in giving you the moderated assessment mark.

It's all up to the individual, anyway. If I studied for legal the night before with no prior study, I would get 85-90. If I did that for say, biology, I would get 60. That's because my talent leads more to humanities than it does for science, and therefore sciences require more study time to do well. So there will be people in your class who can study the night before and get 90, but they may do that for maths and get 50. It all depends on the ability of an individual relative to a particular subject.

 

[feeo_o]

You have to remember that it's all relative i.e. your rank in our cohort, which is used in giving you the moderated assessment mark.

It's all up to the individual, anyway. If I studied for legal the night before with no prior study, I would get 85-90. If I did that for say, biology, I would get 60. That's because my talent leads more to humanities than it does for science, and therefore sciences require more study time to do well. So there will be people in your class who can study the night before and get 90, but they may do that for maths and get 50. It all depends on the ability of an individual relative to a particular subject.

Thanks for responding. I know I'm more of a maths and science, so I always perform better in biology/chemistry/maths compared to history/english.

But what I was asking was whether HSCOnline would be a good source to study from for my modern history trial exam, i.e. is it detailed enough etc. I'm not going to just study the night before. I've studied but the textbook has a lot of irrelevant information (I think - and I'm no where near completing all my own notes, and there's little use in doing them now), so I was looking at hsconline as a better alternative for "week before the exam" studying.

 

[Eduard_Khil]

Modern History is unlike English you've/you'll probably notice, obviously modern history is more factual and informative, the similarity however for an essay is the emphasis that you have to remind yourself that it is an argument.
Make a good intro kinda introducing your main points IN RELATION TO THE SPECIFIC QUESTION (that requires knowing your stuff) you then proceed to further elaborate on why you are right by pointing out your facts and figures in the main body, of each of the points you list in your intro, it's also important to keep tying your arguments back to your question, though it may seem repetitive, it not only reminds you of your main goal it also reminds the teacher that you are arguing specifically to the question and not wondering away to the perils of never never land which you tell a nice story. that ends up wasting 20 minutes and not answering the question.

Modern history has a lot of dates to remember, for that I would suggest psychological conditioning, perhaps a bit late now but not too late for the actual HSC, (I actually did this when I did my HSC) I used a form of semantic coding, which is like arranging key events to anagrams. So if I wanted to remember things especially Chronologically I would make up a funny word or funny symbol that would allow me to remember it, and write it down the moment I entered the exam(just the first letter of each anagram) So basically I would have a word for each section of my modern history exam, one of them being EASTWOOD, where the E stood for Entrance to war, the A stood for Allied counter offensive, S stood for Soldier casualties (a statistical reference), but anyway you get the idea.
By basically assigning easier information that I memorised I was basically able to compress larger amounts of detail per letter, ultimately this led me to more than I could obviously write in the HSC, but that was the point, I basically had the entire syllabus and all info in my head, dependant on my question I would pick out the letters that I thought were relative to the question and skip the ones that weren't

Hope this helps

 

[PatrickH]

I got 91 for my trial (what didnt everyone else get?) which sounds impressive, but i didnt do too well, 25 for WWI but only 20 for Trotsky. Do you want my essay questions? I found my essays that 23/25 were just simple form - If i put 6 ideas in my intro I wrote 6 BP's and that usually should answer the question. It's not too difficult, remember quotes from historians but in your essay dont quote them directly, say Ian Thatcher concurs believing Russia would of been better off with NEP (or whatever) not Historian be said "quote" end quote. THat makes you look like a mirror, not your own intelligence.