Introduction
As we move closer towards the exam, hopefully students have made or are in the process of making their bound reference and are getting stuck into practice exams or practice questions. This week, we will take a more in depth look at the style of questions that have traditionally been used in VCAA examination.
Disclaimer
These are recommendations and not everyone learns in the same way, so take all advice with a grain of salt.
Practice Exams
Considering we are about 6 weeks out from the first Further Maths exam, I do really think it is a great time to get stuck into practice exams. Practice exams and in particular VCAA past exams are definitely your best resource during this period leading up to the exam.
Practice exams are a really powerful revision tool for a number of reasons:
1. They help diagnose your personal strengths and weaknesses
2. They help you develop your ability to actually answer the questions
3. You start to notice patterns in past exams that will likely continue into the 2020 exam
4. They will give you more and more self-confidence which will help keep stress and anxiety in check throughout the exam period.
‘Change of facts Questions’
Examiners have historically used questions where they give two sperate sets of information and us students must use both sets of facts to provide an answer. Such a question is extremely common in financial maths and an example multiple choice question is attached below.
In these questions, it is critical to not try an answer the questions too quickly, we must be methodical and answer the question step by step.
‘Misleading Questions’
Examiners also commonly change the focus of questions in the last couple of words. Subsequently, it is common for students to simply not answer the question as the examiner would like purely because they didn’t understand the meaning of the question. An example of this is attached below.
Given this is an extremely common style of question, it is critical to always fully read the question and never presume what a question is asking.
Conclusion
We went through two very common styles of questions used by examiners in the past, I hope these examples are helpful for students to obtain a better understanding of how to answer such questions.
Next week I will go through another two styles of questions commonly used by examiners.
Stay Safe!
Have a question?
In the final weeks before exams Ned will be hosting 2 Live Q&A sessions to help everyone get fully prepared for exams. If you have a question on how to best get prepared, have been stuck on an exam question or want to clarify an area of content send it through here, and Ned might answer it live!