Hey!
First of all, I want to preface this by telling you not to panic if your results aren’t going how you’ve hoped. SAC scores are by no means indicative of your final score, and there is still more than enough time to improve!
Here is a few things to consider when writing your responses.
- Pay attention to task words and key terms! Many students know the content extremely well, but lose marks because they don’t know what the question is asking them. For example: An 'evaluate' question requires you to give strengths, weaknesses and your opinion.
- Focus on the mark allocation. For example: if you have a discuss question worth four marks, you are required to give two advantages and two disadvantages to get full marks.
- Make sure you are incorporating the key terminology. In Year 12, I wrote down the key terms to define and explain each of the dot points within the study design. This allowed me to write much more precise and coherent answers.
Some study techniques that I used were:
- Posters. These are amazing for gaining a comprehensive understanding of the content. I would keep my posters fairly brief, with tables for advantages and disadvantages, dot points, acronyms etc.
- Flashcards (my lifesaver during VCE), whilst it won’t help with answering the questions, it is a great way to test what you know, and highlight areas that you need to work on,
- Watching Edrolo videos (if your school has it) on topics I was uncertain on.
- Teaching someone else (even if it’s your pet hahaha). You’ll find that if you can articulate the content well, you'll understand it a lot better.
After that it really comes down to answering questions.
- Go through your study design!!! It has all of the content you can be asked on, along with the associated task words. You can predict what types of questions you will be asked and write your own if you’re looking for more questions.
- Read over the examiner’s reports to see what they look for in a response. It’s also a really good opportunity to read a high-scoring piece of writing; comparing what you do similarly/differently. (That being said, remember your style of writing will never be identical to someone else’s, so don’t try to copy it word for word).
- Do as many practice questions as you can. Application should take up most of your time/study in VCE. It is one thing to understand the content, but another to be able to apply it to scenarios and write about it under timed conditions.
- Seek feedback! Post responses on the forums, ask your teachers what they think you can improve on. This is one of the best ways to improve.
Good Luck!