Hey all!
I've been writing this psych guide for a bit of time now and hopefully it can help you guys out if you're trying to figure out how to study well for the upcoming psych exam, or if you're doing 1/2 now and looking for advice for next year. Whatever, it is, these tips and FAQ should be of use (I hope), so enjoy!
1. Research Methods Research methods in psychology is probably one of the most (if not the most) important section that you need to properly apply yourself within the exams and SACs. I admit, it can be pretty tedious at times and boring, however, don’t underestimate how useful it is. Try to consistently practise identifying and operationalising your independent and dependent variables, as well as the hypothesis in a clear structure (I personally used the If-then structure as recommended by teachers). I would also recommend trying to think of potential extraneous variables (and confounding, but difficult to prove) that can be applied to many scenarios. Having said all this, do not make things non-specific to the question! (I’ll touch on this more later). As a last point, if you’re thinking of undertaking psychology at university (or extension subject), these research methods will make your life so much easier
2. Scenario Questions You may have or may not have noticed it, but the majority of questions on the psychology exams are scenario based and involve specific people and their experiments. Sure, this makes the question more ‘intesting’ and easy to remember, but it also gives examiners another reason to take marks off you. It is really simple to avoid this. You simply have to refer to the name of the person or just be specific towards what they are testing. For example, if a question asks “Identify and explain the type of reinforcement James is using to teach his dog to sit on command.”, you may answer it by saying: “James is using positive reinforcement as he provides his dog a treat every time he sits on command. Thereby increasing the likelihood that his dog will sit on command in the future as a desirable stimulus (food) has been provided.”.
3. Practice Questions Personally, the best way to study for a content heavy subject such as psych is to do practice questions and not to spend your time trying to remember every single detail of your notes. This will not work because some examiners can be quite picky on the wording you use. Therefore, practice writing answers and marking them (harshly) to see how you can better improve your answers. Writing in dot points is also allowed in the exam (and most likely SACs too), so this can help you to structure your answers clearly. However, it is not necessary and could disadvantage you if you aren’t used to it. I didn’t use dot-points in the exam, but I did try it out in my SACs and it was helpful at times.
Also, checkpoints are useful, however are not necessary. Last year, I didn’t purchase checkpoints for psychology and still got a 50. However, I did go through past VCAA exams myself and do the relevant questions. You might ask, “what about practice exams at the end of the year? Won’t seeing the questions ruin it?”, however, I honestly doubt that you’ll remember the questions you do throughout the year, unless they are particularly memorable or difficult. So I wouldn’t worry too much. If anything, it’s preparing you for what the real exam should be like (hopefully) because VCAA will ask questions in the similar way each year.
4. Revise consistently Having said to ‘not memorise your notes’, I don’t mean that you shouldn’t revise at all. What I mean is that you should be revising every week (or preferably every class) to review what you do and don’t know. This is a lot easier if you’re doing psych early and don’t have other 3/4 subjects to balance. Saying that though, I wasn’t able to stick to this all year round and definitely took time off. However, please make the effort to not cram and to either revise notes, or do practice questions throughout the year.
Another tip is to try to link different concepts together throughout the year. For example, stress from Unit 3 AOS1 can relate to Unit 4 AOS2 mental health section. Drawing links together will help you at the end of the year when revising and also when answering that 10 marker at the end of the paper.
I also would have another piece of advice regarding this, and it’s a bit of an annoyance of mine, but here it goes. Please, please, please, please, please, pleasseeeee do NOT re-write your notes as a method of studying for something. Not only does it take up your time, but it also doesn’t work since you’re simply copying out your notes. Instead, you might want to make your notes more concise or more neatly organised (easier on the computer obviously), that’s fine, but please don’t re-write your notes to study for the exam.
5. Ask Questions Another useful piece of advice would be to ask your teacher or your friends (if you trust them haha) any confusing topics or questions that you come across. Or, you can always post them here on AN and someone should be able to give you a good answer
. I also found it useful to answer questions that other friends may ask me. If I was able to change the way I thought about the concept to match the way they needed it, it shows a deeper understanding of the topic and will help you understand it. Alternatively, you can teach your bedroom wall (or walls of your house). It might sound crazy (and look), but I would sometimes walk around with my notes and talk to an imaginary person and try to explain the concept I’m trying to remember.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How many practice exams did you do?I did 26 exams all together. However, in no way are these full length exams where every question is relevant. In fact, all of my exams except for about 3-4 were not from the current study design. Obviously, doing more exams in Year 11 is easier than if you’re doing psych in year 12. However, it is the quality of your exams and your marking/learning that is most important. What I mean by this is that you have to mark these exams as if you were a grumpy VCAA examiner who still has 200 papers left to mark by the end of this week. If you miss a keyword, take the mark. Don’t think to yourself “Oh, that’s what I meant to say”, because examiners can’t read your mind (luckily lol). All in all, you’ll probably end up marking more critically than how they mark, but this will teach you proper question technique and refine your answers to the necessary bits. After marking your exams, take note of what areas your knowledge/skill is lacking in and try to revise your notes in that area or practice more questions around that area.
2. Did you type or handwrite your notes? Throughout the year, I handwrote my notes and they were basically straight copies of the powerpoint (bad idea too). However, I found that handwriting was a bit of a pain and couldn’t be easily edited and reorganised. So, I actually started to re-write my notes (gasp), however, I was summarising them and re-wording them as I went – I choose to give myself an OK for this. Having said this, I would recommend that you stick to one method throughout the year and don’t change (unless you really have to or really want to). I personally endorse the typed notes method, but hand writing exam answers (sorry trees) since that’s what the exam requires.
3. How do you tackle the 10 marker? Well, there’s no doubt that it’s a hard question to answer and very few people score 10/10 (or even 9/10) - really, I don't even know what I got either. However, I would recommend trying to plan it out like an essay of sorts. I would underline the text given to me (beware of this because they will sometimes slip in another command term within the ‘junk’ text) and find out what they want me to answer. I would then plan it out as best as possible and think of all the inter-relations that the topic may have (as I said before, link your concepts together). I would then use this plan to write out the response as clearly as possible. Remember, this isn’t meant to be a giant slab of text. You are definitely allowed to (and I would encourage it) to use headings, subheadings and possibly tables. This will make the information easier for you to scan through and for the examiner to read (you want them in a good mood). I personally think that there are really only two main topics they can ask due to their size. Those being related to sleep, or mental health. I personally predict that mental health will be the topic of the 2018 exam. However, knowing VCAA, they may throw a curveball and give you something different, so be prepared.
4. Did you do tutoring? No. I didn’t to tutoring for any of my subjects in Year 11 (accounting and psychology) or Year 12 except for English language. Tuition isn’t really necessary, however, if you feel that you need someone to mark your questions, explain it in a different way to your teacher or just to simply go ahead, by all means, get a tutor. (I’m considering tutoring in 2019 depending on uni btw
).
5. Did you go to revision lectures/purchase extra resources?I did purchase notes at the start of the year and used them at the start (plus the research methods section), however, I used them less and less towards term 2 when I found that they were too in depth and difficult to follow for myself. So I just used my own notes. I did also go to a revision lecture at school (run by Connect), however, I didn’t find it useful since it was a very brief overview of the subject. I also bought the NEAP SmartStudy exam and question booklet the start of the year. It was basically just extra questions to do before SACs, however, sometimes the solutions wanted a lot more from your answer than what VCAA typically wants. Otherwise, it provided some good resources for the 10 mark question at the end.
Can’t speak for the other lecturing companies as I’ve never tried them, but you can’t really go wrong with anything free
6. What SAC scores did you get throughout the year? Honestly, I never like answering this question since it can make it seem impossible/give false hope in your results. This is because each schools’ SAC difficulty is different from each other and therefore cannot be compared. I also have no clue how hard my school’s SACs are, but I assume they’re on the tougher side (no clue) since we’ve had six raw 50 scores in the past two years (three in 2017 and three in 2016), plus a premier’s in each year. You can also probably find my school now, but oh well haha. So all in all, please don’t be disheartened/too ego-boosted when you see my scores here:
- Unit 3: 93%, 95%, 92%, 83%
- Unit 4: 100%, 96%, 94%
With the exam, I have no clue what I got since I didn’t order a statement of marks (a 50 is a 50!), but I assume a high A+. All my GA’s on the scores page were A+ obviously.
Please do take these results with a grain of salt though. In the end, the exam is what counts (a whopping 60%, plus it scales your SACs). In addition, one lower score will not ruin your dreams of a 50. When I got that 83%, I was honestly pretty cut about it and I thought a 50 was out of the question, but obviously, I was very wrong. So if you get a score that drops from your usual range, please don’t be disheartened and treat it as a learning opportunity. In the end, individual SACs by themselves play an insignificant role and don’t truly matter that much (still try your best though). Also, keep in mind that I was a Year 11, so I had a lot more time compared to Year 12s undertaking the subject to revise/do questions/exams. However, just because you are in Year 12 doesn’t change anything. The other two 50s at my school were Year 12s
7. Day before and of the exam The day before, I didn’t do a practice exam or any psych questions. Instead, I chose to do some light reading of my notes and stay off social media (I was scared of friends asking my stuff and getting stressed – turns out every one shut off social media though). I got an early night of sleep and took it easy.
Day of the exam, I woke up really early for some reason (I think 6 something), which is unusual since I normally only wake up at 8 on most days. I did some light reading of notes again (not necessary) and had a good breakfast and mostly tried to stay calm (this was my first ever VCAA exam). I got school like 30 minutes early (as recommended) and talked with friends – obviously no one was stressing each other out and we were encouraging each other.
During the exam, you start off and you might be a bit nervous, but you’ll get right into it and the nerves should disappear. I also did the exam from front to back cover, no jumping around. During reading time, I focused on the large slabs of text in the paper (2017) and thought about the 10 marker.
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Anyway, that's it! Hopefully all of this covered everything that most people want to know, otherwise, feel free to PM me some questions. I’ll probably be pretty busy coming up to exams now, but I’ll do my best to answer them
Good luck!
- Peter