Anybody else realising the vast difference between textbook and exams?

[highSchoolAttender]

I was under the idea that if you manage to go through a textbook, do great, and understand all the concepts, you'll do good in exams. I go to an underrepresented school, and our mid year exams are basically just textbook questions but a bit harder and with different values obviously.

I was completely wrong; I've done various practice exams, and the questions are a lot harder than what they'll ever give in a decent textbook. The textbook is almost like a basic outline, in which they expect you to go through it, understand it, then practice exams for the rest of the year.

Not only that, but the way marks are allocated is very particular, to the point you'll probably be spending more time making sure your working out is clear rather than doing actual maths. I also hate those questions where they're like "do x by y", even though there's much more convenient and simpler ways to do x.

Does anybody have any tips on how to tackle exams, if you're so used to a textbook environment and go to a bad school?

[jazzycab]

I was under the idea that if you manage to go through a textbook, do great, and understand all the concepts, you'll do good in exams. I go to an underrepresented school, and our mid year exams are basically just textbook questions but a bit harder and with different values obviously.

I was completely wrong; I've done various practice exams, and the questions are a lot harder than what they'll ever give in a decent textbook. The textbook is almost like a basic outline, in which they expect you to go through it, understand it, then practice exams for the rest of the year.

Not only that, but the way marks are allocated is very particular, to the point you'll probably be spending more time making sure your working out is clear rather than doing actual maths. I also hate those questions where they're like "do x by y", even though there's much more convenient and simpler ways to do x.

Does anybody have any tips on how to tackle exams, if you're so used to a textbook environment and go to a bad school?

There is absolutely no comparison between most textbook questions and exam questions when it comes to Methods. I think the main reason for this is simply how difficult it is to write complex questions that model those in the exam and textbooks are designed to be easily mass-produced. You should think of your textbook as a resource primarily for understanding the basic concepts in the course. The questions are good if you are struggling with particular content - you can do lots of repetition on that one thing - but they rarely go to the same depth as exam questions, especially when it comes to combining content from different topics.
The best thing you can do is attempt as many exam-style questions as you can - this means attempting more of the extended response questions from your textbook, accessing previous years exams (which you can do from Checkpoints if you have it, or simply from the VCAA website) and company produced trial exam questions (some, like itute, are free (although very difficult) - there are a handful of user produced exams on the forums as well). To access expensive company produced exams, you can often ask your teacher(s) as schools regularly order these sorts of things.
The biggest issue for you here might be that the questions aren't ordered in a way that allows you to attempt much, particularly this early in the course, as many of them require a significant amount of calculus. You might consider asking teachers, friends etc. help you to determine which questions are appropriate for what content.

On another note, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "do x by y" - Are you referring to questions that instruct you to use a particular method? If so, you won't have to worry about this on the exams. The closest it will come to instructing you in this way is to specify the form that an answer needs to be in (which is only occasional anyway). You may use whatever method you choose to solve a problem (provided it solves it legitimately and you can show how you arrived at your answer)

[MAGGOT]

I know VCAA on very little occasions uses textbook questions or past external exams or VCAA exams for the end of year exam.  But yeah in any maths, textbook questions and the exam will be different and it's on a whole new level