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Author Topic: 40 hours until the Studies of Religion Exam  (Read 3944 times)  Share 

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elysepopplewell

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40 hours until the Studies of Religion Exam
« on: October 25, 2016, 02:36:12 pm »
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Studies of Religion has arrived. With one full day left before the exam – what should you be focusing on?

Memorising
Do I recommend memorising responses for Studies of Religion? Absolutely not. Did I just hear you sigh of relief? But I don’t think you can avoid the need to memorise some things in Studies of Religion. Those things are quotes. You absolutely must bring your arguments about a religious tradition back into its roots: the sacred texts and writings. Without this, you’re waffling about a narrative, rather than analysing a belief system.

What deserves memorising? I think in each religious tradition there are a few staples that should be known really well – including their source. Example: The Commandment of Love is found in Matthew 22:37-38. Without even having to memorise the exact wording, this little gem becomes inherently useful to just about anything you could be asked about Christianity.

Better yet, you can commit some really specific quotes to memory. Memorising some things that specifically relate to ethics, practice or person is really important for showing your authentic voice in an essay. You’re not at all limited to only quoting the sacred texts and writings of the religion, you can reference other authorities of scholars as well (this is probably most relevant to your significant person or school of thought study).

Past papers
Should you be doing past papers right now? Yeah nah. Multiple choice is incredibly easy to study for – in ten minutes you can smash out a paper’s worth of multiple choice questions. That’s a convincing stat! Multiple choice questions are recycled with a slight twist through the years – by doing the past 5 years worth of multiple choice questions, you eliminate a lot of surprise and potentially study exactly what is in the 2016 exam. Trust me, if you don’t want to spend your last day of SOR study with your nose in census data, this is one of the quickest ways to learn the topic!

As for essays? I don’t recommend them. Most students don’t have a planned essay up their sleeve to quickly apply to essay questions (at least, I didn’t have that!). So it really isn’t as though past papers is a matter of adjusting a planned essay to questions – it means that if you actually want to do the past paper, you’ll be looking at doing the entire thing. That’s exhausting, and time consuming. The day before the exam probably isn’t the best time to study intensely on one or two sections, it’s probably more effective to study widely and strategically.

But short answers? I mean, why not! Give yourself a ten minute window to plan and execute a short answer. You can do a lot of these in quick succession, meaning that you cover a lot of content in a short time; simultaneously testing your ability to respond quickly and effectively. Sweet! Have a look through the past short answer questions for the religious landscapes/Aboriginal spirituality section – you’ll definitely notice some trends!

5 point plan
If you’re not sure what to study or where to begin: write down your religious traditions (two for SOR 1, three for SOR 2), and a heading for “practice, person/thought, ethics.” Under each one, write five points about each. Hopefully, you can do this with ease for all. More realistically, you’ll struggle with your least favourite section.

If you can do this, focus on the one that took you the longest to pump out five points for. Alternatively, if it all went swimmingly: keep building. Right an extra point for each until you can’t think of anything new to say. Which has the most? That’ll be a good indicator of what you should choose to do the essay on. Which has the least? That’s a good indication of exactly what you should be studying now.

Otherwise, maybe you struggled with all aspects: the day before the exam is the day for you to learn the content. With 5 dot points, you can make your way through a short answer at the very least. Once you’ve hit that bottom denominator, then it’s only upwards from there!

Brain dumps
Following a similar vein to the above two points: brain dumps. Whip out a past question, or a predicted question, and just write the points that you’d use in an essay down. Even better: organise them into an essay plan. This is an excellent exercise for revision. Better yet, it’s a great way of practicing the planning and organisation of an essay in an exam situation. This is more time effective than actually writing out whole essays, simply because you can move through them far quicker. You can stop to flesh out the really tricky ones, or you can skip over the ones that you know you are really good at.


Tonight: plan tomorrow. Plan exactly what kind of things you want to achieve. This is likely one of your last two or three exams, so the stretching out that last bit of motivation is tricky. Be disciplined, and be kind.

Tomorrow night we’ll bring you some last minute thoughts and prep advice for the night before. Stay tuned.
In the mean time, ask any questions you have! We’re super happy to lend a hand with our own experiences, thoughts, and knowledge! No question is too silly – we’re ready to help!

Some more helpful links:
How to incorporate a stimulus in SOR? Click here!
Got any questions? Ask! We’re here to help as much as we can.
Looking for a structure for an SOR essay? Jamon wrote a stellar guide that you can read here.
5 mistakes that SOR students are guilty of? Right here!
« Last Edit: October 25, 2016, 03:02:05 pm by elysepopplewell »
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