Preparing for Methods 3/4

[jackbourkeee]

My understanding is that the Cambridge textbook has great questions however they do a poor job at explaining each chapter. Is there another textbook out there that describes the concepts better for Yr12?

Thanks.

[keltingmeith]

Define poor job - some people find it needlessly complicated, and prefer Maths Quest (published by Jacaranda) because the explanations are much simpler - the caveat with this is that Maths Quest doesn't explain the full picture, and sometimes takes shortcuts that can give you the wrong idea - even if your knowledge is still good enough to answer the questions they or VCAA will ask. IMHO, Cambridge explains things good enough for what you need in VCE, provides more difficult questions for you to practice against, and you save money by only using the one textbook.

To my knowledge, there's no other main textbooks in the circulation.

[homeworkisapotato]

Hey! Do you think Cambridge is more accurate in terms of questions which resemble exam questions than Math Quest?

[Sine]

Hey! Do you think Cambridge is more accurate in terms of questions which resemble exam questions than Math Quest?

I used the Cambridge textbook and I don't think they resembled much of exam questions. Not too sure about MathQuest. The main aim of the textbook is to teach the skills but VCAA's questions are quite unique such that the questions are rarely as simple as the questions in the textbook.

This doesn't necessarily mean the textbooks are bad though. I think they are definitely a very good starting point to make sure you actually have learnt the basic skills. It is advised for students to complete practice exams (VCAA and commercial) to get used to the exam style questions which apart from some questions in exam 1 need you to apply your knowledge.

EDIT: forgot to mention the chapter reviews from Cambridge are probably the closest you will get to exam style questions for exam 2 in the textbook.

[colline]

Hey! Do you think Cambridge is more accurate in terms of questions which resemble exam questions than Math Quest?

My school used Maths Quest but I occasionally also used the Cambridge book - I'd say Cambridge has *marginally* better written questions. As Sine said their chapter review questions quite closely resemble VCAA's (relative to Maths Quest at least). Though I personally do not think using Maths Quest as opposed to Cambridge really puts you at a disadvantage.