When to start studying ..?

Cakes.

Well..
I was just wondering when should i start studying...?
My teachers were on about some type of exam before Christmas and then there is the pres in February ...
any help is greatly appreciated ....

spurious

Listen in class and keep up with your homework and you will be fine.

Chuchoter

Just don't start at christmas. You'll get most of your study done before xmas, thats 4 months. After summer theres a lot less time, the mocks take up the whole of February, the easter holiday take up March. Do a little bit every night from when you start and you'll be fine.

spurious

Easter is very late next year which will make for a very short last term.

salthillman

Around Feb... I didnt start till Easter and got all A's and B's

salthillman

1 A tho, the rest B's!!

An Fear Bocht

I did my Junior Cert in 2007, but I remember at the time, our teachers use to be nagging at us from an early point to do some study. It really wasn't that simple however; there's a lot to learn between eleven-or-so subjects and way too much rote-learning if you ask me - Maths was the only subject that really required any practical thinking, and even at that, it was relatively straightforward.

My recommendation is that until christmas you should focus on two things: first, make sure you understand everything you've done so far. You don't necessarily have to know every fact or detail, you simply want to make sure than when you look over a concept, a section or a chapter that you don't scratch your head and wonder, "What was that about again?" If you've trouble with a certain section, I'd read the text again and if that doesn't help, ask your teacher to explain it to you sometime at the end of class - they normally won't mind spending an extra minute or two explaining.

The second thing to focus on is exam technique - this is particlarly important in English (albeit I believe that marking English is way too subjective - but that's another story for another day). You need to make sure that you are answering the question and that you are making things as easy as possible for the examiner. When you get exams back, look over them and examine the nature of the errors you make - this'll help you to avoid making the same error again. It's also worth paying a trip to www.examinations.ie. They have all the exam papers, marking schemes and chief examiners' reports on the website, all of which are helpful resources.

The actual memorisation of facts can begin around Christmas or so; any time before, and you won't really do yourself much good. One thing I may as well pass on is that there is way more luck involved in the Junior and Leaving Certs than you'd think - in the words of a friend of mine who was a year above me in school, the state exams are "glorified guessing-games interspersed with vomiting of information." Even though he's exaggerating, he unfortunately has a point - you can hand up the same script to two different examiners at Junior or Leaving Cert level and one will give a C2 and the other an A2. The grade the script really deserves could literally fall anywhere between the two extremes. As long as you don't stress out and that you keep in good contact with your friends, you'll be fine.

coffeelover

Do a little every night. The most important thing is to listen in class because a lot of classwork will be revision. Just don't leave it until the week before the JC to start studying.....like i did :rolleyes:

spurious

An Fear Bocht wrote: »

you can hand up the same script to two different examiners at Junior or Leaving Cert level and one will give a C2 and the other an A2

Simply not true.
Have you or 'your friend' any idea of how the examinations are marked??

The Junior Cert. is an exam designed to give the candidates as many marks as possible. The Leaving Cert. is very different. 'Luck' comes in where something you have studied well comes up or doesn't, certainly not in the marking schemes.

An Fear Bocht

spurious wrote: »

Simply not true.
Have you or 'your friend' any idea of how the examinations are marked??

The Junior Cert. is an exam designed to give the candidates as many marks as possible. The Leaving Cert. is very different. 'Luck' comes in where something you have studied well comes up or doesn't, certainly not in the marking schemes.

Eh, I've been reading the marking schemes and chief examiners' reports for the past two years (mainly before exams). I've read the exemplar material that comes with the reports and some very questionable answers are awarded A grades. Don't act as if subjects English and Irish don't have a lot of subjectivity involved; I've known people who've come out of the exam expecting a B3 and getting an A1 (and vice-versa) - of course it's possible to over/underestimate one's own performance, but the amount of people I know whose grades (except in Maths and Sciences) have been drastically different from those they expected is nothing short of astonishing. One of the best English students I ever knew (Leaving Cert Class of 2009) got an A2 in English, yet a friend of mine who banked on Boland and had to improvise a Kavanagh essay this year got an A1 (he was expecting a C3, by the way).

If you really mean to tell me that every examiner corrects non-objective subjects in exactly the same way with no significant deviation, then I'm going to have to ask yourself to back yourself up properly. Some examiners like a quirky and spontaneous essay. Others prefer a more traditional and formal essay. There are so many minor points of interpretation that aren't defined in many marking schemes and are instead left to the examiners' discretion that you simply cannot deny that two different scripts will get two different grades. In my own school, I had four different English teachers - one was a very harsh marker (not in a bad way), two were moderately harsh and one was a rather lenient marker. A deviation from C2 to A1 is obviously extreme, but I've seen it happen before.

Of course, the Junior Cert is more lenient, but it's not a bulletproog model - some of my friends had subjects appealed and had the mark upgraded, which quite clearly shows that two different examiners had different opinions on the same paper. My year's appeals haven't been lodged yet, but from the point of view of the Junior Cert, had my friends been marked by the latter examiners and not the former, they would not have been in a position to have to appeal their results in the first place - if that doesn't involve luck, I don't know what does.

spurious

Your teachers can mark any way they want. Examiners have to stick to the marking scheme.

The SEC have publicly stated in previous years that 'learned off' answers would be hit in marking and they have been. This has resulted in many students getting lower marks than they expected. Perhaps they should have learned the subject and associated skills, not 'answers'.

If you believe there is significant deviation, with a system that has as standard numerous remarkings by the Assistant Examiner, the Advising Examiner and the Chief Examiner, then you should present your theories to the Chief Examiner.

If your theory was true, there would be massive upgrading on appeals, which there isn't, at either JC or LC level. The most common way people are upgraded on both JC and LC appeals is from mis-tots, which have nothing to do with marking.

An Fear Bocht

But this is where we hit a little snag; the very minute you give examiners discretion (I'm not saying it's bad, by the way), different interpretations will be taken of the same sample of work. The central pillar of the English marking scheme is the PCLM system, of which most of the criteria is based on impression. One examiner might feel that exploring three King Lear characters is a sufficient display of depth to answer a general question and thus will give an A1. Another, however, might feel that the omission of other characters takes balance away from the answer and that the candidate makes a few claims that are true to an extent but not fully substantiated. Thus, the candidate may get a B2 (for arguments sake). Let's not forget too that a fine analytical essay may be penalised by one examiner for not being enough like a personal response (they do like their personal responses at Leaving Cert Level) by one examiner yet thought to perfectly OK by another; one examiner might think the style appropriate, the other might find it inappropriate. Before my Leaving Cert, my English teacher told me that my writing style suited the old English Leaving Cert very well, yet can easily be misconstrued as being impersonal in the current Leaving Cert English exam. She didn't say I'd definitely be penalised, simply that I could. Once again, a discretionary field without a fixed interpretation.

Not every subject is like Maths where the marking scheme is unambiguous and factual; a lot of marking schemes are based strongly upon the examiner's interpretation, eg. Irish - for the 100 mark essay, the examiner must give an impression mark for both the content and the language. Based upon use of idioms, accurate grammar, effective communication etc., the examiner can rank each category as fair, quite good, excellent, etc. What defines the exact parameters of these categories? There's no handbook that says x number of grammatical errors incurs a penalty of such and such a number of marks; it is the same with the opinion pieces in French and other mainland European languages. Can you answer me a question - do you really expect examiners to take approximately the same interpretation of all impression marks? After all, about half (give or take) of my Classical Studies exam was based upon impression marks! The very word impression (used explicitly in the Classical Studies Marking Scheme) indicates that an undeniable element of subjectivity is present!

By the way, as regards learnt-off material, I have no time for people who learn off essays, regurgitate them and complain that they didn't get an A1. The chief examiners' report for Irish notes with disappointment that there are still a vast many essays that are simply learned off by heart and regurgitated. Sometimes, however, I'm not surprised that people believe that it is the only way to do things. I remember when I was in 3rd year, half our Irish class got A grades because our teacher gave us essays to learn off. I never liked the approach and preferred to deviate, but it got people results, even though she was a diabolical teacher (and I've got more than a few stories about that...). Our Leaving Cert Irish teacher made a point of making us write essays from scratch; none of us got an A1. The Leaving Cert Irish class the year before got a stupendous amount of A1s - the teacher gave them essays and oral notes to memorise as well as a few techniques to stop them from losing marks on the comprehensions. I'm not trying to draw a conclusion from that, but it is definitely a very odd pattern for which I have no full explanation (and yes; I have considered the thought that this may be explained to a certain extent by the fact the other Irish class had more top hitters - we only had 14 honours students, the previous class had 24!).

You suggest that I present my theory to the chief examiner; I may well do, but I would have to spend more time compiling information for a formal report. A lot of my information is anecdotal and I wouldn't be able to prove that any scripts outside of mine were marked unfairly unless the other students actually expressed and supported this sentiment themselves. My personal opinion is that not all the examiners mark the papers properly - I can understand that there will be a certain margin of discrepancy between the grades people expect and the grades they will get, but some of the divergences I've encountered have been astonishing. Two of the most intelligent men in my year and who would have got high marks in school exams got 505 points, which was way below what others expected them to get (560-580). Meanwhile, a few of the more disinterested yet talented students got marks around the 530 mark. Nothing against them, some are very good friends of mine, but they themselves thought they'd be lucky to hit 500! A reviewing of the scripts would obviously be a more substantive port of call, but right now, I'd be closing my eyes and putting my fingers in my ears if I was to say I didn't smell something iffy in the system. It's of no great consequence to me because I got my course, but it's interesting to debate nonetheless.

I'm very skeptical on the idea that most grade changes are simply mis-tots; much as I can understand an examiner making a mistake in the heat of the moment, the idea that a large proportion of the 2,074 upgrades last year were based on adding errors is really stretching the bounds of credibility. These examiners do have calculators (I assume) and I imagine that most of them would smell a fault if they read through a good paper (B1 standard) and ended up giving a B3 as a result of a mis-tot. It can happen, but anything more than 100 incidences is difficult to believe for me. If you have any specific statistics on upgrades as a result of mis-tots, I would be interested to take a look at them. It must also be bourne in mind that the department are fond of their infamous bell-curve (very conveniently helped by the fact that they change some of the marking schemes before results are released, eg. French) - it's not incontemplatable that the department are going to be reluctant for there to be too many successful upgrades. Speculation on my part, but the department do have a system to run and upsetting the bell-curve doesn't seem to be one of their priorities at the moment.

Junior D

An Fear Bocht wrote: »

I did my Junior Cert in 2007, but I remember at the time, our teachers use to be nagging at us from an early point to do some study. It really wasn't that simple however; there's a lot to learn between eleven-or-so subjects and way too much rote-learning if you ask me - Maths was the only subject that really required any practical thinking, and even at that, it was relatively straightforward.

My recommendation is that until christmas you should focus on two things: first, make sure you understand everything you've done so far. You don't necessarily have to know every fact or detail, you simply want to make sure than when you look over a concept, a section or a chapter that you don't scratch your head and wonder, "What was that about again?" If you've trouble with a certain section, I'd read the text again and if that doesn't help, ask your teacher to explain it to you sometime at the end of class - they normally won't mind spending an extra minute or two explaining.

The second thing to focus on is exam technique - this is particlarly important in English (albeit I believe that marking English is way too subjective - but that's another story for another day). You need to make sure that you are answering the question and that you are making things as easy as possible for the examiner. When you get exams back, look over them and examine the nature of the errors you make - this'll help you to avoid making the same error again. It's also worth paying a trip to www.examinations.ie. They have all the exam papers, marking schemes and chief examiners' reports on the website, all of which are helpful resources.

The actual memorisation of facts can begin around Christmas or so; any time before, and you won't really do yourself much good. One thing I may as well pass on is that there is way more luck involved in the Junior and Leaving Certs than you'd think - in the words of a friend of mine who was a year above me in school, the state exams are "glorified guessing-games interspersed with vomiting of information." Even though he's exaggerating, he unfortunately has a point - you can hand up the same script to two different examiners at Junior or Leaving Cert level and one will give a C2 and the other an A2. The grade the script really deserves could literally fall anywhere between the two extremes. As long as you don't stress out and that you keep in good contact with your friends, you'll be fine.

An Fear Bocht wrote: »

Eh, I've been reading the marking schemes and chief examiners' reports for the past two years (mainly before exams). I've read the exemplar material that comes with the reports and some very questionable answers are awarded A grades. Don't act as if subjects English and Irish don't have a lot of subjectivity involved; I've known people who've come out of the exam expecting a B3 and getting an A1 (and vice-versa) - of course it's possible to over/underestimate one's own performance, but the amount of people I know whose grades (except in Maths and Sciences) have been drastically different from those they expected is nothing short of astonishing. One of the best English students I ever knew (Leaving Cert Class of 2009) got an A2 in English, yet a friend of mine who banked on Boland and had to improvise a Kavanagh essay this year got an A1 (he was expecting a C3, by the way).

If you really mean to tell me that every examiner corrects non-objective subjects in exactly the same way with no significant deviation, then I'm going to have to ask yourself to back yourself up properly. Some examiners like a quirky and spontaneous essay. Others prefer a more traditional and formal essay. There are so many minor points of interpretation that aren't defined in many marking schemes and are instead left to the examiners' discretion that you simply cannot deny that two different scripts will get two different grades. In my own school, I had four different English teachers - one was a very harsh marker (not in a bad way), two were moderately harsh and one was a rather lenient marker. A deviation from C2 to A1 is obviously extreme, but I've seen it happen before.

Of course, the Junior Cert is more lenient, but it's not a bulletproog model - some of my friends had subjects appealed and had the mark upgraded, which quite clearly shows that two different examiners had different opinions on the same paper. My year's appeals haven't been lodged yet, but from the point of view of the Junior Cert, had my friends been marked by the latter examiners and not the former, they would not have been in a position to have to appeal their results in the first place - if that doesn't involve luck, I don't know what does.

An Fear Bocht wrote: »

But this is where we hit a little snag; the very minute you give examiners discretion (I'm not saying it's bad, by the way), different interpretations will be taken of the same sample of work. The central pillar of the English marking scheme is the PCLM system, of which most of the criteria is based on impression. One examiner might feel that exploring three King Lear characters is a sufficient display of depth to answer a general question and thus will give an A1. Another, however, might feel that the omission of other characters takes balance away from the answer and that the candidate makes a few claims that are true to an extent but not fully substantiated. Thus, the candidate may get a B2 (for arguments sake). Let's not forget too that a fine analytical essay may be penalised by one examiner for not being enough like a personal response (they do like their personal responses at Leaving Cert Level) by one examiner yet thought to perfectly OK by another; one examiner might think the style appropriate, the other might find it inappropriate. Before my Leaving Cert, my English teacher told me that my writing style suited the old English Leaving Cert very well, yet can easily be misconstrued as being impersonal in the current Leaving Cert English exam. She didn't say I'd definitely be penalised, simply that I could. Once again, a discretionary field without a fixed interpretation.

Not every subject is like Maths where the marking scheme is unambiguous and factual; a lot of marking schemes are based strongly upon the examiner's interpretation, eg. Irish - for the 100 mark essay, the examiner must give an impression mark for both the content and the language. Based upon use of idioms, accurate grammar, effective communication etc., the examiner can rank each category as fair, quite good, excellent, etc. What defines the exact parameters of these categories? There's no handbook that says x number of grammatical errors incurs a penalty of such and such a number of marks; it is the same with the opinion pieces in French and other mainland European languages. Can you answer me a question - do you really expect examiners to take approximately the same interpretation of all impression marks? After all, about half (give or take) of my Classical Studies exam was based upon impression marks! The very word impression (used explicitly in the Classical Studies Marking Scheme) indicates that an undeniable element of subjectivity is present!

By the way, as regards learnt-off material, I have no time for people who learn off essays, regurgitate them and complain that they didn't get an A1. The chief examiners' report for Irish notes with disappointment that there are still a vast many essays that are simply learned off by heart and regurgitated. Sometimes, however, I'm not surprised that people believe that it is the only way to do things. I remember when I was in 3rd year, half our Irish class got A grades because our teacher gave us essays to learn off. I never liked the approach and preferred to deviate, but it got people results, even though she was a diabolical teacher (and I've got more than a few stories about that...). Our Leaving Cert Irish teacher made a point of making us write essays from scratch; none of us got an A1. The Leaving Cert Irish class the year before got a stupendous amount of A1s - the teacher gave them essays and oral notes to memorise as well as a few techniques to stop them from losing marks on the comprehensions. I'm not trying to draw a conclusion from that, but it is definitely a very odd pattern for which I have no full explanation (and yes; I have considered the thought that this may be explained to a certain extent by the fact the other Irish class had more top hitters - we only had 14 honours students, the previous class had 24!).

You suggest that I present my theory to the chief examiner; I may well do, but I would have to spend more time compiling information for a formal report. A lot of my information is anecdotal and I wouldn't be able to prove that any scripts outside of mine were marked unfairly unless the other students actually expressed and supported this sentiment themselves. My personal opinion is that not all the examiners mark the papers properly - I can understand that there will be a certain margin of discrepancy between the grades people expect and the grades they will get, but some of the divergences I've encountered have been astonishing. Two of the most intelligent men in my year and who would have got high marks in school exams got 505 points, which was way below what others expected them to get (560-580). Meanwhile, a few of the more disinterested yet talented students got marks around the 530 mark. Nothing against them, some are very good friends of mine, but they themselves thought they'd be lucky to hit 500! A reviewing of the scripts would obviously be a more substantive port of call, but right now, I'd be closing my eyes and putting my fingers in my ears if I was to say I didn't smell something iffy in the system. It's of no great consequence to me because I got my course, but it's interesting to debate nonetheless.

I'm very skeptical on the idea that most grade changes are simply mis-tots; much as I can understand an examiner making a mistake in the heat of the moment, the idea that a large proportion of the 2,074 upgrades last year were based on adding errors is really stretching the bounds of credibility. These examiners do have calculators (I assume) and I imagine that most of them would smell a fault if they read through a good paper (B1 standard) and ended up giving a B3 as a result of a mis-tot. It can happen, but anything more than 100 incidences is difficult to believe for me. If you have any specific statistics on upgrades as a result of mis-tots, I would be interested to take a look at them. It must also be bourne in mind that the department are fond of their infamous bell-curve (very conveniently helped by the fact that they change some of the marking schemes before results are released, eg. French) - it's not incontemplatable that the department are going to be reluctant for there to be too many successful upgrades. Speculation on my part, but the department do have a system to run and upsetting the bell-curve doesn't seem to be one of their priorities at the moment.

In fairness, how are we meant to read all of this??? Could you not make make your points a little more concise?

As for study question, don't stress, just listen and tip away. After all its only the JC not LC

johnmcdnl

you really shouldn't be asking when to start studying - you should be doing the wee bit everyday from first year

then maybe after easter bump the revision a wee bit and you'll be grand

start doing the wee bit from now and do the homework and listen in class and you'll be grand

it's only the junior after all - don't sweat it seriously like - as soon as your finished with it you'll realise how much of a waste of time it is

Steve Collins

Start now, I dare yeah... (you'll be the only one who does though)

Namlub

johnmcdnl wrote: »

you really shouldn't be asking when to start studying - you should be doing the wee bit everyday from first year

then maybe after easter bump the revision a wee bit and you'll be grand

start doing the wee bit from now and do the homework and listen in class and you'll be grand

it's only the junior after all - don't sweat it seriously like - as soon as your finished with it you'll realise how much of a waste of time it is

You seriously started studying for the JC in first year??

johnmcdnl

Namlub wrote: »

You seriously started studying for the JC in first year??

I never started studying - I did my homework every night from first year and I listened in every class from first year - I didn't study for the junior at all - I ended up playing the Elder Scrolls Oblivion every night during the junior and I came out with 2 As and 8Bs all at higher level just because I listened and did most of my homework..

it really isn't that hard - just listen and do the homework and that's all you should need

Namlub

johnmcdnl wrote: »

I never started studying - I did my homework every night from first year and I listened in every class from first year - I didn't study for the junior at all - I ended up playing the Elder Scrolls Oblivion every night during the junior and I came out with 2 As and 8Bs all at higher level just because I listened and did most of my homework..

it really isn't that hard - just listen and do the homework and that's all you should need

Ohhh, so you didn't mean just full-on revising then. Phew.

And I'm in 5th year but, er, thanks

johnmcdnl

Namlub wrote: »

Ohhh, so you didn't mean just full-on revising then. Phew.

And I'm in 5th year but, er, thanks

You don't need full on studying for the junior really - just a wee bit after easter will be more than enough

you will never use your junior cert besides using the basics of a subject for leaving cert level


seriously guys - as someone who's been there and done that - chill out - it's only the junior cert

listening and doing homework is more than enough until right til the end - but if you don't do the homework or don't listen well then that's your own fault - you have to do the homework and you'll be grand

An Fear Bocht

Junior D wrote: »

In fairness, how are we meant to read all of this??? Could you not make make your points a little more concise?

As for study question, don't stress, just listen and tip away. After all its only the JC not LC

Hey relax, it's only debating. It's meant to take ages to hack through everything! If you think I'm tedious and long-winded right now, I can assure you, I'm a nightmare in face-to-face debates. They sometimes go on for quite a while!

But in all seriousness, my posts are long because someone challenged my thinking, which is part and parcel of discussion. What is simply one sentence in the original post I turn into an argued case to demonstrate my thinking. If I didn't go into detail, my post would be lacking something.

BigBenRoeth

Don't start at all,only point of the junior cert is to get you used to the who exam environment thing for the lc

Luno

BigBenRoeth wrote: »

Don't start at all,only point of the junior cert is to get you used to the who exam environment thing for the lc

FYP

And, that's not entirely true...

BigBenRoeth

M&S* wrote: »

FYP

And, that's not entirely true...

Oh the humanity,i made a mistake in my post

Luno

BigBenRoeth wrote: »

Oh the humanity,i made a mistake in my post

Hardy haw haw...

siobhan1894

I'm now in Transition Year, having just completed my Junior Cert in June. I would strongly recommend that you start studying now. I know this sounds harsh but if you even just did a half hour of ONE subject per night you will really reap the rewards come June. I hope this advice has been helpful

coffeelover

siobhan1894 wrote: »

I'm now in Transition Year, having just completed my Junior Cert in June. I would strongly recommend that you start studying now. I know this sounds harsh but if you even just did a half hour of ONE subject per night you will really reap the rewards come June. I hope this advice has been helpful

Ya I would agree with you. If you do just a half an hour each night on one subject you will be flying come June. And DO NOT leave it until the last week before the exams to revise three years work :pac: (So dreading the results tomorrow) :rolleyes:

i.Am.Eva

Cakesofrice wrote: »

Well..
I was just wondering when should i start studying...?
My teachers were on about some type of exam before Christmas and then there is the pres in February ...
any help is greatly appreciated ....

Never Don't kill yourself over studying, if you listen during class and do you homework, you'll be fine, I was!!