Now until June..... :/

CatEyed92

Hey guys
So, with 140 days left tomorrow, I am looking for advice on study:

My weekend job is gone now so looking for advice on how to plan weekend study? Should I be writing notes, doing papers? Help!!!

This weekend, I wasn't as productive as I would of liked to of been.
Also, should I be working towards pre's in March?

Looking to achieve 480 - 540 in August for first and second choice!
Really need to know how to structure myself now until June in order to achieve this!!!

Subjects HL - hoping for..
English - A1
Biology - A1
Ag science - B1
Business - A1
Art - B2/B3
Geography - B1/B2

Please help me

Canard

Firstly, "would have liked to have been". :P
Haha, just messing, I had to say it. :P

If I were you I'd write out really, really good, concise notes for now. There's not much point writing out some good notes and some bad notes and learning both - if that makes sense? E.g. bullet points might work better for you than essays, so do bullet points. I found myself rewriting half my geography questions before the mocks and the other half were still messy essays filled with irrelevant points before I shaved them down. I ended up knowing half of them perfectly and half of them were quite muddled - I fixed that for the real thing and went from a scraped B1 to an A2 (and it wasn't the essays that brought me down :P).

That works for business and geography, and I imagine biology and ag science. What brought my grade up in English was really just consistently doing the same type of essays over and over (e.g. short story / personal essay, pick earlier than on the day of the exam!) and knowing which points would fit which theme, though you do need to be able to improvise all that a bit. For English I'd just do exam papers.

After the mocks when you have your notes written out as nicely and neatly as they'll ever be, I'd start doing exam papers. Or do it all at the same time - half my note-making was answering exam questions since they tend to reappear and all that, so it could be no harm turning the business marking schemes into extra bullet points for topics.

But don't let note-making overtake the mocks! :P Good luck

CatEyed92

Patchy~ wrote: »

Firstly, "would have liked to have been". :P
Haha, just messing, I had to say it. :P

If I were you I'd write out really, really good, concise notes for now. There's not much point writing out some good notes and some bad notes and learning both - if that makes sense? E.g. bullet points might work better for you than essays, so do bullet points. I found myself rewriting half my geography questions before the mocks and the other half were still messy essays filled with irrelevant points before I shaved them down. I ended up knowing half of them perfectly and half of them were quite muddled - I fixed that for the real thing and went from a scraped B1 to an A2 (and it wasn't the essays that brought me down :P).

That works for business and geography, and I imagine biology and ag science. What brought my grade up in English was really just consistently doing the same type of essays over and over (e.g. short story / personal essay, pick earlier than on the day of the exam!) and knowing which points would fit which theme, though you do need to be able to improvise all that a bit. For English I'd just do exam papers.

After the mocks when you have your notes written out as nicely and neatly as they'll ever be, I'd start doing exam papers. Or do it all at the same time - half my note-making was answering exam questions since they tend to reappear and all that, so it could be no harm turning the business marking schemes into extra bullet points for topics.

But don't let note-making overtake the mocks! :P Good luck

Oh haha I'm half asleep from making a study plan So, make notes and learn them till after mocks? I was gonna write questions, get corrected, turn um into notes? Is that what you're getting at?

Geography and business are new this year! Getting the hang of business but there's an awful lot in geography and it worries me :eek:
For geography, I feel writing notes goes on forever

What about structure at weekends? Don't want to waste them - feel I could get alot done but not exactly sure what to actually do - notes or learning off or exam q ?

An A2 in Geography would help points wise

Canard

CatEyed92 wrote: »

Oh haha I'm half asleep from making a study plan So, make notes and learn them till after mocks? I was gonna write questions, get corrected, turn um into notes? Is that what you're getting at?

Geography and business are new this year! Getting the hang of business but there's an awful lot in geography and it worries me :eek:
For geography, I feel writing notes goes on forever

What about structure at weekends? Don't want to waste them - feel I could get alot done but not exactly sure what to actually do - notes or learning off or exam q ?

An A2 in Geography would help points wise

Yep, thats what I'd advise The main thing is to have excellent notes I think! Thats biased on my part though because I learn quite visually, so yeah, having nice neat notes always made me very happy. :pac: But if you keep them to the point you won't get waffle etc into your head - especially with geography, it's very easy to waffle. Don't let a sentence in your notes end without a new fact, and only waffle if you're in absolutely dire straits (I had 20 mins left for the option last year and had no clue what to write, I almost decided to just leave it blank... I wrote absolute BS and you could tell because of how I spaced it out hoping to go back to it with some magical inspiration. My teacher saw it and laughed but it still got 62/80 or something like that!).

But if you already have notes that are quite good, just learn them and redo them later if you like. What I mean is don't go getting like, 200 points in your mocks because you spent all your time making new notes. :P You learn by doing them anyway, but of course writing / typing them out is very time-consuming.

Writing geography notes really does go on forever! Its important to see the overlap though. For example, if California grows grapes (primary sector), the manufacturing sector has to manufacture wine (secondary sector). That means there are wine gardens (tertiary sector - tourism). It's not always there and if it is it might not be obvious, but still! I twisted a whole question last year because I didn't know it and used information for a completely different section of the syllabus, you just have to sound like you know it. :P

For weekends I'd say just do some exam questions and also some notes and learning. I always found it easier to learn separately though - it's a lot more passive than writing stuff out, so do that on its own maybe, but whichever you find works best is the way to go of course!