Advice for us future 6th years?

Sucette!

I wanted to ask this before you current Leaving Certs leave for whatever college forums after the results or just drift away!

I know there has been threads like this previous years, but I wanted to ask again anyway so we are well prepared for what's to come in September and more importantly next June and I know the teacher will rant on and on but the best advice always comes from people who've experienced the whole Leaving Cert!

Any advice would be much appreciated, I really want to have the right mindset come September

ScummyMan

Learn the Sraith Pictuirs as you do them in class. Mother of God don't do what I did and leave 20 of them till the week before.

peekachoo

Run for the hills! :pac:

Peregrine

peekachoo wrote: »

Run for the hills! :pac:

I think I'll take that on board peekachoo

When you get homework, study the chapter and do the homework without the book. Too many people copy from the book and so they're not actually learning/understanding.

Get yourself a folder for each subject and keep corrected exam questions in it. I only started this towards the end of the year as I kept losing solutions and it frustrated me.

Focus on your papers but learn your curriculums as well because the exams are getting less predictable.

Don't give too much focus to Christmas exams, focus on mocks.

Take a break once in a while, you need it to keep going at a decent space.

If you are easily distracted, use the library (I moved in with my nanny as she had no WiFi or digital TV)

With English, get your timing correct. You need to do this early in the year as I didn't and found myself not finishing essays in the mocks.

Maths, use the papers. I feel like my book never helped as it wasn't focused on the questions that came up in the papers.

Prioritise. With Irish and other languages; pay attention to your oral as it is first in the year. Same with any subjects with projects. However, don't neglect the other parts of the course because when the orals pass, you don't want to start from scratch.

Vito Corleone

Get busy living or get busy dying.

HugsiePie

Exam papers, do excellent sample oral essays when your teacher tells you to write about for eg your hobbies for homework and put the important stuff down on a flash card but cover it in such a way that it doesnt leave you open to awkward questions you cant answer in French, irish, etc.

Eg I love sailing I started it when I was 12 years old, i also enjoy- (Cause they will cut you off if you take a pause for a split second to think)
-Thats an unusual hobby, what is it that you love about sailing?

*Blank face, mouth wide open*

Legion.

At the start of the year, enjoy doing nothing. The closer to the exams you get, you begin to feel guilty for not doing work which basically ruins all relaxation/leisure time.

As far as subject work goes, spend 20 mins or so on a Sraith Pictuir every night, will be a massive benefit come the orals. Only other thing that I can think of is condensing/summarising your notes in to bullet points. That was the way I learned best, but I didn't figure this out until too late haha.

magicianz

Going into 3rd year in college and still knocking around here, one thing that I learned in sixth year and I have used since then in all my exams is breaking subjects down.

Now, this doesn't work AS well for languages and the likes, but for sciences/economics&business&accounting/maths, it helps out a lot.

I would take maths as an example, but the course has now changed so I can't really use it well, so how about physics. Go through every paper, draw a rough spreadsheet with a column for question type(leave column blank) and a column for each year. Start with last years paper, and assign a question type to each question. Does Question 1 it ask about classical mechanics? Write classical mechanics in the 'type' column and 'Q1' in the year column. Repeat back as many years as you want.


You now have the course divided into smaller chunks, with a table of reference for each question type. So if you want to practice questions on electronics, go to the appropriate row and you have a list of all the questions.

Next is to go into the section deeper. Go to your book, find out how they split it up, its usually the easiest way to do it even though some books can be a pain. If you're already happy with that section, go to the end and pick a few questions on it, do a few easy, a few medium and a few hard. If you're not so sure, go through the section, write down the equations/theories/definitions IN SHORT HAND on a flashcard. Then do the questions. If you don't have correct answers available, ask your teacher if they would look at them with you (DO THIS!).

Doing that for all the sections will leave you fly through everything study wise and give you a bit of a sense of achievement when you're able to say "Right, I know everything on the course to do with X and Y."

Of course, it isn't only important to be able to do the questions. What separates the A2/B1 from the A1 is the logic and understanding the material. You can always figure out things if you have equations, however somethings do require reading. If you have an equation you don't understand, taking the easy, really simplified example of V = IR, then read about it. What do the symbols mean? What does it physically mean? Can you picture what happens in your head? Can you come up with an easy analogy to think of or maybe a quick sketch to help you remember? Anything to make it easier, for example, electricity can be loosely thought of as water flowing in a pipe -

Increased resistivity? Thats sort of like making the pipe thinner so less water can flow through it. There is more resistance to the flow of water in the pipe. What happens when you make a pipe thinner? You reduce its cross-sectional area! So hey, theres a relationship for Resistivity there! Increase in Resistivity? Increase in Resistance if everything else remains the same! Maybe the resistance stays the same? Then for more resistivity, the cross-sectional area must have decreased! Mathematically, what can we get from this?

Badly explained though, I hope someone sort of gets it :L

frozenfrozen

do work don't panic

Sucette!

Thanks a million guys, All your replies are really helpful

Corvo Attano

Try limit the times you break down to controllable off hours. Nothing worse that a full blown meltdown in the library.

Other than that the Exam papers are your new Bible. You will revere the exam papers, you will study the exam papers, you will eat, sleep and breathe the exam papers for it is in that exam papers that all answers lay apart for languages.

When not praying to your new God the SEC through the exam papers you will learn any useful word, phrase, body movement that can help you in an oral. Remember the oral isn't about grammar its about holding a conversation. A conversation does not comprise of flashy words surrounded by silence that even the examiner feels akward in. It also does not comprise of 600 uses of "Is", "went" or "bought". You must be fluid. Adaptable.
In German I was asked about the importance of freedom and independence.
In Irish I was asked why do I use Facebook if my friends are already in school.

You will make a full effort at all tape examinations for your ear is untrained to a foreign language. It will mould you into someone who can semi comprehend tape. You will need this. For Irish its TG4 and sports. For German it was Tageschau in 100 sekunden. If you do not do the tape you will not hear key vocab and you will fail the tape.

If you can not study at home you haul your ass down to a library or study centre ASAP. Time is points in the LC and you have precious little time. A quiet spot away from electronics will boost study ability by over 9000%. Study is key. It must be structured. It must be comprehensive. You cannot study effectively without a plan.

DO NOT shut off from society. They know how it is and your class mates are feeling the same. It helps to be able to vent. If you do not the stress will break you. Stay confident and never give up no matter how bleek. You have plenty of time.

magicianz

Corvo Attano wrote: »

DO NOT shut off from society. They know how it is and your class mates are feeling the same. It helps to be able to vent. If you do not the stress will break you. Stay confident and never give up no matter how bleek. You have plenty of time.

Also, this. I went out drinking every friday night of 6th year drinking heavily until a few weeks into the new year when I feel sick and was out of college for 1 month. Went back out drinking in late feb until middle of april-ish. Got 545, which was a big step up from all C's and D's and F's in 5th year...

kingcobra

Oh 6th year, I miss it already. :rolleyes:

6th year isn't that bad of a year, it's kind of overrated really. You will cut your pre-exam stress levels if you start studying early. That's the most important piece of advice I could give everyone really: get into a routine from September and then gradually build yourself up for the final exams. Find the routine that suits you and do the things that suit you (taking notes, highlighting etc.)

No course is an easy course. Don't stop studying a course because you think it's easy. I only 'discovered' that English was a pretty big course in the weeks running up to the exams because of all the quotes and in-depth knowledge you need for each of the texts and poems. Same goes for other subjects.

DO NOT rely on exam predictions. It is simply a stupid thing to do and probably causes more disappointment than joy. Unfortunately you only hear the stories about people getting what they wanted in the exam and being the best predictor in the school, along with the grinds schools that reportedly have the inside knowledge on the exam. Exams aren't meant to predicted easily, and generally, the people who rely on the exam predictions are the ones who just don't want to put in the effort in the first place.

Have a life during the Leaving Cert. You don't have to lock yourself inside your own home for the whole year, or even the last month before the exams. Make sure you're doing some form of exercise and go out every so often too. Of course, don't go overboard either, you wouldn't want to be going out getting locked every week just before the LC, but just have a few drinks or whatever and chill. You don't want to let it all bog you down!

bluejay14

Don't let any failures or disappointments get to you. Seriously.

When our mocks came back, I think it was a Friday afternoon, I ran into our English teacher in the hall, she told me that nobody in the year had got higher than a C and she thought she better warn me beforehand and I got a massive shock. She said that she'd read through some of my paper and that it deserved far higher than a C, I knew it too because I've always been drifting between high Bs and As. When she gave them back on Monday morning (I'd had to wait the whole weekend, knowing that I'd only got a C). I'll admit it, I was actually gutted that I'd only come away with 63%, it ended up that it was my lowest result due to the bonus maths points. I'd been only 2 or 3 marks in each paper off getting the best result in the class on each paper individually. We were told that the corrector had been very severe on anyone who had managed to get 50% or over so that should have made me feel better but it didn't. I'd never got a score that low and it shook me. It did take me a couple of weeks to get my mind back to where it was before, to finally shake off the niggling feeling that maybe I just wasn't actually good enough or didn't actually deserve a grade higher than that. Don't do this to yourself, forget about it and move on and remember that the mocks really aren't the best corrected by any stretch of the imagination.

A similar thing happened to me with the orals. I'd had my French oral on the Wednesday morning of the first week and then had a mock Irish oral after school on the Friday, just the general conversation part. I'd felt completely exhausted earlier in the day but I was feeling fine by the time afternoon rolled around so in I went and made it through the first five minutes of the conversation no bother. That's when things went pear shaped, I couldn't string a sentence together in English let alone Irish yet all the things I wanted to say I could think of in French. No matter how much prompting the teacher gave me I crumbled and ended up half-crying with her offering me the box of tissues and telling me we'd stop there that I'd *nearly* made it to the end. Devastated. I'm still not sure which got to me the most, the fact that I couldn't make it to the end or the fact that I'd had a breakdown in front of her but oh does it get worse. The next morning we had to go in for full mock orals with an external examiner (who I happened to know and who knew all of my family). I tried to forget about the shambles I'd made of the evening before, blocking out everything with the iPod on the walk in. I was grand when I got there, if a little nervous but no more than usual. It came to my turn. I made it through the greeting bit and completely winged my way through my sraith because I had a complete mental block and happened to pull out one of the very few I didn't have time to go over. Then the questions unhinged me completely. I used the wrong question words confused both myself and the examiner before finally not being able to even ask a final question. Similarly to the day before, this resulted in him offering me tissues and a drink of water despite me protesting that I would be fine and that this had never happened to me before. He then had to spend about 10 minutes attempting to calm me down so we could continue on. Mortified but I struggled on regardless and couldn't wait to get out of the room which by that stage had got unbearably warm. Back in the other room with the teacher she could tell it had been disastrous and knew that my earlier failure had got to me. She advised me to go home and not touch a shred of Irish for the rest of the weekend because I had all the work done and it was just a matter of relaxing and putting what had happened behind me. So I did that but couldn't get my meltdown out of my mind. I reluctantly had another mock oral on the morning of my real one, knowing that if I messed this one up I wouldn't make it through the real one, my confidence was already in tatters as it was. I think she knew that and took it easy on me but I made it through in one piece and was on top of the world. The real thing was a dream. The examiner told me he was starting to get worried when he saw me pick out what many saw as the worst sraith (even though it was one of my best for some reason....) but seemingly he was very impressed. I used a few words that are seemingly typical Connemara words that he'd never heard any students using and said I'd been very natural. He even told me I should be an Irish teacher because good ones are hard to find these days! Now #1. on my CAO is English Lit. and Modern Irish!


Phew! That was far longer than planned

TL;DR Don't let failures get to you, you have to get back up and overcome them no matter how badly you want to crawl into a corner and never come out and also, never underestimate the power of a break and completely switching off because numerous times during the year I was told by people to just do nothing and relax when my brain wouldn't cooperate with me.