Practice Questions

Exam Style or Past Paper Practice Questions

Type: Active Intensity: High

Practicing past paper questions is one of the best ways to get ready for your HSC examinations. It lets you practise accessing and organising the information in the correct format. It also makes it very easy for you to see areas you are strong in and areas you are struggling a bit with.

There are different approaches to this technique. You could one or two questions that are related to content you just learnt. Or you could sit down and do a whole paper. You can do them open book or closed book style depending on if you want to practice your response structuring or your information recall.

How to use Exam Style Questions to study super effectively:

Complete a topic test, question or past paper (without looking at your book or the answers).
Mark your answers.
From your errors, make a list of things you don't understand yet.
Go and read through each of these misunderstood concepts in your study notes or watch a video on it. Your subject specific teacher may have some websites or subscriptions like Edrolo to help you find good quality videos. Here are some websites I like:
- - WooTube for mathematics
  - Khan Academy for a range of subjects
  - Ameoba Sisters for biology
  - Professor Dave Explains for chemistry, physics, mathematics and some biology
  - The Sydney teacher Col Harrison for chemistry, biology and earth and environmental science.
Try some more questions on these concepts from text book or a different past paper.
Check your answers.
Ask your teacher for help if you are still struggling.
Move on to the next concept and repeat the above steps.

Where to get exam style or past paper questions:

NSW Department of Education

Textbooks often have stepped questions for when you are first learning, as well as sample tests. Check out the study section in the library.

- Pearson
- Nelson
- Excel
- Pascal Press - Free Excel Resources

There are some textbooks and websites that are just exam style questions. These include:

- Success ONE
- ATAR notes - Topic Tests
- Dotpoint
- HSC Focus (website with an insane amount of past trial papers - beware the answers are not always correct on these things)

Remember

The HSC uses particular verbs for short and long answer questions. These verbs are a code that tell you how much and what to include. I have included a HSC Verb Scaffold that will help you decode the verbs and see what you need to include. These verbs are used across all subjects. The main ones used in science are: identify, describe, explain, assess, apply and investigate. I suggest you start with practicing these verbs before moving on to the others.

Check out other pages with tips on how to answer questions here:

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