Amount of work in HSC Mod. History...! (1 Viewer)

Logain

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Has anyone else found this class to be the most work out of any of their classes??? I'm doing Germany at the moment, and it's just booklet after booklet to read, highlight, summarise, it's getting me down!

Do I just have to sift and summarise, or is there a better way? Cheating perhaps?!!
 

c_james

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My teacher always told me if you're making more than one page of notes for any one topic, such as trench life for example, you're doing it wrong. It's a fair enough statement too, because getting an idea of the bigger picture in history is far more important than knowing the most obscure facts about trench life.

There's only ONE totally knowledge-based question on WWI in the HSC, and it's about 44 lines in length, so don't stress :).
 

rama_v

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Logain said:
Has anyone else found this class to be the most work out of any of their classes??? I'm doing Germany at the moment, and it's just booklet after booklet to read, highlight, summarise, it's getting me down!

Do I just have to sift and summarise, or is there a better way? Cheating perhaps?!!
Yeah there is a lot of work. Unfortunately there's no easy way around it...Try summarising different topics with friends and sharing maybe? thats what I did...But then again I was lucky enough to do modern in yr 10 and 11 so I didnt have any other hsc subjects to worry about. The only way you will remember the content is by writing it down, and the only way you will learn it completely is by writing essay after essay.
 

rain_28

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like the others said... skim and highlight, jot down important points and make a revised summary of it ... dont leave it to the last minute to do summaries
 

Sarah168

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if you do a little bit each night, it really doesnt seem like alot. Leaving even one week's worth of work to the weekend will make you stress and wonder where the pile of notes and texts came from lol

Edit: sounds obvious I know, but doing a little each night is not as painful as doing summaries for 3/4 of your weekend...
 

hello99999

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There's absolutely no need to take down too many notes- get a copy of the syllabus and just structure them in terms of the dot points. Keep in mind that writing pages and pages of notes will not help you in the HSC or half-yearlies or whatever, you're much better of writing practise essays and sticking to 1000-1200 word limits.

There really isn't much you can write in 40/50 minutes so you don't need to know every tiny little detail, and knowing all these little details will probably make you more inclined to write 'descriptive' rather than 'analytical' essays.

Writing essays helps you organise things in your mind, and you'll probably do better by 'twisting' the information you know to fit the essay question in the exam than by knowing a truckload of random facts but not being able to organise them into a decent essay.

Read and highlight ALL the info your teacher gives you and do all your homework for sure, DO find some good quotes for historiography, but don't go overboard with notes.
 

ameh

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Last time i wrote 26 pages on the schlieffen plan (stalemate dotpoint in wwI core) alone! i should really cut back to 4-5 pages atleast for each dotpoint. Argh. The amount of worksheets and summarising to do in Modern is definately overwhelming, seeing that barely get any in extension english and 1/8 of the workload in English advanced!
After the hsc I shall pile up my notes like bricks and make a paper house, then maybe start the bidding.
 

Sarah168

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26 pages on the schlieffen plan? when i did the HSC, i wrote 1/4 of a page on it lol. im such a bludger lol
 

hello99999

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amoz_lilo said:
Last time i wrote 26 pages on the schlieffen plan (stalemate dotpoint in wwI core) alone! i should really cut back to 4-5 pages atleast for each dotpoint.
At least you'll be the only person to survive if you get a question like this:
"Describe the Schlieffen Plan in great detail" [100 Marks]

in the HSC.

You only need ONE PARAGRAPH MAX for this point- it is only ONE part of ONE dotpoint in the most basic part of the entire modern history course which you can probably make up on the spot anyway. I hope you're exaggerating a lot otherwise you really are wasting your time doing unnecessary and detrimental study.
 

Tulipa

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hello99999 said:
There's absolutely no need to take down too many notes- get a copy of the syllabus and just structure them in terms of the dot points. Keep in mind that writing pages and pages of notes will not help you in the HSC or half-yearlies or whatever, you're much better of writing practise essays and sticking to 1000-1200 word limits.
For all of my modern notes so far I've just taken the syllabus dot points and written notes about those, the lengths varying according to how much I think I'll need to know.

My teacher doesn't give us booklet after booklet but she does make us read a lot of our textbook and random sheets, its just a matter of really looking through what you think is relevant and needed whilst discarding what you alreadyknow/isn't relevant.
 

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