Studying smarter, not harder
Hard work is always appreciated within our society and is expected to produce results. It sure does produce results but none of us actually wonder if it is the most efficient way of yielding results. A hard working VCE student might go through hundreds of questions before their SAC at school or they might do numerous practice SACs. This method does generate positive results but not at a very fast pace.
A better and lesser known method of studying is smart working through the content and questions. In this technique more than the number of questions, the manner in which you attempt the questions and the feedback you gain from practicing each question has greater significance. In this world of numbers, VCE students often forget that the number of practice questions done by them is merely a number and not a correct evaluation of one’s understanding of that particular concept.
Smart studying is all about first learning the content so that you are prepared to answer any kind of question and then moving on to the next phase of practicing questions related to the topic. However, the metric to valuate knowledge of a certain concept is not the number of questions completed but how well one was able to attempt each question and if one is being able to improve the quality of the answer as they do more questions.
Improvement does not happen without constant revaluation. While smart working, you have to keep asking yourself questions such as ‘what could have made my answer more perfect ?’, ‘what was my thought process in getting to that particular answer?’ and ‘why did I get that answer incorrect?’. Most VCE students forget about the revaluation phase while practicing for SACs. They tend to skip questions even though they might have got it wrong or tend to not figure out what led them to reach that perfect answer.
The revaluation part is the secret to success in VCE and it is a part of smart working. Students need to spend the equivalent amount of time reflecting on their answers and working through questions. Revaluation will help a student improve at a faster rate because they are becoming aware of what needs to be done with more concentration and what aspects need more clarity in terms of content. This technique may seem very evident and frequent but not many students put it into practice just because they are running behind a particular number of question that they have to complete instead of improving the quality of their answers by reevaluating each of their answers!
- Ann Sabu