Time Management?

Phoenix Wright

I just finished my mocks there on Friday and ran out of time in alot of my tests (Geography, Business, Both English Papers :eek: and Irish Paper 1) leaving tests unfinished, and being forced to rush parts of a test on a below-par standard.

Any advise ? I've dropped from a potential A1 to a B2 I reckon in English because of a rushed composing essay, and from not getting the chance to do the unseen poetry :mad:

Aeternum

A lot of people try to put too much into the exams. With subjects like English it's about learning to get your point across in as little words as possible. There is no point preparing essays or answers which you wouldn't have time to do in the exam. I learnt this myself in history, I managed to cut down a 5 page essay to a 3 page essay and still get the same grade. It's all about ensuring everything you put in your answer is relevant to the question.

PictureFrame

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

I just finished my mocks there on Friday and ran out of time in alot of my tests (Geography, Business, Both English Papers :eek: and Irish Paper 1) leaving tests unfinished, and being forced to rush parts of a test on a below-par standard.

Any advise ? I've dropped from a potential A1 to a B2 I reckon in English because of a rushed composing essay, and from not getting the chance to do the unseen poetry :mad:

Unfortunately those subjects (Business, Geography, English Paper 1 + 2) are always subjects you're going to be short for time with. I sat all of them in the Leaving Cert. last year and tbh, barely had enough time to finish them all during both the mocks and the actual Leaving. You just have to practise timing yourself doing the questions as under exam conditions and try to speed up your writing/cut down on the waffle.

I struggled for time with all those 3 subjects last year, just something you have to learn to cope with.

I ended up getting an A1 in English and B1's in Geography/Business.

Phoenix Wright

Aeternum wrote: »

A lot of people try to put too much into the exams. With subjects like English it's about learning to get your point across in as little words as possible. There is no point preparing essays or answers which you wouldn't have time to do in the exam. I learnt this myself in history, I managed to cut down a 5 page essay to a 3 page essay and still get the same grade. It's all about ensuring everything you put in your answer is relevant to the question.

I see your point. The standard length for an English is essay is four pages (so I'm told), but I found myself dragging on a little bit and thinking outside of the box during my Macbeth essay. I'm going to practice some exam questions and try to stick as precisely to the question asked as possible. I guess it's about what you write, not how much.

Aeternum

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

I guess it's about what you write, not how much.

It's always quality, not quantity that counts

Phoenix Wright

PictureFrame wrote: »

Unfortunately those subjects (Business, Geography, English Paper 1 + 2) are always subjects you're going to be short for time with. I sat all of them in the Leaving Cert. last year and tbh, barely had enough time to finish them all during both the mocks and the actual Leaving. You just have to practise timing yourself doing the questions as under exam conditions and try to speed up your writing/cut down on the waffle.

I struggled for time with all those 3 subjects last year, just something you have to learn to cope with.

I ended up getting an A1 in English and B1's in Geography/Business.

The time management concept of the Leaving Cert is so unfair Why do they make tests into a race? There's nothing more sickening then when you know an answer, but don't get time to show your knowledge.

Maybe a lack of exam question practice is at the root of my problems? I generally study by reading. But for subjects like Geography for example, did you count your SRP's as you wrote your answers, or did you just write as much as possible and stop when you felt you had answered the question?

ray2012

As the above poster said, try breaking a 5 page answer (for example) down to 3 + 1/2 pages. In subjects like English for Macbeth/Comparative answers, waffling is huge and just wastes your time. Try not eliminate that, and just focus on the points that you actually need and which will get your marks. My essays for English do be NEVER four pages. I'd say the most I've ever wrote was maybe 3 pages, and I do pretty well in them. Remember it's quality not quantity

Canard

Do you mean Irish paper 1 or 2, and HL or OL? There's a huge amount of time given for that, I honestly can't see how you could run out..what was the problem? I'd try help more but I just can't imagine what it was. :P

For English, look at the P1 essay first. Think about it while you do the others. Pick your part B before your part A (you do NOT want to realize you can't do the nicest part B because you picked its part A!). For P2, I've heard of people doing all 3 sections at once and switching if they can't think of things so their time is maximised. Don't worry about unseen poetry either - realistically no matter what you write for it, it's only going to ever bring you up one grade (20 marks = one grade, so unless you got full marks and were on the dot of a grade you won't be gaining anything). I got pretty close to full marks in paper 2 but only 13/20 in the unseen. I was raging at first thinking that had cost me a grade, but even 20/20 would have left me at the same grade, and only getting 1/20 could have brought me down. It's so much less important than people think. Main thing with P2 is one mark = one minute!

For geography, do your answers in bullet points! That way you can count and even if everything isnt an SRP, you can get a rough idea. I planned not to do that in the exam because I thought I'd look arrogant (i.e. "hi examiner I'm telling you this is an SRP whether you like it or not"), but panicked when the exam was so bad and just started doing it anyway. I got full marks on the questions where I did it and I knew I was getting full marks because I could clearly see how many SRPs I had, and then I could move onto the next question - it's helpful. Just make sure not to do that in the option bit, I don't know if you're allowed to? I put faint dots beside mine to make sure I could still count them.
(funnily, though, because my section was the oceans question and i couldnt answer the question i'd chosen i made things up and the examiner thought i was giving more srp's than i was...but that wont work in geoecology :P)

I don't really know what to say for business, pretty sure I finished that one with seconds to spare. :P

Michael Scofield

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

The time management concept of the Leaving Cert is so unfair Why do they make tests into a race? There's nothing more sickening then when you know an answer, but don't get time to show your knowledge.

Maybe a lack of exam question practice is at the root of my problems? I generally study by reading. But for subjects like Geography for example, did you count your SRP's as you wrote your answers, or did you just write as much as possible and stop when you felt you had answered the question?

While the Leaving Cert is flawed in many ways, the time management aspect is something that will follow you around for the rest of your life. You need to be able to get your point across concisely, that's the point. When you start college, this will continue to be tested in exams, along with presentations, where you will actually be cut off mid-speech if you go over your allotted time. You will also be tested on this skill in essays where you're given word counts - In a 3,000 word essay, it's just as bad to be 500 words over the count than 500 words under. Learning to write concisely in your Leaving Cert is an essential skill which will stand to you forever.

PictureFrame

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

Maybe a lack of exam question practice is at the root of my problems? I generally study by reading. But for subjects like Geography for example, did you count your SRP's as you wrote your answers, or did you just write as much as possible and stop when you felt you had answered the question?

I had wrote so little in my Geography exam in my Leaving Cert. I had time left over. Don't know how I got that B1 ever!

Phoenix Wright

Patchy~ wrote: »

Do you mean Irish paper 1 or 2, and HL or OL? There's a huge amount of time given for that, I honestly can't see how you could run out..what was the problem? I'd try help more but I just can't imagine what it was. :P

I'm going to answer all these paragraphs individually, just to ensure we don't break the record for the longest post ever :P

Oh, Paper 2 (higher level) of course lol. I honestly think I could write six or seven pages in the time given for the essay. I left 45 minutes early but was still the last out :cool:

I think I spent a bit too long on the comprehensions. 1hr 40 mins, but that was increased because of the talkative lads doing foundation were finished within twenty minutes -_- how long would you advise for the 30/30/40 questions? I know the principle is quality>quantity but just roughly.

90 mins for comprehensions and 90 mins for everything else at 100 marks each was the initial plan Also, on the question b's on the first comprehension were asking for two pieces of information in every question from 1 to 5.

Sparkyhav

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

The standard length for an English is essay is four pages (so I'm told).

When you say four pages, do you mean four sheets of paper back to back or two sheets of paper back to back with writing? I know this sounds like a really silly question but I was told to write six pages (three sheets of paper) and I was just wondering.

Aeternum

Sparkyhav wrote: »

When you say four pages, do you mean four sheets of paper back to back or two sheets of paper back to back with writing? I know this sounds like a really silly question but I was told to write six pages (three sheets of paper) and I was just wondering.

We are told 4 for compositions and 5 for Macbeth and poetry in my school. Some people go over that of course but that's a guide anyway. And I mean two sheets of A4 paper, filled on both sides for the 4 pages. I think for short stories it's necessary to do more (just my opinion), but for articles, speeches and personal essays 4 pages is a good estimate.

Phoenix Wright

Patchy~ wrote: »

For English, look at the P1 essay first. Think about it while you do the others. Pick your part B before your part A (you do NOT want to realize you can't do the nicest part B because you picked its part A!). For P2, I've heard of people doing all 3 sections at once and switching if they can't think of things so their time is maximised. Don't worry about unseen poetry either - realistically no matter what you write for it, it's only going to ever bring you up one grade (20 marks = one grade, so unless you got full marks and were on the dot of a grade you won't be gaining anything). I got pretty close to full marks in paper 2 but only 13/20 in the unseen. I was raging at first thinking that had cost me a grade, but even 20/20 would have left me at the same grade, and only getting 1/20 could have brought me down. It's so much less important than people think. Main thing with P2 is one mark = one minute!

For Paper 1, thankfully I didn't fall into that trap, and did really well in the comprehension questions (I think I'm looking at surely 85/100 at the very least) But I'd say I'm looking at something from 60-80 on the essay because I spent wayyy too much time on the comprehensions. I had fifty-five minutes to rush an essay and basically wrote whatever came into my head It's hard to make a story about a court case interesting in that amount of time lol, so I'm not too optimistic..

That's actually a good way of putting it now that I think of it. I just realised the Unseen Poetry is only 5% :pac: I think I'm going to do this last again in the actual Leaving Cert to be honest.

Phoenix Wright

Sparkyhav wrote: »

When you say four pages, do you mean four sheets of paper back to back or two sheets of paper back to back with writing? I know this sounds like a really silly question but I was told to write six pages (three sheets of paper) and I was just wondering.

Oh, two sheets of paper and four pages I actually went over that for all three essays to write a conclusion and whatnot.

Sparkyhav

Aeternum wrote: »

We are told 4 for compositions and 5 for Macbeth and poetry in my school. Some people go over that of course but that's a guide anyway. And I mean two sheets of A4 paper, filled on both sides for the 4 pages. I think for short stories it's necessary to do more (just my opinion), but for articles, speeches and personal essays 4 pages is a good estimate.

Thank you for that and the tip, will keep that in mind.

Sparkyhav

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

Oh, two sheets of paper and four pages I actually went over that for all three essays to write a conclusion and whatnot.

Just making sure that I'm doing a significant amount of writing, thank you.

Canard

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

I'm going to answer all these paragraphs individually, just to ensure we don't break the record for the longest post ever :P

Haha, sorry, didn't mean to ramble on for so long. :P

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

Oh, Paper 2 (higher level) of course lol. I honestly think I could write six or seven pages in the time given for the essay. I left 45 minutes early but was still the last out

I think I spent a bit too long on the comprehensions. 1hr 40 mins, but that was increased because of the talkative lads doing foundation were finished within twenty minutes -_- how long would you advise for the 30/30/40 questions? I know the principle is quality>quantity but just roughly.

90 mins for comprehensions and 90 mins for everything else at 100 marks each was the initial plan Also, on the question b's on the first comprehension were asking for two pieces of information in every question from 1 to 5.

Ah, that makes more sense. :P Truth be told I only realized IN the P2 exam that I had no idea what time to spend on everything , so obviously I never found out after. :pac: I just spent the time getting my point across, but I think I write kind of fast. I wrote about 3-4 pages for Hurlamaboc and 4-5 for An Triail, so yeah, I have no idea how I didn't run out of time doing that. I guess the key for those things is know what you plan to say - honestly you can summarise the story to take up space and just point out how the part you're at is (or isn't) relevant to the question, if that makes sense?
Rather than try to explain that, how about this - are you rewording the comprehensions? That takes up so much time, and you don't have to. You can take the answer straight from the text which really cuts down on time.

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

For Paper 1, thankfully I didn't fall into that trap, and did really well in the comprehension questions (I think I'm looking at surely 85/100 at the very least) But I'd say I'm looking at something from 60-80 on the essay because I spent wayyy too much time on the comprehensions. I had fifty-five minutes to rush an essay and basically wrote whatever came into my head It's hard to make a story about a court case interesting in that amount of time lol, so I'm not too optimistic..

That's actually a good way of putting it now that I think of it. I just realised the Unseen Poetry is only 5% :pac: I think I'm going to do this last again in the actual Leaving Cert to be honest.

I know the feeling, in the real exam I had 40 minutes left and all I wanted to do was start my essay all over again! :pac: You mentioned a story, do you always do those? It's best to stick to just one type of essay, especially after the mocks. That way you get used to it and stuff. I wouldn't worry if I were you anyway, I got 73/100 in my mock essay and was so so so disappointed because I usually hit the high 90s (I loved writing :P), but in the real thing it went up to 87 (I wasn't happy with that but hey, still the best I'd managed under time pressure :pac:). Also, it's handy to get useful descriptive phrases that you can just drop into the stories to move them along. Rather than trying to think, on the spot, of an elegant way to describe someone standing nervously in a courtroom (for example), why not write out some descriptions (or indeed take them from books and other stories) and have them in mind to save time? I did that with a lot of my writing and it also raises your marks if it blends in properly.

(Looks like I do win the longest post ever award, oops. :P)

Phoenix Wright

Patchy~ wrote: »

For geography, do your answers in bullet points! That way you can count and even if everything isnt an SRP, you can get a rough idea. I planned not to do that in the exam because I thought I'd look arrogant (i.e. "hi examiner I'm telling you this is an SRP whether you like it or not"), but panicked when the exam was so bad and just started doing it anyway. I got full marks on the questions where I did it and I knew I was getting full marks because I could clearly see how many SRPs I had, and then I could move onto the next question - it's helpful. Just make sure not to do that in the option bit, I don't know if you're allowed to? I put faint dots beside mine to make sure I could still count them.
(funnily, though, because my section was the oceans question and i couldnt answer the question i'd chosen i made things up and the examiner thought i was giving more srp's than i was...but that wont work in geoecology :P)

Wait, can you actually do that :eek:? For all my part b + c's I do all essay format with headings and whatnot. Like this:

http://gyazo.com/c34e6ab826f0c5649ea26fb1f700f778
and
http://gyazo.com/536571f99f34c1b483031a5fcf4065c1

That essay got me 30/30. I'd did this for all my essays in the mocks past apart from two parts c's which I bullet pointed (badly) due to the time restrictions.

I know for a fact that the geoecology essay has to be in an essay style format because roughly a quarter of the marks go for coherence.

Canard

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

Wait, can you actually do that :eek:? For all my part b + c's I do all essay format with headings and whatnot. Like this:

http://gyazo.com/c34e6ab826f0c5649ea26fb1f700f778
and
http://gyazo.com/536571f99f34c1b483031a5fcf4065c1

That essay got me 30/30. I'd did this for all my essays in the mocks past apart from two parts c's which I bullet pointed (badly) due to the time restrictions.

I know for a fact that the geoecology essay has to be in an essay style format because roughly a quarter of the marks go for coherence.

Yeah, see its extremely unclear...my teacher corrected for the SEC yet he had no idea what an SRP was, and in my mocks he didn't give me ANY marks for coherence in the option section and when I pointed that out to him he brushed it off. He always told us we HAD to use 2 headings (and 2 headings only - I had 3 and he cut my marks in half :rolleyes:) or we'd get 0 marks. On the other hand, he said we COULD do the option in bullet points!

So in the end I completely ignored him. :cool: I still went with headings as you have there because a lot of the time in the marking scheme it says you need to, and you never know when you do or don't have to have them - you can always broaden them to lump everything in anyway like. But yes, you can do it in bullet points. The most notable thing would be for physical geography landform formation, which I always did like this:

• Feature: Beach
• Process: Deposition
• Example: Dollymount Beach
• Diagram:

Then you have 10 marks there! But of course with a beach you don't have 2 headings, so you just write another 10 points underneath. Its 10 times easier to study too (I usually just remembered one word per bullet point and fleshed it out in an exam) and you never end up with waffle.


The geoecology marks go for essay style but also for how well you've written it / answered the question I think. I got full marks for coherence but I didn't answer the question properly, I think they just kind of gave it to me because the exam was more difficult than previous years and they needed to even out the grades. :pac: So yes, you're right to definitely do it in essay style, but if you don't get the 6 or 7 srp's under the heading you can lose some of the OC marks I think.

Phoenix Wright

Patchy~ wrote: »

Haha, sorry, didn't mean to ramble on for so long. :P

No problemo haha :P

Ah, that makes more sense. :P Truth be told I only realized IN the P2 exam that I had no idea what time to spend on everything , so obviously I never found out after. :pac: I just spent the time getting my point across, but I think I write kind of fast. I wrote about 3-4 pages for Hurlamaboc and 4-5 for An Triail, so yeah, I have no idea how I didn't run out of time doing that. I guess the key for those things is know what you plan to say - honestly you can summarise the story to take up space and just point out how the part you're at is (or isn't) relevant to the question, if that makes sense?
Rather than try to explain that, how about this - are you rewording the comprehensions? That takes up so much time, and you don't have to. You can take the answer straight from the text which really cuts down on time.

Whoa haha, you do write fairly fast :cool: I think I got about five pages between the three written questions :P I get what you mean. For the texts, they really aren't looking for anything hugely specific, so it's possible to get your point across by summarizing the necessary part of the story as long as it's somewhat relevant to the question. Only thing is, my mock question on

Oisín i dTír na nÓg involved the traits of a scéal béaloidis

which was a little bit more specific ::pac: Oh, I'd change a mé to sé if you get me nothing too drastic. Also, how important is your grasp of the grammar rules? I don't have clue where to put séimhiús and I've been learning the language for thirteen years xD

Phoenix Wright

Patchy~ wrote: »

I know the feeling, in the real exam I had 40 minutes left and all I wanted to do was start my essay all over again! :pac: You mentioned a story, do you always do those? It's best to stick to just one type of essay, especially after the mocks. That way you get used to it and stuff. I wouldn't worry if I were you anyway, I got 73/100 in my mock essay and was so so so disappointed because I usually hit the high 90s (I loved writing :P), but in the real thing it went up to 87 (I wasn't happy with that but hey, still the best I'd managed under time pressure :pac:). Also, it's handy to get useful descriptive phrases that you can just drop into the stories to move them along. Rather than trying to think, on the spot, of an elegant way to describe someone standing nervously in a courtroom (for example), why not write out some descriptions (or indeed take them from books and other stories) and have them in mind to save time? I did that with a lot of my writing and it also raises your marks if it blends in properly.

(Looks like I do win the longest post ever award, oops. :P)

Yep haha, I always go for the versatile story option I genuinely don't think I've ever done a composing question on another type of essay (which is a good and a bad thing in itself I suppose). We'll see how it goes haha, but there's nothing worse than when you're halfway through and you're thinking: "wtf have I just wrote?". That's not a bad idea I must say I do something similar for French, but surely there's got to be some versatile phrases in English as well

Canard

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

Whoa haha, you do write fairly fast I think I got about five pages between the three written questions :P I get what you mean. For the texts, they really aren't looking for anything hugely specific, so it's possible to get your point across by summarizing the necessary part of the story as long as it's somewhat relevant to the question. Only thing is, my mock question on

Oisín i dTír na nÓg involved the traits of a scéal béaloidis

which was a little bit more specific ::pac: Oh, I'd change a mé to sé if you get me nothing too drastic. Also, how important is your grasp of the grammar rules? I don't have clue where to put séimhiús and I've been learning the language for thirteen years xD

Exactly! :P Okay yeah thats really specific I remember seeing that stuff in my book, but I was sick when we did it so I never learned it :P The others are pretty broad though. Honestly they're not too important outside of Q6 in the comprehensions! But my teacher did the dative and genetive cases with us, it makes sooo much more sense when you know why you're putting those h's in, oh my god it was such a revelation :pac: Plus none of my essays came up on the day (I had prepared a grand total of like, 4 haha) so I just wrote a 5 page one on the spot and got 96 for it, definitely helped to know the grammar there! I'd advise you to learn it if you have time (the cases etc are on the internet and its all quite straightforward, save for the genetive, but you just need to practice that one a bit), but if you don't have time don't bother. :P

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

Yep haha, I always go for the versatile story option I genuinely don't think I've ever done a composing question on another type of essay (which is a good and a bad thing in itself I suppose). We'll see how it goes haha, but there's nothing worse than when you're halfway through and you're thinking: "wtf have I just wrote?". That's not a bad idea I must say I do something similar for French, but surely there's got to be some versatile phrases in English as well

I never, ever did anything else either, no need I know! Happened to me so I just brought my character for a walk in the woods and described everything, thats the beauty of stories, you can bring them totally off track. :P Thats a good comparison, its exactly like what people do for French, but everyone thinks you can't study for P1 - thats the perfect way to study for it and it makes your stories sound fancier than they otherwise might have. :cool:

Phoenix Wright

Patchy~ wrote: »

Yeah, see its extremely unclear...my teacher corrected for the SEC yet he had no idea what an SRP was, and in my mocks he didn't give me ANY marks for coherence in the option section and when I pointed that out to him he brushed it off. He always told us we HAD to use 2 headings (and 2 headings only - I had 3 and he cut my marks in half :rolleyes:) or we'd get 0 marks. On the other hand, he said we COULD do the option in bullet points!

So in the end I completely ignored him. :cool: I still went with headings as you have there because a lot of the time in the marking scheme it says you need to, and you never know when you do or don't have to have them - you can always broaden them to lump everything in anyway like. But yes, you can do it in bullet points. The most notable thing would be for physical geography landform formation, which I always did like this:

• Feature: Beach
• Process: Deposition
• Example: Dollymount Beach
• Diagram:

Then you have 10 marks there! But of course with a beach you don't have 2 headings, so you just write another 10 points underneath. Its 10 times easier to study too (I usually just remembered one word per bullet point and fleshed it out in an exam) and you never end up with waffle.


The geoecology marks go for essay style but also for how well you've written it / answered the question I think. I got full marks for coherence but I didn't answer the question properly, I think they just kind of gave it to me because the exam was more difficult than previous years and they needed to even out the grades. :pac: So yes, you're right to definitely do it in essay style, but if you don't get the 6 or 7 srp's under the heading you can lose some of the OC marks I think.

That teacher of yours seems like an odd fella :pac: I don't see how the addition of an extra heading would lower coherence. If anything, I'd say it would surely improve it lol.

Oh yeah, we take the FEED approach to physical as well (Feature, Example, Explain, Diagram) Geography is an intimidating subject for me to study because I have 80+ essays like the one I posted written out, but maybe it's time to start highlighting the key points of them :cool: Presumably you did the LC last year in that case, correct? 2012 was a tough paper compared to others I must say. The mock I just did had a fair few curve-balls as well, hopefully it's not a sign of things to come :eek: We're doing nine biome essays as far as I know, so hopefully one of them will come up on the day

BrownBear11

History is the single worst LC subject for timing. I don't even think an extra half hour would allow the entire exam to be done

Phoenix Wright

Exactly! :P Okay yeah thats really specific I remember seeing that stuff in my book, but I was sick when we did it so I never learned it :P The others are pretty broad though. Honestly they're not too important outside of Q6 in the comprehensions! But my teacher did the dative and genetive cases with us, it makes sooo much more sense when you know why you're putting those h's in, oh my god it was such a revelation :pac: Plus none of my essays came up on the day (I had prepared a grand total of like, 4 haha) so I just wrote a 5 page one on the spot and got 96 for it, definitely helped to know the grammar there! I'd advise you to learn it if you have time (the cases etc are on the internet and its all quite straightforward, save for the genetive, but you just need to practice that one a bit), but if you don't have time don't bother. :P

Whoa fair play To come up with something on the spot like that and get 96/100? You must had a really good grasp of the language and general vocab :cool: Oh, dative and genetive cases? Never heard of them in my life lol, (which doesn't bode too well considering I'm hoping for an A2/A1) but I'm definitely going to check it out :P I usually just base my h's on how I would prenounce the words if speaking and I get the odd few haha.

I never, ever did anything else either, no need I know! Happened to me so I just brought my character for a walk in the woods and described everything, thats the beauty of stories, you can bring them totally off track. :P Thats a good comparison, its exactly like what people do for French, but everyone thinks you can't study for P1 - thats the perfect way to study for it and it makes your stories sound fancier than they otherwise might have. :cool:

Of course you can study for P1 lol :rolleyes: I have ideas floating in my head about stories before I go into an exam. Usually, I adapt it from a movie, novel, or video-game and take a different point of view which really does help. I've written an A2 court-case story before so when the title

"a shredded secret document, write about a story with a hidden secret"

I blinked in disbelief :cool: Not expecting to get that luck in the actual LC, but having ideas in place definitely helps I find

Canard

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

That teacher of yours seems like an odd fella :pac: I don't see how the addition of an extra heading would lower coherence. If anything, I'd say it would surely improve it lol.

Oh yeah, we take the FEED approach to physical as well (Feature, Example, Explain, Diagram) Geography is an intimidating subject for me to study because I have 80+ essays like the one I posted written out, but maybe it's time to start highlighting the key points of them :cool: Presumably you did the LC last year in that case, correct? 2012 was a tough paper compared to others I must say. The mock I just did had a fair few curve-balls as well, hopefully it's not a sign of things to come :eek: We're doing nine biome essays as far as I know, so hopefully one of them will come up on the day

He was very odd. :pac: Exactly! My headings were Climate; Relief and soils; CAP, and he said that if I'd just written them as "Physical" "Economic" I'd have gotten 28/30. He made no sense. :L

The thing with geography is, besides the fact that half the syllabus never comes up, you can kind of twist it all anyway. As you said 2012 was bad (I thought I was getting a C after it ), and some question got asked that had never come up before but was on the syllabus exactly as they had worded it. I used information from a totally different part of the syllabus and got 30/30. :pac: You probably don't do the economic elective, but it's a good example of that - you can use information on the policies for regional geography / farming quite a bit. It's not as rigid as things like biology.

I'd say you'd be grand with 9, so if you practice doing them out a few times and shortening them to cut out extra information you should have no trouble with timing in the end.

Aeternum

BrownBear11 wrote: »

History is the single worst LC subject for timing. I don't even think an extra half hour would allow the entire exam to be done

Tell me about it. I love the subject but I hate the exam.

Canard

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

Whoa fair play To come up with something on the spot like that and get 96/100? You must had a really good grasp of the language and general vocab :cool: Oh, dative and genetive cases? Never heard of them in my life lol, (which doesn't bode too well considering I'm hoping for an A2/A1) but I'm definitely going to check it out :P I usually just base my h's on how I would prenounce the words if speaking and I get the odd few haha.

haha thanks :P to be honest i thought i was butchering the language because i hadnt revised my rules really, but the main thing is to learn the prepositions' cases (which really just means whether or not they add a H!). That's all dative is I think, and the genetive one is just like the man's hat -> hata an fhir. The most you'd have to do is find an example in the comprehensions so an A1/A2 is still attainable even if you didnt know they existed. :P

Phoenix Wright wrote: »

Of course you can study for P1 lol :rolleyes: I have ideas floating in my head about stories before I go into an exam. Usually, I adapt it from a movie, novel, or video-game and take a different point of view which really does help. I've written an A2 court-case story before so when the title

"a shredded secret document, write about a secret with a hidden secret"

I blinked in disbelief :cool: Not expecting to get that luck in the actual LC, but having ideas in place definitely helps I find

That sounds quite specific for a story title anyway! :P But yeah definitely helps to have ideas. I got too scared to use any of my pre-learned ones in case they didn't fit the purpose, but if it fits then its grand. :P

Phoenix Wright

Patchy~ wrote: »

He was very odd. :pac: Exactly! My headings were Climate; Relief and soils; CAP, and he said that if I'd just written them as "Physical" "Economic" I'd have gotten 28/30. He made no sense. :L

The thing with geography is, besides the fact that half the syllabus never comes up, you can kind of twist it all anyway. As you said 2012 was bad (I thought I was getting a C after it ), and some question got asked that had never come up before but was on the syllabus exactly as they had worded it. I used information from a totally different part of the syllabus and got 30/30. :pac: You probably don't do the economic elective, but it's a good example of that - you can use information on the policies for regional geography / farming quite a bit. It's not as rigid as things like biology.

I'd say you'd be grand with 9, so if you practice doing them out a few times and shortening them to cut out extra information you should have no trouble with timing in the end.

Haha, I wouldn't mind but those heading are still relevant to the question because physical IS climate, relief and soils while CAP is part of the economic side of thing :P You were completely robbed, no doubt about it :pac:

Yep haha, practice makes perfect I guess :cool: Now it's just a case of getting the time to practice

Phoenix Wright

Patchy~ wrote: »

haha thanks :P to be honest i thought i was butchering the language because i hadnt revised my rules really, but the main thing is to learn the prepositions' cases (which really just means whether or not they add a H!). That's all dative is I think, and the genetive one is just like the man's hat -> hata an fhir. The most you'd have to do is find an example in the comprehensions so an A1/A2 is still attainable even if you didnt know they existed. :P


That sounds quite specific for a story title anyway! :P But yeah definitely helps to have ideas. I got too scared to use any of my pre-learned ones in case they didn't fit the purpose, but if it fits then its grand. :P

That's exactly it I'm very good at structuring sentence in Irish, but always have question marks over whether or not I'm getting my h's, urú's and everything like that correct :P

Oh yeah, I read somewhere here that if your purpose goes down, the CLM goes down as well so I guess I'll have to be careful Hopefully I will be able to twist my story on the day, and if not I'm sure I'll come up with something