Advice for Leaving Cert 2014

pappakhan

Hi, Im going to be doing my leaving cert this year, I need to get 580-600 points for my course, is there any advice you could give me. Any tips that help you get good grades?? and how you managed your time i.e. how many hours did you study??

my subjects are maths, english, french, biology, chemistry, business and economics.

ShaunaO_95

For English Paper 1, the best way of studying is to write when you have time. Find out what type of essay you're best at - short stories, descriptive essay, speech etc - and practice essays from past exam papers. Not only will your writing improve, but you'll have a bank of ideas to base essays on in the real exam. For the reading comprehensions, read articles from newspapers, magazines etc and learn to look at them in a critical way - look at techniques, imagery, if they use facts and quotes or emotive language - and what the effect of this is.

For English Paper 2, the most important thing is to know your text. Be able to back up your point with quotes and thorough references and explain why this supports your point. Try not to just summarize the text but give insights you gain from reading the text. I found flash cards helpful when learning quotes.

Also important is to read! It doesn't matter what; novels, short stories, the Sunday paper, anything! My teacher always said that she could spot a reader when she was correcting essays because the quality of writing was so much better.

In terms of hours, I didn't spend too much time studying English. I re-read my comparative novels and single text often, but apart from this I spent maybe 2 hours over a week practicing writing bits of essays and learning quotes.

For chemistry, the little details are the very important. Marks are given out in 3s so you can get 3 or you can get 0 and it can depend on using one phrase or word in an answer.

Know your experiments well - again, know the small details of experiments, like what order chemicals are added an why (if there's an order and a reason obviously). Calculations on the experiments are important too because they're always asked. Knowing the exact quantities of chemicals you added aren't important though.

There's a lot of definitions in chemistry and they're asked a lot. I found it useful to have a definition sheet - the words going down in a column with descriptions next to it. Every chapter I added in the important definitions, plus any laws. That way you can cover the description and test yourself. Go over them often enough and then they're easy to remember, which can be really helpful in the exam.

I spent about 3 hours a week on chemistry. I went over the definition sheet all the time and studied 2-3 chapters a week from September to February, depending on how big the chapter was and did old exam questions based on those chapters. From February on I did past exam questions by question. The questions repeat themselves a lot from year to year and there is a pattern to questions - Q1 is titrations, Q2 is organic chemistry experiments, Q3 is any other experiments, Q4 is a mix of short questions, Q5 is the normally the atom, one or more of Q8, 9 and 10 are normally organic chemistry.

I can't remember what the other questions are but they're is a pattern to them.

I hope this helps, I got A1s in HL in both of these subjects and doing this definitely helped me. Best of luck

pappakhan

ShaunaO_95 wrote: »

For English Paper 1, the best way of studying is to write when you have time. Find out what type of essay you're best at - short stories, descriptive essay, speech etc - and practice essays from past exam papers. Not only will your writing improve, but you'll have a bank of ideas to base essays on in the real exam. For the reading comprehensions, read articles from newspapers, magazines etc and learn to look at them in a critical way - look at techniques, imagery, if they use facts and quotes or emotive language - and what the effect of this is.

For English Paper 2, the most important thing is to know your text. Be able to back up your point with quotes and thorough references and explain why this supports your point. Try not to just summarize the text but give insights you gain from reading the text. I found flash cards helpful when learning quotes.

Also important is to read! It doesn't matter what; novels, short stories, the Sunday paper, anything! My teacher always said that she could spot a reader when she was correcting essays because the quality of writing was so much better.

In terms of hours, I didn't spend too much time studying English. I re-read my comparative novels and single text often, but apart from this I spent maybe 2 hours over a week practicing writing bits of essays and learning quotes.

For chemistry, the little details are the very important. Marks are given out in 3s so you can get 3 or you can get 0 and it can depend on using one phrase or word in an answer.

Know your experiments well - again, know the small details of experiments, like what order chemicals are added an why (if there's an order and a reason obviously). Calculations on the experiments are important too because they're always asked. Knowing the exact quantities of chemicals you added aren't important though.

There's a lot of definitions in chemistry and they're asked a lot. I found it useful to have a definition sheet - the words going down in a column with descriptions next to it. Every chapter I added in the important definitions, plus any laws. That way you can cover the description and test yourself. Go over them often enough and then they're easy to remember, which can be really helpful in the exam.

I spent about 3 hours a week on chemistry. I went over the definition sheet all the time and studied 2-3 chapters a week from September to February, depending on how big the chapter was and did old exam questions based on those chapters. From February on I did past exam questions by question. The questions repeat themselves a lot from year to year and there is a pattern to questions - Q1 is titrations, Q2 is organic chemistry experiments, Q3 is any other experiments, Q4 is a mix of short questions, Q5 is the normally the atom, one or more of Q8, 9 and 10 are normally organic chemistry.

I can't remember what the other questions are but they're is a pattern to them.

I hope this helps, I got A1s in HL in both of these subjects and doing this definitely helped me. Best of luck

thanks that was really gud advice, it made me a lot clearer with what to do now also did u do 3 hours a week of chemistry at once or did u break it up during the week???

ShaunaO_95

pappakhan wrote: »

thanks that was really gud advice, it made me a lot clearer with what to do now also did u do 3 hours a week of chemistry at once or did u break it up during the week???

No I broke it up over the week, an hour at the weekend and 4 half hours during the week. Most of the homework I got in chemistry was past exam papers anyway so it didn't feel like I was spending ages on chemistry all the time because I was just getting homework done

hannahmatt1

i thought my english exam went disastrous!

for paper 1
comprehensions went just okay
my essay was very all over the place. it was very expressive. i wrote about the guilded promises of life and used a really ****ty anecdote and i ended it on a 'meaningful' life quote that reinforced the point of my essay
for paper 2
I knew hardly any macbeth quotes, the few i did know were the blatantly obvious ones that are hammered into your head from day 1. I think i even jumbled a few quotes up IN the leaving cert exam.
Poetry: I was set on shakespeare. I studied him 4 hours the previous day of the exam and was sure he'd come up. I hadn' looked over Mahon since my mocks but i ended up writing on him. I wrote about how his poetry reflects universal themes.
My comparative went quite well but the comparative is relatively easy as its very subjective. you can literally make any comparison between 2 texts and as long as you back it up with an example the examiner cannot not give you marks.

In contrast with me, my brother has a great passion for english. He studied it alot and knew every quote there was to know and was so happy with his exam! I on the other hand was convinced i would get no more than a C

on results day: my brother got a B3 while i got an A2
this outcome has lead me to believe the english examiner does NOT want a reem of learned off material

my advice: write YOUR response to the question. I am one of those people who tend to think outside the box naturally, i interpreted the question alot different to my peers. after the exam that worried me but evidently a different approach to the question is refreshing for the examiner

another crucial piece of advice: ANSWER THE QUESTION ASKED. I found that because I was not prepared for Mahon, I had not much learned off material to work from so I really focused in on the question. I was panicking trying to add length to my answer so I wrote very opinionated paragraphs that really focused on the question and my personal response to his poetry. Writing this does not require lots of study, it just requires you to not be afraid to express yourself on the day! That goes for every other part of the english course, make your priority ANSWERING THE QUESTION, not showing off how many quotes and fancy words you know.

honestly, I think english is a subject unlike any other. I feel you should NOT over prepare for it.