Advice to Future Sixth Years

WorthlessPeon

Hey there,

I was just wondering if anyone who was happy with their results yesterday would like to share some advice? I'm going into sixth year and all this talk the last few days has me slightly worried...Anything at all would be appreciated as I'm the first in my family do it!

(My options are Spanish, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Business btw if that helps)

Thanks

aquse

The only thing I can comment on is to watch out for bull****ters and know how to filter information. Also, be in school.

50% of what I learned was completely useless for the LC, so I simply didn't take it in. You need to know the exam structures well in order to be able to do this, so don't wait like me until the orals to get VERY familiar with the structures. Start early on them, know each one well and know what you have to know. When I finally did this, I realized what exactly I had to learn and so I did. Know how to answer questions and what the marking scheme is looking for. I felt guilty not studying because I didn't know so much, so studying became much easier as it gained a cause. Before this moment, stupidly studying the whole course seemed pointless as half of it was either useless or very unlikely to come up. (Especially applies to things like Business, Geography, even English. Maybe not so much in science subjects.)

Stand up and go school, I skipped 1/3 of 5th year and 1/4th of 6th year, it didn't help towards my results. Especially the last 2-3 months, don't skip 'em


Don't get too hung up on the mocks, I somehow only got 335 in them. I was also checking a data sheet with thousands of entries(board.ie thread, see if you can find it) 9/10 people go up, and usually by a very hefty amount.

Oh and watch out for bull****ters. "Oh yeah man, I'm studying like 12 hours a day non-stop." I've had a few people tell me this with a straight face, at first they seemed to me as actually gullible enough to study like that, but I really don't think that's the case.


I got 515 in the LC(I should've done higher maths, I would've done very well in it. Got ****ed over by a teacher who said "No way, no, no, no." when I asked at the start of 5th year if I could do higher after ordinary in JC. Was too late when I realized later.), and while that might not be the highest, I'm still really impressed by it considering of how much school I missed and comparing my other classmates' results. I was the only one who got 500+, only 3 got 400+, while most got 200 to low 300 out of ~40 people. They didn't want to do **** I don't even know why some of them came to school, although some still tried hard but were taking a completely wrong approach(Studying the wrong things, not focusing on all subjects.). I could see that many had great potential and weren't stupid, but it just wasn't normal to study in their group of friends.

When I managed to be in, I was heavily engaged in every class and tried to be interested, that helped a lot. If the subject wasn't interesting, then the teacher was. I got the courtesy of every single teacher being really good, some others were quite **** and simply didn't do their job.

If you want to do well - and it seems the you do -, with a bit of smart work you will do well.

Peg14

for biology this is what I did

• Keep up with everything new right up until Christmas, as in, do the homework and learning as teacher says every night. After Christmas exams you start preparing for mocks so you probably won't feel like you have the time to learn all the new stuff so just try your best with it all. Its easy to get out of routine and neglect the new stuff, but at the end of the day, these could be all the topics in the long questions.
• Exam papers. For example, I would do all the Respiration questions at once and keep them together separately. I did this with all the biology topics. Then I did them all again!
• Write your own notes. Our teacher gave us notes, never ever used a biology book. But for 6th year I wrote these out in my own handwriting, abbreviating things, mind-maps, making things more concise I guess. Everything can go all over the place easily. Not everything is in the exam papers as our biology exam this year reminded us!
• With all subjects, you have to do your own bit too, not just what the teachers says all the time. In that I mean use your own initiative. Don't be waiting until you're told 'test on friday' Always get ahead. Be making notes, do exam questions nearly every night. Take topic for a certain amount of time, test yourself on it with exam questions.
• Make timetable. Biology needs constant learning. Even the day before my bio exam I thought I had forgotten a lot of details, which I sort of had until I revised it quickly later. More times you revise something, the better it will actually stick with you
• Be wary about places like Leeson St for biology, my sister did an easter course there and I didn't use her notes at all, I felt the teachers notes were better. I wouldn't really recommend it unless you feel you have no other choice..
• Start biology study as soon as you can, keep it simple at the start. I would say in September you should begin biology study in order for you to achieve your best grade. Its a very long course. I also used a folder for biology.

Then your Spanish. I did German but languages all follow the same kind of thing anyway

• Any reading comp you, listening comp, letter....any words you don't really know, write them down in a hardback. Keep going over these words for the whole 2 years. I also wrote down the gender of every noun. Go over the new words every night for 10 minutes or so. Get into a daily routine with this.
• Practice listening with the exam papers in your own time, I only really did this the last 2 months of 6th year as we had been doing them in class regularly enough. Also listen to Spanish news, podcasts when possible, do this maybe twice a week, write down the words in your hardback, learn them. I used the website kiraka.de [german] a lot of the time, the news is more for children I think but that doesn't matter.
• Find a bunch of phrases of the internet. Use these in the letters etc. Find some idioms too, they can add to your expression.
• Brainstorm different topics, some vocab for it. A lot of the day though is just manipulating to what you do know.
• THE ORAL of course, nearly forgot about this. I wrote out answers to loads of different conversation questions and kept looking over them. The questions they ask really are so simple, you will have prepared for them all. For roleplays and picture sequences, just learn them and keep going over them all the time. Don't neglect the questions for the pictures as they are worth a lot of the marks. The roleplays really are not that bad at all, maybe a little improvising required, but its fairly basic, if Spanish is like German.
• Do LOADS of reading comps, our teacher did so many with us, from very early on, they soon came like second nature to us.

Good luck with it all

Medicine2o15

I would say for most of your subjects the teachers tell u u need to know everything. My advice would be to learn the topics you're best at and are most likely to come up well instead of everything being half learnt. For example in biology I left out ecology and genetics completely but learnt everything else inside out. Likewise in business I learnt about 4.5 units out of 7. I went up this year by 80 points to 605 so this worked best for me. Also take breaks, last year I studied around the clock, never went out and ended up disappointed. This year I went out with my friends until about Easter, went to cafés and the cinema but still studied hard. Good luck with it, the lc is a hard year so I wish u all the best!

Fiona G

Physics is a predictable paper so work out in advance what questions you will do and then practice all of that type in the papers. You can leave out a section if you want. I left out all of current electricity and managed an A2, it's all about knowing the exam paper structure. But DON'T leave out any experiments, seriously.

WorthlessPeon

Thanks for the helpful responses so far!
Anybody else have anything to add?

dandc357

My advice for biology would be to practice exam papers from the very beginning. It's so helpful, and definitely what helped me to get an A. Print off all of the marking schemes and go through them during the year. It'll let you know exactly what the examiner is looking for which is imperative to getting high marks!