Smith Mathematics Coaching Sydney

General Study Tips for HSC Maths Coaching

Here are four important study tips. To find the others, tips for all subject areas, you really need to beg, borrow or buy the book "100 Study Tips That Work" – by John Smith. The sooner you begin using study techniques, the better.

Here then are four of the top Mathematics ideas that I'd recommend:

1. Maths is not a spectator sport. You won't master maths by reading your notes or textbook. You won't master it from a TV screen or internet program. You master maths by doing exercises using pen, paper and hard work. By all means, use your textbook to get the exercises. But then you, your pen and a stack of paper is the only way to go.
2. Before you start a new topic at school, read through the chapter in your textbook. You'll soon see whether this topic is one of those with only a few formulae – quadratic functions for example, or one with a new formula on each page – trig functions perhaps. In either case, make a list of the formulae. As you go through the chapter at school, find a good example that illustrates how each formula is used, and add it to your list of formulae.
3. Many schools don't use textbooks. Instead, they write their own notes or photocopy the relevant pages from a text. Whatever else you do, go and buy two or three textbooks!! Try to get a very basic one – you're learning the subject – the last thing you need is a text written for Einstein. Also buy a high level one for when you have completed the exercises in the basic book. And buy a book of revision papers. There's no point in learning a topic only to forget it through lack of use. Humans forget things. Students can't be human.
4. You'll hate this one. Once you've completed a topic, learn how to derive each formula used in that topic. It's unlikely that you will be asked to derive the formula in an exam, but, the people who write text books and the people who set exams, have to get their ideas from somewhere. Many of their questions are based on the techniques used to derive the formulae. In one sense, a formula is a summary of ideas that are important in the topic. So learning how to derive your formulae is a great way of anticipating exam questions!