It’s your final year in school before you move on to bigger and better things.
You want to ensure you excel in your HSC exams so you can achieve a high ATAR.
How can you ensure to score well when you sit your HSC biology exam? There are a lot of ways you can give yourself advantages and assure yourself of your biology exam success!
Study Tips for HSC Biology
The very first thing to do when you start your HSC biology course is set yourself up for success while studying.
Start the school year strong by taking excellent notes: legible, organised, and thorough.
From there, you can use your notes as the ultimate study tool!
Focus on the 3 Ideas of Competency
The 3 ideas of competency are:
- Conceptualising and Understanding
- Retaining (“Memorising”)
- Answering
These are the skills you want to develop in any school course you take because it means that you are actually learning the material.
When you conceptualise and understand information, you are able to think of it in your own terms that make sense to you. You can intake the info from an outside source and know it well enough to come up with your own way of thinking about it.
This is different from the classic “memorise” idea because when you memorise, you remember how to say facts, but you might not know what they actually mean. When you conceptualise, you not only remember facts, but you can say them in many different ways because you actually know what you are talking about.
Retaining also builds on the idea of memorisation. When you understand the information, it’s much easier to keep it in your head. If you only memorise, you might forget or get the facts muddled up because you didn’t really know what it all meant in the first place.
Answering means you can take the thoughts and ideas out of your head and give information to someone else in a way that makes sense. The facts are correct, the argument is sound, you can use the proper terms and know the definitions, and the order in which you present information makes sense.
20-Minute Reviews
Use your excellent notes from class to complete a 20-minute review every day before bed.
Read your syllabus and make dot points of the top 5 lessons of the day. Keep these 20-minute review pages all together as you go through the course so you have concise study material in the weeks leading up to the HSC exam.
Even if you missed some lessons, you can always go back and make a 20-minute review page for yourself. It’s worth it to have a summary of your lessons in HSC biology for easier studying later on!
Use Tried-and-True Memorisation Techniques
You might be thinking ‘But you said not to memorise!’ And that’s true! But if I were to tell you to try “retention techniques” it doesn’t conjure up anything that useful, right?
You can use classic memorisation methods to help you practise retrieving information in your head as well as give repeated exposure to the words and ideas, which helps you retain information.
When you use these techniques to study, ensure that you actually understand what you’re saying, not just spitting out a textbook definition.
Try these methods and see which ones work best for you!
- Rote technique
- Flash cards
- Mnemonics
- Memory palace
- Songs and jingles
- Write and re-write your notes
Studying is half the battle with any school subject. There is a lot to remember over the course of the term, and you might have forgotten a good portion of what you learned early on. So, note-taking and refreshing your memory often is a good idea!
"Biology is the study of complicated things that have the appearance of having been designed with a purpose." ~Richard Dawkins.
When to Use a Tutor
In the event that you need a tutor, it’s best to seek one out as soon as possible.
Some students might benefit from having a tutor from the beginning of the year in the HSC biology course, especially if they struggle with science, maths, and related subjects.
If you feel pretty confident about the course material but want some help preparing for the HSC exam, you can seek out a tutor 1 to 2 months before the exams. They can help you study and practice HSC biology.
At any time during your course, you might feel like you could benefit from some extra help. And that’s okay! Tutors exist for the sole purpose of helping students excel in their courses and prepare for exams or other academic hurdles!
If you’re not sure that a tutor can help you, check out this list of things that tutors are meant to assist with:
- Bringing up your internal assessment marks
- Discovering which learning methods work best for you
- Help you fill in gaps in your knowledge
- Help you understand which information is important and which is less important
- Teach you how to take good notes in class
- Give you self-awareness about your education
- Teach you how to be a better learner
- Teach you how to interpret and answer HSC exam questions
It’s never a bad idea to seek out a tutor, especially if you don’t feel absolutely confident in the subject material or your ability to study on your own!
Where to Find Tutors
You can find tutors through a few different avenues.
Try asking if there are any available through your school or in a local youth programme. You can also check online and search local bulletin boards for tutors near you.
If you can’t find a suitable tutor in your area, you can always look online! On Superprof, you can search for tutors who meet your personal criteria. Some are available for face-to-face sessions, but even more tutors can meet with you online!
Tutors are available from all over Australia as well as many other countries.
What is the HSC Biology Exam Format?
The HSC exam consists of two parts and is the same every year.
Part One is 20 multiple-choice questions and some short answer questions.
Part Two is a handful of extended-answer questions.
You will have 3 hours and 5 minutes to complete the exam. The first 5 minutes are for you to skim through the question booklet and see what questions you’ll be coming up against. This is when you can plan your attack strategy.
If you see any questions you know you will struggle with, save them until the end so that you can answer all the questions you know more easily first.
It is suggested that you take no more than 40 minutes for the multiple choice questions and 1 hour and 10 minutes for the short and extended answers sections each.
You will have to adhere to the rules and only have certain materials with you when you sit the HSC biology exam, like pencils, black ink pens, a ruler, a NESA-approved calculator, and a few other resources.
You will not be able to bring any superfluous technology with you, even a programmable watch.
While the assessment environment may be stressful, you can help prep yourself for exam day with practice beforehand.
How to Prepare to Answer HSC Biology Exam Questions
The HSC biology exam measures two things: Your knowledge of the subject and your ability to comprehend and answer questions in a limited amount of time.
When you study regularly, you can easily handle the knowledge portion of the exam.
The harder part for many students is actually the format of taking an exam!
In the months and weeks leading up to the HSC biology exam, you need to start preparing yourself for that day.
Take Practice Exams with Past Papers
You can find past papers online which are an excellent source of study material.
These HSC exams from years past make great practice exams because they are actual questions that have appeared previously.
You can study with them in three different ways:
- Open-book practice
- Closed-book practice
- Assessment conditions practice
For open and closed-book practice, you complete either a whole exam or a portion of the exam at a time. Since the whole thing takes 3 hours, you might not always be able to practice the whole exam at once. You can break it up by section or by question type, or answer a few of each type of question at once.
You might also choose to time yourself or not. It’s a good idea to get a sense of how long it takes to answer a question with a timer, but you don’t have to time yourself every time you practice.
With open-book, you obviously give yourself access to your biology notes. This is perfect if you are feeling unsure about the material because you allow yourself to investigate the answer when you need help, rather than guess something incorrect.
Closed-book practice is a great way to see what material you are competent in and how good you are at pulling information out of your memory.
Assessment conditions practice is when you treat your practice session just like the real deal: no distractions, 3 hours and 5 minutes, only approved materials on your desk. This method is good for helping you get desensitised to having a timer and strict exam conditions.
The HSC biology exam is a huge step in your academic career, but it’s not the be-all and end-all if you score lower than you’d like. So, while you should still try your best, remember that the outcome doesn’t determine your future success!
Study and practice, maybe enlist a tutor, and give it your best try! Get help in your biology class with a professional tutor on Superprof!
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