The year 12 exam period is always a stressful time for students. It’s all too easy to be tempted to only study at the last minute and hope your midnight cram session is good enough to let you pass the exam.
But what if there were an easier way that didn’t require you to feel frantic and frazzled in the days leading up to evaluation?
If you take a little bit of time each day to review your lessons, you can easily ace your HSC biology exam with confidence.
Here are 5 study tips to help you stay on top of your biology studies and breeze through exam day.
The 3 Ideas of Competency
First of all, you need to know what your goals are while you’re studying for your exams. This gives you a guideline of what to strive for in your education.
You can use these tips when studying any subject or course.
1. Conceptualising and Understanding
The very first step is to understand what is being taught to you. Sounds pretty self-explanatory, right?
This is the ability to summarise what you have learned in your own words in a way that makes sense to you. It doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else, just you.
Conceptualise and wrap your head around an idea any way you need to so that you can fully comprehend it.
2. Retaining (“Memorising”)
Most people will call this phase “memorisation,” but it’s more than that. You need to be able to pull information out of your head even if the format of the question or answer is different than you’re used to. Especially with a science subject like biology, you'll need to be able to put information together in many different ways.
So, you need to actually know the information and retain it. Coming back to your notes often reinforces your knowledge.
Imagine this: every time you study a certain idea, it’s like you’re painting a layer of it into your brain’s database. You need to let the layer of paint dry and then apply another coat to make the “colour” of the information stronger and richer. Do this multiple times and you have a nice, even, robust coating of this info that won’t fade easily.
3. Answering
So, you’ve conceptualised, you’ve memorised… what more do you need?
You need to practise taking the information from your head and putting it down on paper in a way someone else can understand.
If you 1000% understand the topic, but you’re unable to explain it to others in a concise, coherent way, your knowledge does you no good.
Especially for an exam, the whole idea is to be able to prove your knowledge, and the medium you need to do that with is the written word.
Keep these 3 ideas in mind while you study. Do you conceptualise to understand? Do you review to retain so that it feels like you’ve memorised? Do you know how to write your ideas in multiple ways, and blend different concepts together for a cohesive answer? These are the skills you need, not only for the exam but for any subject of your life.
1. 20-Minute Reviews
At the end of your day, take the time to spend 20 minutes per subject to go over your biology lesson. Read the syllabus and write down the top 5 dot points in the material for the day.
Think about what ideas your teacher emphasised along with what the syllabus outlines. These are the concepts you’ll need to pay the most attention to.
In each dot point, include keywords, diagrams, examples, and any helpful discussion that happened in class as well. Summarise the idea in your own words as concisely as possible.
It’s important to use your own words for conceptualising and understanding!
If you’re already part-way through the class, go back and do this same exercise for the sections of the syllabus for the previous module(s) until you have 20-minute note sheets for every concept in the syllabi.
You can easily and quickly review these sheets when studying for the exam as part of your retention and memorisation learning phase!
2. Experiments Are Fair Game
Include any biology experiments you perform in class in your 20-minute notes. You might even do a write-up about the experiment separately so you can remember what happened, how to procedure was performed, and the outcomes.
Experiments might be part of the exam, so you need to refresh your memory about the event every so often.
You can practice making connections between the experiment and different times in class when you’ve talked about the same concepts to develop a broader understanding.
3. Memorise to Retain
Remember that performing memoisation techniques is not the same as being able to actually retain and remember something.
While memorisation methods like rote learning work for some people, it’s not a one-size-fits-all technique. There are many ways to practise memorisation/retention of information. Some methods work better for biology, and some work better for other subjects.
Try all of these techniques and any others you can think of to see what elements of them help you retain information. If something doesn’t work for you, skip it; it's a waste of your time for this specific science subject.
Pick the top one or two methods and use them interchangeably to reinforce your learning in more than one way for maximum benefits.
Rote Technique
The good, old-fashioned rote technique, aka repetition.
Do you know the opening credits of The Simpsons when Bart is writing a whole blackboard’s worth of the same thing, over and over? That’s the rote technique.
Whether it’s writing it, saying it, thinking it, or doing it, the key is repeating the same thing over and over so that you have a strong memory of it.
It works better for certain people and for certain subjects or ideas. Give it a try but if it doesn’t help you then don’t waste your time by hoping it will suddenly start working. There are better ways!
Flash Cards
This method is great for smaller bits of information at a time. Break down larger concepts into bite-size ideas and transfer them to your flash cards.
Coming up with the cards can be just as helpful as studying with them since you need to identify the areas that you need to study more, construct a concise question that questions exactly what you don’t know, as well as an answer you can understand and remember.
Study the cards both ways: read the question and provide the answer, and read the answer and know the question.
Try practising them with a friend so you can both study at the same time!
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”
~ Robert Collier
Mnemonics
Mnemonics are the classic ROY G BIV style of memorisation.
Come up with your own or find popular ones for the idea you’re trying to remember. This method works best for concepts that have a list or multiple steps each time. Look up popular mnemonics for HSC biology concepts and use those for reference.
For example, when remembering the bases of DNA, think "Apples in the Tree, Car in the Garage."
Mnemonics are great to put on flash cards and study that way!
Memory Palace
Sherlock your study skills when you build an imaginary environment to store your data in.
You can make your “palace” whatever you like. It doesn’t have to be a palace at all. It can be a house, a place outdoors, a bookshelf, a bouquet of flowers, or anything that you can recall exactly the same way over and over again.
Associate each element with a bit of information so you can locate the data in your mind more easily.
This can be especially helpful for HSC biology because there is so much information to remember.
Songs and Jingles
Making up little songs for your facts is fun and easy. You can choose a catchy tune that already exists or make up your own. It doesn’t have to make lyrical sense, it just needs to be something you can remember easily with minimal effort.
Learn about more retention techniques with a year 11 biology tutor on Superprof.
4. Write and Re-write
Remember how it’s important to write the information down in your own words and with your own hand? Right, keep doing that.
Whether you type or take pen to paper, physically write your notes while rephrasing them yourself so you make a physical connection between the information and your actual body.
Rather than just copy and paste some words from a book, screen, board, or another piece of paper to your own notebook, input the info into your brain, process it, and then bring it forth with your own hand. So not only do you study the material, you help it stick in your mind even better.
Do try writing the information at least once, as it has been shown to increase brain activity when remembering the information later on, implying a stronger recall. Since HSC biology is so complex and expansive, being able to organise and rephrase the information your own way is crucial.
5. Practice, Practice, and Practice Some More!
Periodically take practice tests or quizzes to keep your mind familiar with the way questions are asked in the exams.
You can easily access past HSC biology questions online to practice with!
Multiple Choice
If you’re short on time or energy for practice, stick with multiple-choice questions.
Practise reading and re-reading to ensure you understand the phrasing fully before answering. Practise your skills of utilising the process of elimination and critical thinking, especially if you don’t know the exact answer off the top of your head.
Make note of the concepts you struggle with and study them with the help of your 20-minute sheets.
Long and Short-Answer Questions
For both types of written questions, practice getting clear on what information you need to convey in the answer.
You need to include the explicit information that has been asked for, the relevant information required for context and supporting your answer, and omit superfluous information that muddles your point and takes away your valuable time.
Practice planning outlines in your scratch paper section. For a short answer, you might write four bullets that end up being two sentences, and you found that you could leave out one of the ideas since it was unnecessary.
For longer answers, make sure you note down all the ideas and supporting facts you need and consolidate where you can to save on time, paper space, and energy. In an HSC biology exam, you should be able to identify what's being asked, provide a succinct answer, and give the necessary supporting scientific information.
Have the marking criteria at hand so you can refer to them while you write. You want to practice the proper techniques for the real deal! Also, utilise your notes so you can have more practice writing the correct information down, rather than guessing and writing something incorrectly that you might recall later.
There are many ways to study for your HSC biology exams, so start practising as soon as you can to find which ways help you most!
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