The senior chemistry course is arguably one of the most difficult subjects out there, but doing well in this highly demanding subject is extremely gratifying - both mentally and in terms of ATAR contribution/scaling.
As someone who went from barely passing junior science to coming 5th and 2nd respectively in Year 11 and Year 12 Chemistry at Normanhurst Boys High School, the following guide will be a useful template to get you started on excelling in your Chemistry studies!
I'll break this down into a few simple steps.
Understand the concepts
Chemistry is an APPLICATION subject.
This means that you won’t be able to do well just by "ROTE" learning and purely relying on memorisation as a study technique. Although this may have worked in your junior years or other subjects, HSC Chemistry has become increasingly focused on having a solid foundational understanding of the syllabus content such that you can apply your understanding to the unseen questions presented in exams.
At EXL, we promote this by breaking the difficult concepts of the Preliminary and HSC syllabi down into easily digestible chunks through analogies and other interesting explanations to make this easier on you or your child.
When you are learning a concept for the first time, try to ask questions until you feel like you understand the content 100%, such that when you go back to revisit what you have learned, a mind-map of knowledge unfolds in your brain.
I also encourage my students to ask themselves questions - how does this connect to what I’ve previously learned? An example of this is in Module 5 of Chemistry - how do the principles of equilibrium link to the energy drives of entropy and enthalpy that we learnt in Module 4?
Know Your SYLLABUS
The syllabus is essentially a check list of all the content you should know before you take your exams. This is because teachers can technically only test you on the knowledge that is stated in the syllabus.
If you know your syllabus well, you’ll already have a major head start on all your peers, as you’ll be able to approach your studies more systematically and make sure you are checking off all the dot points that are going to be assessed in your upcoming exam.
A nice way I liked to do this was going through the dot points of whatever module I was studying and just internally vocalise everything I knew about the dot point - then check my notes to see if there was anything I missed.
Practice Practice Practice
The last step in doing well in Chemistry is to constantly practise APPLYING your knowledge. By doing practice questions, you are taking your understanding to the next level by applying what you have learnt in a plethora of different experimental scenarios and contexts. Usually, doing practice questions comes in three separate stages:
1.HOMEWORK:
This is the first round of practice that you’ll be doing, usually straight after you have learnt new content. Take your time to tackle homework questions either set by your school or us without looking at your notes.
Then, after you’ve tried your best to complete everything, look at your notes and answer the questions you weren’t able to do. After this, have a look at the solutions that are given to you and take notice of anything that you answered incorrectly, or were insufficient in providing an exceptional response in. Where did you go wrong?
Was it a lack of knowledge about the topic or were you simply not able to think in the same way as the solutions?
If it was the latter, try to make a physical or mental note of the triggers that led to the solution so that next time you do a similar question you’ll be able to breeze through it.
At EXL our homework will help you understand where you are strong but also identify areas of improvement. Our Homework Booklets are created with targeted and combination questions to challenge every student!
2. Practice Papers PART A
This is the round of practice that you should be commencing around 4-6 weeks before your exams. Start looking through some past papers of reputable schools and finding targeted questions relevant to the content being assessed on your exam - do them open book and with unlimited time.
Ask your tutor at EXL or use https://thsconline.github.io/s/yr12/Chemistry/
This is to expand your exposure to the different types of ways that the content you have learned can be assessed - such that you are able to not only deepen your understanding of the underlying Chemistry concepts but also hopefully run into a question style similar to something that will be tested on your exam.
Again, I would like to emphasise the importance of REVIEW after doing practice questions - make sure to go through the questions you got wrong and correct your thinking process such that you are able to get to the solution the next time. Doing practice questions without reviewing will only get you half of the results you desire, so make sure to spend sufficient type reviewing!
3. Practice Papers PART B
This round of practice should be completed around 2-3 weeks before your exams, once you feel ready and no longer need your notes to do questions anymore. Essentially repeat stage 2 of practice, but this time closed book and under timed conditions - I usually set a limit of 1.5 mins per mark but you can do faster/slower depending on the time limit of the past paper that you are completing!
And that wraps up this guide - EXL helps with steps: "Understand your Concepts and Know Your Syllabus" through syllabus-guided theory and dot points. We help by removing all the excess material found in textbooks which confuse students and overwhelm them with untestable content. Book a free trial with EXL for Chemistry to see how our lessons run!
Good luck in your studies and if you have any questions or queries please don’t hesitate to reach out to our friendly EXL team.
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Matthew Chen
2nd in NBHS Chemistry, 97 HSC Mark
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