Optimising your HSC study with the Question Matrix

It’s crunch time.  With just over a week left until English Paper 1 kicks off, it’s more important than ever to optimise your study pattern.

If you ever find yourself short on time studying and want to re-enforce the fundamentals, HSCninja can help you prioritise your study.  The Question Matrix can give you an “at a glance” view of the number of marks allocated to each HSC syllabus topic in the past few years.  From this, you can prioritise your study based on what the Board of Studies has examined in the past.

Example: HSC Physics – Motors and Generators

In this example, we’ll look at HSC Physics Motors and Generators.  Similar matrices are also available for all topics in Mathematics, Physics and Biology.

Question Matrix on HSCninja for the Motors and Generators module in HSC Physics
Question Matrix on HSCninja for the Motors and Generators module in HSC Physics

 

Based on this matrix, we can see that the Board has placed heavy emphasis on the first topic: 9.3.1 – Motors and magnetic forces. An average of 9.9 marks has allocated to this syllabus topic for the past 7 years.  The least emphasis is placed on 9.3.5 – AC motors with an average on 3.3 marks over the past 7 years.

However, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t study for AC motors!  You can see that the Board is still very likely to examine you on the topic, it just affects fewer marks.  So it’s all just a balancing act.

A good strategy may be to place a suitable amount of time revising teach topic based on how many marks each topic has historically been worth.  But at the end of the day, the more familiar you are with material across all topics — the more likely you are to get higher marks.

Kenneth Tsang

I'm the author of jxeeno™ blog and co-founder of HSCninja.com. I'm a bit of an #NBN and public transport geek. You can normally find me juggling work and my studies at UNSW where I'm currently completing a degree in Geospatial Engineering.