TSSM FREE Report 9 Tips for a Better VCE

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1 9 Tips for a Better VCE There is a better way! There must be! Study hard and get the results you dream of. I am sure you have heard this before. Only if it were that easy! This report is designed to alert you to 9 tips that will help you elevate your VCE scores, however it will only work if you apply them. Make a decision right now to begin applying these 9 strategies, one at a time. So that it does not get overbearing, a smart way of doing it is to begin applying one strategy a week for the next 9 weeks. Let s not waste any more time, after all time is of the essence in VCE. Here are the 9 tips you need to help you get better results out of your VCE journey: 1. Manage your time carefully: It sounds simple enough, but in reality, this is remarkably difficult. Here are three simple things you can do to improve your time management throughout VCE: Use your Holidays for more than fun. The holidays are ideal for getting in some extra study before returning back to school. TSSM runs a brilliant program during each of the holidays. These programs are custom made for the needs of VCE students. Get study help from an expert. Rather than sitting around wondering where to start, work with an expert who can get you moving when you re feeling lazy, and push you to achieve your personal best. Using a professional VCE service helps keep you on track and focussed. Focus on the main obstacles. It s easy to lose track of the big picture when you re feeling stressed and tired. When you focus on the small and insignificant details you waste time and energy. For this reason, it s important that you learn how to study for the big stuff, and how to avoid wasting time on trivial details. TSSM 2012 Page 1 of 8

2 2. Get help and accelerate your results! Have you ever wondered why Olympic athletes need a coach? After all, aren t they in the top echelon of their sport? What could a coach really teach an Olympian? The answer is simple: A coach helps an athlete get the most out of themselves and fast! So, let s ask ourselves; are we better at what we do than an Olympic athlete is at what they do? The answer is probably not! Why then, do we so often hear ourselves saying I don t need help? As with most things in life, it s important to recognise that getting help from people who can make a difference to our overall performance is an act of intelligence. VCE experts and former students who have travelled down this road before and achieved the results that you desire are important points of contact for you right now. Are you making the most of them? Without that all-important outside coaching, it s hard to maintain motivation and focus. When you re tired and overwhelmed having an additional support person to encourage and guide you can be invaluable. Of course, given more time, you probably could succeed perfectly well on your own. However in VCE you only have two short years in which to get the results you need to kick start your future. It really is too short a time to try to figure everything out by yourself. So why take the slow route? Accelerate your results by getting some extra help now you won t regret it. TSSM 2012 Page 2 of 8

3 3. Build good habits, eliminate bad habits! Habits can essentially be split up into two categories- good and bad. Good habits have a positive outcome on your life and are likely to lead you closer to your goals. On the other hand bad habits more often than not, can steer you away from achieving your goals. In VCE, success in reaching your goal is all about the habits you create- the good and the bad. Unfortunately good habits are hard to start, as it can take thirty days of consistently forcing yourself to complete a particular action until it becomes a habit. For example, if you choose to wake up each morning thirty minutes earlier to read your English text, at first you may find this task very difficult. However by forcing yourself to do it day after day for a month, eventually you will find that completing this action becomes automatic, meaning that the action is no longer hard to complete as you don t have to think about it anymore. This may sound difficult however the outcome of developing good habits will often outweigh the struggle taken to create them. Effective VCE students tend to build more and more good habits each week and never settle with what they are currently doing. As mentioned earlier, bad habits are also adopted into our behavioural pattern. Unlike good habits which need to be created, bad habits need to be eliminated. But with habits usually being so in ground in our routine that they re automatic, how is it possible to eliminate these habits to maximise the possibility of reaching our desired goal? An effective way of doing this is by replacing each bad habit with a good habit. For example a person who is trying to develop a healthier lifestyle, identifies that smoking is preventing the reaching of his/her goal. Instead of eliminating the habit all together, the person may wish to replace the habit of having a cigarette with going out and getting a fresh juice. In the person s mind they are being tricked. They are still going on a break and doing something, but instead of continuing with their bad habit of smoking they are replacing this with a good habit which is now brining the person closer to their goal of adopting a healthier lifestyle, and is much easier to do than not going out on a break at all! In VCE it is important to consistently build more and more good habits so that you can achieve your VCE goals! VCE success can often be hidden in our habits, so how could you replace your bad habits to increase your chances of VCE success? TSSM 2012 Page 3 of 8

4 4. Master the basics: When it comes to truly excelling at VCE, your path to real success lies in your capacity to master the basics, and understand the difference between crucial and non crucial information. To keep you focused on the big picture, we ve compiled an easy checklist: 1. learn the ins and outs of the basics and ask lots questions about them. 2. discuss the concepts in a group, until the whole group is satisfied that they understand the main issues. 3. Apply your understanding of the basics to a range of sample questions. If you ve mastered the core issues you should be able to do all of them. 4. Go back and review which bits of information you thought you knew, but really didn t. 5. Remember to seek help from teachers and exam preparation courses that can help. 6. Get a teacher to give you a quick quiz. 5. Learn before you burn: In reality, students who fail to carefully learn and revisit the core content of their VCE subjects are likely to walk out of their exams feeling as though every question was designed to trick them. They won t be prepared to answer basic questions, and they ll suffer months of anxiety from knowing that their performance wasn t up to scratch. To avoid this kind of scenario, it s important to remember a simple rule: Learn Before You Burn. Put simply, be sure to learn all the important content for your subject before you start doing practice exams otherwise, you ll just be revising the bits you already know! This is a really common mistake in VCE, and one that can be easily avoided with a little preparation. To give you a head start, we ve included a few helpful strategies to help you learn before you burn: 1. Review your notes. Before you sit down to do a practice exam, be sure to have carefully reviewed all study notes. 2. Revisit your text books and highlight the sections that you are unclear about. 3. Make a list of what you don t know. 4. Ask your teachers or tutors to explain the parts that you don t understand. 5. Return to your notes and add the new bits of knowledge that you have now acquired. TSSM 2012 Page 4 of 8

5 With this kind of revision in place you can be confident that you have done your best to prepare for your exams. Remember, you might need to go through this process a few times in order to be 100% sure that you have learnt all the basics for your subject but the results will definitely be worth it! 6. Practice makes permanent: Remember that old expression practice makes perfect? When it comes to succeeding in VCE exams, we have a similar saying: Practice Makes Permanent. In other words, the more you practice, the more permanently the information will stay in your mind. Here are a few hot practice tips to get you on your way to exam perfection: 1. Simulate exam conditions. Your exams are going to be conducted in a quiet environment, without interruptions. Make sure that you recreate these conditions as you practice. 2. Adhere to time limits. Use a stopwatch or an alarm clock as a guide to help you figure out how you re likely to perform when being timed. Think about how you are using your time are you getting through all the questions on your practice exam, or are you lagging behind? 3. Consider your time management. Remember it s important to ensure that you answer all questions properly and thoroughly before moving on. 4. Practice answering questions that you know are likely to appear on your exams. Identify your key points and then practice writing them up under exam conditions. With this tip you will be well and truly on your way to VCE success. 7. Focus on healthy competition: The word competition was derived from the Latin term competere, the word competition has its origins in notions of being sound and capable as well as to meet, to happen at the same time, or to coincide. Today however, our views on competition have changed, and all too often we think of competing against others with the solitary aim of doing better than them. Is that what VCE is really all about? No, of course it isn t. As you work your way through VCE and beyond, it s important to remember that the best form of competition is healthy competition. And the healthiest form of competition is competition against yourself! TSSM 2012 Page 5 of 8

6 In trying to be the best you can be, rather than trying to beat others, you place your focus on your most important asset you! Instead of worrying over who achieved what result in the last piece of assessment, think about what you can do to improve your performance in each subject that you are studying. In remembering that the origin of competition also means to happen at the same time or coincide we have the opportunity to help each other succeed. So, rather than trying to do better than everyone else, it s better to work together to achieve similar goals. This kind of healthy competition will make you feel better about yourself and will make your study time more effective. 8. Overcome Fear: Feeling a little nervous before an exam can be a great motivator, however, extreme Exam Anxiety can stop you functioning normally. It makes it difficult to plan, think, concentrate and relax, and when you are in this state, you are not performing at your best. The main problems arise when you start to have trouble recalling information that you actually know. As you start to prepare for your next round of VCE exams, it s worth spending a little time thinking about Exam Anxiety, and setting a plan in place to overcome it. Like all obstacles, fear and anxiety need to be worked through. Here are three simple strategies to help you stay on track: 1. Tackle anxiety head on. One way to do this is by thinking of the FEAR acronym: False Evidence Appearing Real. When we enter into a heightened state of anxiety we begin to focus on negative thoughts that have no place in reality. Put simply, we put obstacles in the way that aren t real. 2. Plan ahead. Don t leave it to the last minute to start revising your notes and preparing for exams. Go straight to the experts who mark VCE exams and find out what you need to know ahead of time. 3. Prepare notes. It s almost impossible to underestimate the value of good study notes. Make sure you get your notes together early in the term and revise them regularly. Exam preparation courses like those run by TSSM provide comprehensive notes as part of their study program. TSSM 2012 Page 6 of 8

7 9. Be courageous: Courage, it s a thing that many people talk about, but few actually possess. As you work your way through VCE, it s worth taking a moment to think about courage. What is it? How do you show it? And what s it got to do with VCE? The word courage stems from 12 th century France, where the word corage was used to describe the notion of "heart, and innermost feelings. Over the centuries the meaning evolved more broadly to include not only "bravery," but also "pride, and confidence". Today, when we think about courage, we think about it as the ability to confront fear, pain, risk, uncertainty and intimidation. Courage is making a choice to go through something that is painful and tough, and hanging in there without quitting. Sound familiar? It takes a lot of courage to embark on VCE. We know ahead of time that it s going to be tough and that we might have to make sacrifices; yet we take it on bravely. We endure stress and uncertainty; we lose sleep, and often have to forgo holidays and nights out with friends in order to achieve the results that we desire. So when times get tough and we feel like there is so much to learn in such a little time, we need to draw on our inner reserves of courage to get us through. Courage pushes us through the tough times. It helps motivate us to keep studying and continue preparing for exams, even though we may think that the effort is in vein. Not surprisingly, when we make a deliberate effort to be courageous, our efforts pay off. When we push through our comfort zones and keep working regardless, we are often truly surprised at what we can achieve. TSSM 2012 Page 7 of 8

8 Wow, that was a lot of information! These are the 9 tips for a better VCE. Remember to begin by applying them one at a time so that you can truly benefit from them. At TSSM we frequently release study tips that we would love to share with you! Join us on facebook today to receive the latest up to the minute information and study tips. Like us now... If you would like more information on how to succeed with VCE, contact TSSM at A: Level 14, 474 Flinders Street Melbourne Victoria 3000 T: F: (03) W: tssm.com.au TSSM 2012 Page 8 of 8