Tip of the day: Past Papers & how to make the most of them! So, hopefully youve all realised that past papers are a very important part of revision if you want to do well. Its not only important to be familiar with how theyre going to ask you the questions and what to expect, but past papers will also give you the chance to test your knowledge and get a feel for whether youll be able to pass the real thing. Which, really, is the aim right? So today we have some tips as to how we suggest you use past papers to milk them for all theyre worth.... 1. Where do I get them from?? - okay so past papers are copyrighted material sold by the IBO who consequently would get very angry and legal and stuff if we handed them out at IBS. So we dont! Your first port of call should be to ask your teacher who should have a stash of past papers and markschemes from previous exams. If they dont, or if they dont have them all then we suggest good old Google. Remember to specify the subject, level, timezone (TZ0, TZ1, TZ2), session (May/Nov) and year. Those fortunate enough to also come across any Questionbanks (collections of IB papers broken down into topics etc.) will find these a tremendously useful resource for revision, but again these are copyrighted and we cannot help you find them. You can ask your teacher but as its computer software they probably wont give them to you. The final option, if you are a billionaire with some money you were otherwise going to burn, is to buy them from the IB store for extortionate prices... 2. When should I do them? So, some people claim to revise solely from past papers and will start out by doing them. This is all well and good except for two important points - 1. IB papers are not a comprehensive reflection of everything in the syllabus so you WILL miss things out by doing this, and 2. that youre using up all of the material you have to test yourself with! Ideally therefore we suggest you do past papers AFTER youve gone through the syllabus and learnt everything in it. You can then use the papers to test yourself on your recall and also see whether you can apply your knowledge. Basically this means past papers are something you attempt later on in your revision, so do remember to leave plenty of time to do them! Revise solely from past papers at your own discretion, but dont say we didnt warn you that you will inevitably miss stuff, especially if the syllabus has been changed in the last 5 or so years... which basically means almost every subject! 3. Should I do old papers or not? - so, some syllabi have indeed changed and you may find old exam papers contain questions which are not relevant to what youve learnt. Especially in the sciences - papers pre-2009 will all be from the old syllabus. HOWEVER no syllabus has ever done a 360 degree turn from the old one and generally its just a few topics removed or inserted here and there, so we recommend you do indeed do old papers if you have time. No point in limiting your resources! Just remember that if a topic looks completely foreign to you, check that its actually on your syllabus still, because it may not be. 4. Should I do past papers for every subject?, well the answer is actually not necessarily. For instance in Biology basically the whole exam is about recall rather than technique in terms of answering the questions, so youd be better off concentrating more time on the syllabus than papers. In Chemistry its a lot more about technique and figuring stuff out, so papers are more valuable - same with Maths! Basically take a look at the papers and then use your common sense as to whether youd be better off spending time going through questions or instead just trying to keep cramming the knowledge in. 5. Humanity subjects you obviously dont want to /do/ the past paper necessarily as that requires writing a massive essay each time. Instead you should use the titles to pick out facts which you should learn. Making outlines of essays and making sure you know enough that if you HAD to, you could answer it, is the best way to use these past papers. 6. Sciences = MCQs aka Paper 1s. Once you get to the stage of your revision where you want to start past papers, a useful piece of advice is to always start with old Paper 1s because you can blast through loads of MCQ questions which will reveal to you very quickly how well you know something and how much you understand it. MCQs are often the most tricksy parts of the sciences because they try to trip you up with lots of tiny little details and differentiating factors, so its a valuable exercise. If you have any other questions about past papers, please comment, otherwise... good luck!
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 16:18:47 +0000
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