It's exam season: in fact, it's just gone. So many of us will be turning our thoughts to retakes - or in my case, to reapplying for exams we had to drop out of.
So how do you study for an A Level maths exam?
1) Don't necessarily do all the questions. For some, like me, it's essential to do every question in the book and all the past papers. For many, that's just repetition. You need to do the first few and the last few. Past papers are good to study as well as to do, to work out which questions often come up.
2) Make sure your calculator has new batteries. Yes - graphical calculator batteries do NOT last for years!
3) MAke sure you know the formulae which are NOT in the formula book for the module you are doing. There are usually several really common ones - like trig identities for example. Check each chapter in the textbook to see which formulae you need. It is easy to forget these, especially if you have been *ahem* working on the same module a while.
4) DON'T do anything the night before. The formulae will start to jump around in your head.
5) Revise the previous modules a little. You will find some identities and formulae you studied before that are not explicitly repeated come in handy. For example, the cosine and sine rules from C2 can be very handy when doing the questions on reciprocal trig functions in C3. Also the rules and techniques of radians are very useful indeed, though quite a bit of practice on this is done through C3.
6)If you do past papers and you can't get a tutor to mark them for you, you can do it yourself via the online answer papers which are published. It's not an exact science because you are not amazing at maths, unlike the markers, which is why you're studying it now. So BE HARSH on yourself and be conservative. Markers will often be generous with follow-through marks so you can at least be prepared. That's the pessimistic side of me coming through.
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