are textbook questions even helpful? (1 Viewer)

[yourbestfriend]

hey guys, so literally since year 10, I never do the textbook questions that my teacher sets are homework because I find them so repetitive and not very helpful. instead I find past paper questions or revision worksheets that my teacher sets us and do them instead. i have always managed to maintain pretty high marks, but now that I'm in yr 12, should I actually spend time on these textbook questions or just do so many past paper questions instead?
I'm kinda scared bc an ex-student who got a high band 6 talked to us and said u literally have to do textbook questions to do good, and I haven't done any for yr 11 or 12!

 

[funnytomato]

I can see both being valuable in different ways and it's up to each individual to see what is appropriate.

Textbook questions are helpful for you to master one subsection of a topic such that you can recognise the pattern of when this particular technique apply. Hence it would be sensible to do those first after learning each topic.
But the goal is to develop sufficient understanding and know how to apply it (instead of doing every single question) in any question whether from exams or elsewhere. For different people it may actually mean different efforts to develop sufficient understanding e.g. some people may take 1-2 questions and some may take 5 or event 10 questions to be comfortable with the same one technique. If you're finding it too easy and repetitive you should skip the easier ones and/or use a more challenging textbook.

On the other hand past papers exam questions are helpful to check how well you can apply your skills in a more general context. E.g with an integration question they wouldn't necessarily tell you whether it's by parts or by substitution (as opposed to the relevant individual chapter section drilling on one skill). And hence the only way to be confident in that is to do sufficient exercise for you to understand and recognise the relevant technique.
Also some of the more interesting exam questions are often reliant on using multiple topic/techniques in a versatile way so you really have to understand each relevant content really well(which is often obtained by firstly understanding the idea clearly and then doing sufficient and good quality textbook questions).

 

[rh_06]

hey guys, so literally since year 10, I never do the textbook questions that my teacher sets are homework because I find them so repetitive and not very helpful. instead I find past paper questions or revision worksheets that my teacher sets us and do them instead. i have always managed to maintain pretty high marks, but now that I'm in yr 12, should I actually spend time on these textbook questions or just do so many past paper questions instead?
I'm kinda scared bc an ex-student who got a high band 6 talked to us and said u literally have to do textbook questions to do good, and I haven't done any for yr 11 or 12!

Your answer is in your question itself.

because I find them so repetitive

Repetition helps u memorise and understand concepts by literally cementing them in your brain. once u do like 100 questions with slight variations of the same topic, it becomes easier to know how to answer that type of q. This is especially for maths. So do both textbook and past paper questions. IMO save the past papers for last/or after you've done all the textbooks and content in class as there's no point trying to do a whole paper when you haven't even learnt the stuff yet. If u need more textbooks, I have a google drive link so lmk.

 

[Eagle Mum]

Exercises do have value but slave-ishly doing every question is a waste of time. If you can answer the most difficult questions of each exercise (usually at the end of each exercise) and the challenge questions at the end of the chapter (if you are using textbooks which include them), you probably have sufficient grasp of the concepts.