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Difficulty of Exam Questions (1 Viewer)

ddtng

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I figured I might start some new conversation in here as previous threads seem to be discussing crap Geo teachers and some Year 11 task that bears no significance (it means nothing, guys).

We had our half yearly exam today. It consisted of a broadsheet we'd already seen (our teacher was unaware luckily), some short answer questions on ecosystems at risk and world cities, and a single extended response question on mega cities.

I just feel that this sort of preparation is sorta sub-par than what would be needed for the HSC. I'm referring to more about the quality of the questions, they were too simple or too broad. One question asked out of a number of maps, which had the largest scale. Another was, what urban dynamic was demonstrated in a photo. Surely the questions are harder than that?

The extended response question goes something like: explain the challenges faced by mega cities and assess the responses to challenges. That's two-thirds of the entire mega cities component... would the HSC exam be more specific than that, especially in an extended response question?

How much depth would a typical geo half yearly have? The difficulty of our exam questions just isn't there, and the super high marks our class constantly get probably aren't the best reflection of what we will get at the end of the year, and that's scary because it would be nice to have some sort of accurate indication. I'd hate to have the impression that I'm whizzing through the course before finding out in the end that our grade as a whole was actually behind the whole time.

I'm interested in knowing the difficulty of other school's exams. Perhaps some example questions would be helpful?
 

AMorris

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Nah - the questions are not too difficult and that question that you got is nearly exactly the same as the urban places HSC question of 2002 (or 2003). If you want to see what the HSC questions are like, just take a look at the past papers on teh board of studies site. The extended responses usually cover at least all of one dot point, but often they can cover quite a few more in the HSC.

In relation to the multiple choice and short answer questions, there are often quite a few really easy common sense questions, but some are sometimes a tad trickier. Geography is quite an easy subject once you know the syllabus really well and have a few solid case studies (for the ones that require case studies) and examples (for the other dot points).
 

Emmy-Lou**1989

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We had our half yearly goegraphy exam today.

We had the exact same extended response question about the challenges of living in mega cities and their associated solutions

We had a second extended response on the nature and rate of change human impacts have on 2 ecosystems we had studied.

I think i did better with the first one.

We had some of the dumbest multiple choice questions ever, most of them based on stimulus material. the dumbest question gave all these grid references and asked which one would be the best to build a house to catch the morning sun? So dumb.

Some of the questions were ok though.
 

ALLLICE

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Emmy-Lou**1989 said:
We had our half yearly goegraphy exam today.

We had the exact same extended response question about the challenges of living in mega cities and their associated solutions
I remember getting that question in MY hsc half yearlies last year...the teachers seriously need to get some new material
 

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