HELLO
This year I'll be starting the y11 Legal Studies course and I wanted to start a little early in the holidays. Does anyone have any steps I should take and what I should do?
Atm I've looked at the syllabus and started making notes but it feels like I'm not really understanding it. Is there a different way to fastrack how I'm studying? Also, if there are any resources that I'm clueless about, it would be well appreciated if you could tell them to me.
ty!
I recommend getting familiar with the syllabus and coming up with a system on how youre going to take your notes and study. For example, after learning a new syllabus dot point you should always have LCMDI's for that dotpoint and a paragraph on it. I recommend colour coding it, it comes in handy when youre memorising cases and media. However, this type of study may be too intense for year 11 since its what i did in year 12. Legal studies in those 2 years are very different, year 12 demands much more than year 11, so be prepared! Don't stress about it too much now since youre going to be learning the basics first like how to write a legal studies essay, it's very different from english or any other subject.
If you would like a head start i recommend following a pdeeel strucutre, so point, define, explain, example, example, link. Your point sentence should always be directly answering the question and making a judgement, for instance, a question would ask you, "Assess the effectiveness of the bail process in achieving justice for victims," in which you would respond with, "the bail process has been increasingly ineffective in achieving justice for victims but only somewhat effective in achieving justice for offenders." Then you would explain what the bail process is and what legislation is it under. After you have done that and get to your discussion, you should always have an argument for and against; for instance, the bail process may not achieve justice for victims, but if may achieve justice for offenders because it preserves their presumption of innocent until proven guilty. In this discussion you would need LCMDI's to back up your point that is, legislation, case, media, documents (statistics), or international documents. After you have presented your evidence you would have to explain how that piece of evidence supports your point using the PEARRJAM criteria, that is: protection of individual rights, enforceability, accessibility, resource efficiency, responsiveness to societies needs, justice achieved, application of the rule of law, and meeting societies needs. You should have at least 2 per paragraph so you could take two of these and each one should be the main focus of the laws strength or weakness. For instance, the bail process may not achieve protection of individual right to safety since the offender is allowed back into society, however, that same bail process allows the application of the rule of law since it upholds the presumption of innocent until proven guilty since the alleged offender is not in custody for a crime they havent been found guilty of only charged with. I really hope that makes sense, there is way more of it to learn but I dont want to dump it all on you right now, as you study make sure you do research! it ends up being so fun when you connect all the dots together.
I know this sounds like a lot right now and I hope ive explained it well, if you would like any more help feel free to dm me i have plenty of resources that could help, i ended up getting a 96/100 for legal studies in hsc after scoring 91 in my prelim so if you dont feel confident now dont worry youve got plenty of practice and time to go until you sit your hsc in 2027. good luck with everything and dont forget to have fun!
