What study tips can help maximise your performance in the mocks and what can we learn from the experience of last year's students? In his final article on the mocks, BRIAN MOONEYhelps you to make the most of the exams and gives a guide to six more subjects
Home Economics
Study the following topics in detail: proteins, lipids, vitamins and minerals, carbohydrates and water.
Food commodities: alternative proteins (their nutritive and dietetic value), meat, poultry, fish, eggs, milk and milk products, cereals, nuts, fruit and vegetables, fats and oils.
Food labelling, food preservation, food additives, food hygiene, and food safety. National Agencies for food study/food hygiene legislation. Household technologies, large and small appliances. Consumer studies and consumer laws, components of management (inputs, outputs and throughputs).
Types of mortgage, forms of credit and savings schemes. With regard to your chosen Elective, practise long and short questions on past papers and check your answer against the marking schemes available on examinations.ie.
Geography
Core Questions: Ensure that you are able to refer to appropriate case studies at national and international levels.
Attempt all the short questions, as you will be marked out of your best eight.
In Physical Geography, study a landform question. Study the topics of rivers, seas and glaciers. You must study one of them in detail, and prepare a case study of the human interaction with that topic.
Memorise regional geography, primary, secondary and tertiary activities.
Ensure you are able to identify all surface landforms by name or from a diagram.
Elective Questions
If you have chosen Human Geography, revise population and settlement. For economic geography, focus on sustainable development, the impact of fossil fuels on environment, conflict between local and global interests, and the global distribution of a multinational corporation of your choice.
Optional Geography Question
Ensure that you have a clear structure to your work, which deals with three to four aspects of the topic and identify seven to eight significant points on each.
Field StudyFollow closely the structure outlined in the Field Study booklet, focusing on the areas that carry most marks, ie Gathering of Data, Results, Conclusions, Evaluation. Keep inside 1,000 words.
Biology
Short Questions:Practise these questions on both past examination papers and on sample papers and measure your performance against the marking scheme correct answers.
Experiments:Revise all the "experiments", and parallel "control experiments" you have undertaken and written up over the past two years.
Long Questions:Rewrite definitions to help you retain them. Focus on the plant biology section. Practise drawing the diagrams you have studied to date, and ensure that you label them accurately. Concentrate on the following topics: Ecology. Respiration, Genetics, Plant Structure and Body Systems.
French
Timing:The mocks give you the chance to fine-tune how long you spend on each question. Practise this by answering a reading comprehension or one of the past paper essay questions.
Aural:Practise the past papers. Go to YouTube, type in "entretien francais", and watch a chat with some French celebrities. You can also watch videos on http://videos.tf1.fr/. This helps get your ear in for the oral too.
Oral:Revise all the topics your teacher has given you and go back through your document. Remember the more often you read and write the vocabulary, the better your chances of remembering it. Make sure to go back over your idiomatic phrases too. Try recording yourself and picking out your mistakes.
Written work:Look back over your vocabulary notes. Tenses are important here too. Revise the present, past, subjunctive, future and conditional tenses. Make up sentences to practise the topics and vocabulary that your teacher has given you. Always review what you have written. Remember to check agreements, tenses and articles.
Take a look at skoool.ie and read over its study notes. See also http://www.s-cool.co.uk/alevel/french/writing.html. It’s for the British A Level but has some notes that are relevant to the Leaving Cert.
http://www.languagesonline.org.uk/ is also for A level but will correct your answers.
Business
Read the business pages of the national newspapers.
Financial ratios such as profitability and liquidity are regular questions, Revise these, so that in answering this question you will propose a course of action that the business should follow, based on your ability to calculate the correct ratios.
Marketing is a hardy annual on business papers. Revise global marketing, market segmentation, product life cycle and break-even analysis.
Use bullet points in all your answers. Take note of the number of marks offered per question. A 20-mark question should have five key points in the answer, supported by relevant examples.
Practise answering full questions in 30 minutes so that you can maximise your performance. If you write beyond this time limit you will not complete the required number of questions.
History
Develop a regular pattern of revision – at least four 40-minute sessions weekly.
Draw up outline plans for all of the essays you are preparing.
You should now be at the stage where you can write full essays, in around 40 minutes, without the use of textbooks or notes.
Prepare answers for possible context question in the documents section which this year relates to the Apprentice Boys of Derry, Coleraine University, and the Sunningdale agreement.
It is often not possible to revise every topic. Ensure therefore that the topics you do revise are done in some detail.
For example, if you are revising Home Rule within Irish history, you need to cover every aspect of the topic from 1870 to 1914, including the attitudes of successive British governments to the question, as well as Unionist responses during the various Home Rule crises.
Orla McGrath, 18 St Mary’s Holy Faith, Glasnevin
I’m studying Arts in Maynooth, but I remember my mocks was a very scary time. It’s more intense than the Leaving Cert because it’s your first experience of exams. We had just had Christmas and because the Leaving Cert course is so long there was still a lot to cover. So I was nervous of what would come up but, once they were over, it was a big relief.
In the Leaving Cert there’s a lot of choice. In economics, for example, there are lots of questions, but you only have to answer some, so the paper was doable even if you hadn’t finished the course. When the actual Leaving Cert came around, we had covered it, so there was much more choice in terms of what you could answer.
The mocks were a good thing for me and my results were better in the Leaving Cert. They give you the motivation to do a bit of studying. You remember the experience of doing the exam and it helps you understand what it takes to do well.
Philip Chatham, 18 Ardscoil Eanna, Crumlin
I’m doing Genetics and Cell Biology in DCU now, but I did my Leaving Cert last year.
I found the mocks all right, because our school did Christmas exams a few weeks before, so it was just more of the same – another exam.
We had been through past papers a lot in class, so we knew what the format would be. Some of our teachers wrote their own mock papers, so in those exams we had to answer only things we had already covered.
A lot of my marks were a bit lower than they were in the real exam, because obviously you’re doing it earlier in the year so there are things on the paper you may not have covered yet.
But the exams gave me hints on what I should study – what parts I was weakest on and so on.
The mocks also helped me decide (in certain subjects) what level I should do in the exam. It’s never fun to do exams, but they are useful.
Méabh O’Leary, 19 Manor House, Raheny
The mocks didn’t bother me that much at the time, because I knew they weren’t the real thing.
Before I went in, everybody told me “you’re not going to do as well as in the Leaving Cert, so don’t be too worried”. It relaxed a lot of people to look at it that way and no-one in my year got stressed about it. The other thing I found was the Leaving Cert is more spaced out, whereas the mocks are really crammed together, which makes a big difference.
The difference was huge, marks-wise, but then I didn't really study for the mocks. The four months or so before the exams was enough for me. But most people do; very few go down in marks between the two. Having said that, it is worth doing. The last major exam I did was the Junior Cert and it's not the same. It's a lot longer, there's more to do and it's more detailed – so the mocks are great preparation. Interviews by Eoin Cunningham
LISTEN UP Preparing for the oral and aural exams
Oral Exams
Be well prepared on the following subjects.
Yourself – your family, where you live, your past times or hobbies.
Sport – your participation, achievements and interest.
Your school – your friends and your subjects. What do you like most about your school?
Holiday and carrer plans.
Your hopes for the Leaving Cert and your study regime.
Current affairs – make sure you have something prepared on the economic recession or a major event like the Haiti earthquake.
Aural Exams
You can improve your performance by listening carefully to CDs from last year’s exam.
Focus on the key question forms, the when, how, and what, etc, so that you are familiar with the format required.
Familiarise yourself with key vocabulary in the language of the paper you are taking.
Be familiar with the following: countries, counties, towns and cities, months, time, numbers, occupations, academic subjects, types of schools, and vocabulary relevant to the CAO college admission process, job applications and interviews.
Brian Mooney would like to thank teaching colleagues in Oatlands College, Mount Merrion for their assistance in preparing these articles
