Doing past papers

[Xerox]

Basic question, doing past papers, when should you start doing them? A friend of mine has just started doing old exam papers to practice, and my question when would it be clever to start those?

You might not want to do it too early as you have not covered enough of the syllabus yet, but you don't wanna start to late either for obvious reasons... So what should you do?

[Mr. Shiver]

I would say once you've covered all the necessary material, since the main purpose of past papers is to be able to practice writing under the examination time constraints. But if you don't think you'll be able to finish them all between the time you've covered all the necessary material and the actual exam, then trying to answer as many questions you can on a few papers early on wouldn't be a bad idea either.

Edited August 26, 2008 by Mr. Shiver

[moneyfaery]

You could go through past papers and just answer as much as possible. Sometimes, just reading the question and the answer gives you a good idea of what examiners want and also helps to reinforce the idea/concept in your head (if you don't want to write/print out 843928430928490 pages of paper).

I'm assuming this is for group 4 subjects? Personally, for bio, I read over my notes and tried to understand them. About 2 weeks prior to the exam, after I had reviewed all my notes, I took out all my past papers and really started concentrating on those, referring back to my notes when necessary.

[Xerox]

well it is both for group 4 subjects and math i guess, but 2 weeks prior to the exam isn't much... we will probebly be done with math before the christmas holiday so that leaves like 4 months to revise

[moneyfaery]

2 weeks just for past papers to get a feel of what the exam will be like, and time constraints. You may need a bit more or a bit less, I dunno. Do spend a lot of time reading over and understanding notes (especially if the notes have more details than you need to know... if you function at a higher level, an exam at a lower level will be a breeze). Then again, my exam was SL so I knew it wasn't hard and my study "days" are pretty long.

For math, spend as much time as possible on past papers...

[__inthemaking]

I'm a May 2008 candidate and I started doing past papers in April 2008.

I don't think I gave myself enough time though, because I ended up not even doing the past papers for Economics, Biology or English.

I did every single past paper for Chemistry, Math and French, but for the other 3 subjects, I just looked at the questions and then the answers to see what they were looking for in a response.

[moneyfaery]

Oh, maybe I shoulda added that I only had SL Econ and SL Bio to worry about.

[Abu]

I'd start now for Maths, you need as much practice as possible. At this stage, a paper a week is good. P1 one week, p2 another.

Start with the same regiment for your other subs too, but don't do too many otherwise the chances to have a paper in the mocks that you've already done. Which will detract from the value of mocks really.

[djshah]

Basic question, doing past papers, when should you start doing them? A friend of mine has just started doing old exam papers to practice, and my question when would it be clever to start those?

You might not want to do it too early as you have not covered enough of the syllabus yet, but you don't wanna start to late either for obvious reasons... So what should you do?

I think doing IB past papers from the very start is a very good idea. By doing the IB past papers you are setting your mind to how IB wants you to answer the questions. It does not matter how hard you study always. Sometimes knowing what the marker wants is a good idea. Therefore as soon as you finish a part of a syllabus do questions on it so that you have covered it fully by even knowing what kind of questions to expect under that section in your finals.

Although it is a challenge to find questions that are part of the syllabus you have finished. I think that is why IBO has made "question banks". This is an application that includes alot of past questions on a specific subject. For example mathematics. You open the application and classify the questions to lets say SL and choose calculus. Therefore all the SL calculus questions will be displayed making it easier and giving you excellent revision/practice. BUT in the site they mention it as a teachers resource so i am not sure if students can buy it. I havent tried to buy because its too expensive.

You have to buy the question bank. They are quite expensive. For each subject the price is more than 150$. But you should just check the current price at the offical IBo site at their online store.

Click here to go directly to the question bank store

Edited August 27, 2008 by djshah

[cereja]

Our Calc HL teacher will give us all past papers in form of problem sessions. He gives us 1 a week with paper 1 and paper 2 questions. By the end of the year, we'll have done every single question in past IB exams.

Other teachers, like Spanish, said there's no much need to practice, as long as you have the format.

Ask your teacher about when to start. They know the subject and the exams better than you

[moneyfaery]

For some subjects, there's no need to practice. I didn't write a single past paper for econ.

But for G4/math, it is vital that you do past papers. I think I woulda gotten a 4 or something instead of 7 in bio had I not done past papers...