Pingu Posted July 31, 2015 Report Share Posted July 31, 2015 Hello everyone, I'm halfway through my summer, and when I get back to school, I'll be starting the Maths HL course.I am wondering what topics I need to brush up on before I start the course, to ensure my readiness. Also, my maths teacher told me that it would be a good idea to "practice my algebra". What sorts of exercises/questions do you think I can do to help achieve that? Also, my teacher told me I have to be fluent with my maths working, as in I can't make any silly mistakes while solving problems. How do you think I can become fluent in my working? Practicing until I stop making silly mistakes? Thanks! 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
maturk Posted July 31, 2015 Report Share Posted July 31, 2015 Hey! It's really cool that you are already preparing for your classes; but, don't worry too much because you have an entire two years ahead of you. If you want to brush up on your basic math knowledge before going into real IB classes, I highly suggest you get a hold of the syllabus for HL math and looking at the "prior learning topics". Here the IBO tells you everything you need to know before starting the HL course. The syllabus can be found my googling or by looking in the "Files" section of ibsurvival but make sure you look at the syllabus made for 2014 because this is the newest one. If you understand all the prior learning topics, then I guess you could go ahead and jump into the first topic. Unless you don't already have some sort of math book, doing questions might be a little tricky. You could google questions based on certain topics and you could also borrow a IB math book from a library if you really want to. But just remember, reading the theory is not enough for mathematics, you have to do practice problems! Regarding your question about silly mistakes, this is something that still haunts me... and I'm already a year into the program. Making mistakes is inevitable; however, you will learn to do less mistakes as you do more and more practice questions. When I started the IB I used to rush trough the problems in my book as quickly as possible and this made me do a lot of silly mistakes all over the place. Now I try to stay more focused and meticulous as I do practice questions which helps quite a bit. I think all you can do is practice more and figure out what makes you do silly mistakes, which is for most people the fact that they rush trough the problem. Cheers and good luck! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ebu Posted July 31, 2015 Report Share Posted July 31, 2015 Honestly, I would tell you to relax before ib.... But if you really want to prepare, I practiced my algebra naturally by doing questions from Korean math question books, maybe you could find one in your own language. If nothing works, just do problems your past studies. Reducing silly mistakes is something that a lot of people struggle. In my case, I try to eliminate anything that distracts me. When you do maths revision, put away things that may distract you (e.g music, phone etc) and read the question carefully, word by word before attempting to solve the problem. There have been cases where I missed a word from the question and hence made a critical mistake. Hope this helped! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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