BlogBiologyThe 5-Step Guide to Studying for HSC Biology

The 5-Step Guide to Studying for HSC Biology

Studying for HSC Biology - Featured Image

Studying for HSC Biology can be hard. I think we’ve all been in the position of planning to study from 6pm to 11pm but then not doing anything until…10.40pm. 

Let’s make studying for HSC Biology less stressful and make every single minute sitting at your desk worth it!

But how do you actually reach all these goals while studying for HSC Biology?

We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeve and we’re going to share them with you in 5 easy steps! 

Goals for HSC Biology Study
Step 1: Write your HSC Biology study notes
Step 2: Complete HSC Biology practice questions
Step 3: Memorise the content
Step 4: Mimic test conditions
Step 5: Increase accuracy in recall

Goals for HSC Biology Study

On your journey towards studying for HSC Biology, you have 3 goals to reach:

Goal #1: Understanding the content: Aim to learn special terminology associated with that topic, and learn what main concepts the topic is trying to teach

Goal #2: Memorising the content:  You now know what the topics are about, recalling information with specific examples without referring back to your notes

Goal #3: Practice answering questions: This step is crucial as markers only ever see your final answer so it’s important to get your response as polished and specific as possible by familiarising yourself with as many questions as possible

And that’s the secret to studying for HSC Biology: having an objective during your study, and aiming to achieve it during the time that you are studying. 

So, let’s jump into how to achieve these goals, step by step!

Step 1: Write your HSC Biology study notes

You’ve probably heard this a million times already. It seems like such a simple step but it’s easy to ignore its importance.

To fully solidify your understanding of a topic, it’s best to write it down. Ideas in your head are not synonymous to writing it down — your brain is okay with disjointed concepts but it’s not okay to do that when writing a response.

Note: Writing your own notes helps you remember the content, reveal parts that you might not understand, and kick-start your brain (and body) to getting into the habit of collating and recording information.

But these still aren’t solid, tangible steps to write notes. So, as part of Step 1, I recommend the following:

Part 1: Write Notes for NOW

To start your note writing journey, write notes for the topic you are currently learning in class. Many classes don’t start from the beginning, so start from where you are now.

After you come home from school, try and spend 15-30 minutes each night writing up notes from what you learnt in class that day. It seems like a short time but consider all the other classes you need to study for!

These 15-30 minutes should involve you:

  • Going back to the syllabus and visiting the particular topic that you were learning that day
  • Refer to handouts and notes you received that day
  • Look at relevant chapters or pages from your class textbook
  • Any other resources which would be helpful to your understanding.

Your next step is to summarise the dot point in 5 bullet points or less in your own words.

Think back to your time in class and about these questions when making your notes: 

  • What were 3 points that your teacher was stressing?
  • What can you summarise and condense into a single point?
  • What are key words and definitions that are critical to this dot point?

Beneath these 3 main points, it may also be a good idea to add:

  • Diagrams, figures and images
  • A more in-depth explanation of the topic
  • Links to videos/websites that helped you learn this concept

When you come back to your notes, these points should act as triggers for recalling information because you’ll have the most essential concepts down — everything else is just filling in the blanks.

Note: Spending 20 minutes understanding 5 critical points is better than spending 10 minutes rote learning a paragraph from the textbook (or other sources of information).

Part 2: Write notes for THEN

Now that you have notes for the current dot point you are working on, start on your notes from previous topics at the beginning of the syllabus that you don’t have notes for. This should also take you another 15-30 minutes.

The syllabus is designed so that the topics have a logical flow and each dot point prepares you for the next dot point. Following this is a great way to fill in the blanks for the lessons you will have in the near future.

Imagine your class starts with Module 5: Heredity, Topic 1: Reproduction – the beginning of the beginning. You should start writing notes for Module 6: Genetic Change, Topic 1: Mutation.

Before you know it, you’ll already have notes for future modules. Remember to take it one syllabus dot point at a time.

Note: Our goal is to create succinct notes that will reduce your time studying in the future. 5 minutes spent now is 50 minutes saved in stressful and busy times.

If you get stuck at any point with any difficult words which you aren’t sure of, head over here to our Biology glossary! 

Struggled in Year 11? It might be worthwhile to revise the fundamentals of the subject and fill any learning gaps you might have! Check out our Complete Breakdown of Year 11 Biology Module 1: Cells as the Basis of Life for everything you need to know and more module guides inside!

Step 2: Complete HSC Biology practice questions

Completing practice questions straight after writing notes is effective because it helps to put your knowledge to use. 

This, in turn, will help to reinforce your understanding of the content even further, making studying for HSC Biology less painful!

You can check out some of our practice questions for each module in HSC Biology here!

It is perfectly okay to use your notes in this part because the focus should be on how you are structuring your answers so that you are prepared for the HSC-style questions.

You can also use this chance to add to your notes more things you learn from doing past papers.

Don’t worry if the questions freak you out! They’re really just the same words as those in the HSC Syllabus but re-arranged into a slightly different order! It’s all content that you have seen before.

Unsure if you’re answering practice questions correctly? Get some support with an HSC Sydney Biology tutor!

Step 3: Memorise the content

Now it’s time to memorise the content without referring back to your notes.

To start off with, try to memorise content for a few specific questions. After building your confidence that you can answer these questions, try memorising more content.

If you need a quick recap of some HSC Biology content, make sure you check out HSC Together which has FREE videos on every single HSC Biology dot point so that you can effectively master concepts and content!

Each person has their own unique approach to memorisation. Finding out what your study style is can save you weeks of studying because the time you spend studying is just that efficient.

Check out this to find out what your study style is. It takes trial and error so don’t be afraid to test them all out.

Also, I promise you that it will be a little bit easier to memorise the content because you have already engaged with it in the process of doing your practice questions!

How can I memorise efficiently?

Research shows that studying for short increments of time over a long period of time is the best way to remember something. This means that looking over 10 mins over a few concepts every day for 6 days is better than an hour of pure cramming.

So, how can you make 10 mins easier?

Flashcard apps are an easy way to flick through concepts. It’s easy to fill out and easy to read on your phone. A few minutes on the bus everyday is going to reduce your future studying time by hours.

But how does interval study work?

When you first learn a concept, new connections in your brain are being created. These connections aren’t stable and this is why you forget something about a day after you learn it.

To commit something into long term memory, you need to repetitively revise it, and strengthen this connection so that you won’t forget it.

To summarise, the most effective way of studying for HSC Biology is spacing your study time out and repeating it. 

Step 4: Mimic test conditions

You’ve written your notes, tackled some questions and memorised the content. It’s now time to do a question without referring back to your notes.

But don’t worry if you do need to refer back to your notes – the fact that you are attempting the question without notes is already a really huge step in the right direction!

Time yourself 

Another step that you can take is to try to limit the time that you spend on each question. 

When you time yourself, give yourself two minutes for each mark that the question is worth: if it is a 5-mark question, give yourself 10 minutes. This will lay the pressure on but it will also cut down the time you spend studying for HSC Biology!

After you’re comfortable with this, try to work your way closer to the same number of minutes as the number of marks: 5 minutes for your 5-mark question.

Note: Your final goal is that you should be able to complete your question in -10% the number of marks, so 4.5 minutes for that 5-mark question!

Being able to do this will make your exams much, much, easier because you’ll suddenly find that you have slightly more time for each question in the real exam!

Check out our questions for both Year 11 and Year 12 HSC Biology here!

Mark yourself

It’s not fun to look back on your response — critiquing your own response is hard because you often want to believe you have the perfect response, but getting into the nitty-gritty is important! 

So, grab a different coloured pen and go through your response:

  • Are all key concepts defined and explained?
  • Is there a clear structure? (Intro explanation addressing the question)
  • Did you miss any parts?
  • Are there sample answers to the questions that you can use?

In this step, you are learning from your mistakes so that when the questions come up in your future questions, you are able to create more coherent and succinct response.

After marking, consider rewriting your response. It’s one thing to know what you did wrong, but it’s another to take steps to fix the response. If the question is a 3 or 5 marker, you might not have to do this, but if it’s an 8 or 10 marker, consider fixing the response up as it may come up in the future.

Step 5: Increase accuracy in recall

Your goal now is to get to 100% accuracy in your recall! If you’re not making too much progress with the tactic that you have been using, try a different one!

100% accuracy doesn’t mean that you have to know every detail and every number. What it means is that with every question, you are not hesitating to write something down or collect your response because you have it down.

Let’s take a look at Question 22(b) from the 2014 HSC Biology exam:

Drinking water contaminated with dissolved lead (a heavy metal) can cause a serious disease. Classify this disease as either infectious or non-infectious. Justify your answer. 

Let’s take a look at what you would need to know for this question:
  • Infectious disease is caused by a pathogen and can get transmitted
  • Heavy metal isn’t a pathogen because its not alive and it cant get passed on. Its actually a carcinogen
  • Non-infectious disease is illness caused by factors such as genetics, lifestyle and environment
  • Heavy metal carcinogen inducing mutations mutation in important gene controlling cell cycle cancer/illness
  • It’s a non-infectious disease

You should be able to recall these dot points clearly. Though, writing it concisely is a whole other matter.

In conclusion…

Doing a few practice questions for 15-20 minutes here and there is better than not studying for HSC Biology. Keep consistent and keep trying until you are 100% confident! Keeping on going and you will find yourself improving in no time.

Remember what our 5 steps in studying for HSC Biology have been:

  1. Writing notes for your class now and in the future. This step you familiarise yourself with content and terminology
  2. Doing practice questions. Apply the knowledge you learnt in step 1 into a coherent response. You are also learning how to piece together topics
  3. Memorising. You are committing content to long-term memory. This step may be the most time consuming due to short repetitions of content over a long period of time
  4. Time and mark your response. Write at your max speed and see what you can improve on next time
  5. 100% accuracy. You have corrected your incorrect responses and can write faster than lightning.

Follow these steps and studying for HSC Biology should become faster and easier to do!

Looking for some extra help with HSC Biology?

We have an incredible team of HSC Biology tutors and mentors who are new HSC syllabus experts!

We can help you master the HSC Biology syllabus and ace your upcoming HSC Biology assessments with personalised lessons conducted one-on-one in your home or at one of our state of the art campuses in Hornsby or the Hills!

We’ve supported over 8,000 students over the last 10 years, and on average our students score mark improvements of over 20%!

To find out more and get started with an inspirational HSC Biology tutor and mentor, get in touch today or give us a ring on 1300 267 888!

Gia-Yen Luong has been an Art of Smart coach for 3 years, coaching a range of subjects including HSC English, Legal Studies, Biology, Chemistry and General Maths. She is in her final year of a mega double degree in Law/Science (Neuroscience). She graduated high school with an ATAR of 99.9 and spends most of her time trying to convince people that it’s wholly possible to get such a mark while still having a normal life during YR 12. She enjoys reading, podcasts, and making fun resources for her articles.

45,861 students have a head start...

Get exclusive study content & advice from our team of experts delivered weekly to your inbox!

AOS Website Asset 2

Looking for Biology Support?

Discover how we can help you!

AOS Website Asset 1