It can be quite common to come across students studying higher level Math, for instance Singapore A-Level H2 Math, who, even after practicing really hard, still end up failing their tests and exams. There are definitely various possible reasons but a prominent one that I want to highlight to you in this video would be when a student adopt the wrong approach in learning some of the high level Math topics. And good news is, this can be easily corrected.
Theory-Centric Topics
For A-Level H2 Math, certain topics like Functions and Vectors, are to be learnt as Theory-Centric topics. And for such topics, a good theoretical framework is necessary before any practice is going to make logical sense. But most students have developed the habit in primary and secondary schools to learn a new topic by first presenting themselves to questions, and by solving the problems brought forth by those questions, they start getting to know their topics better. This approach works well when a topic is Practice-Centric but this is definitely not not going to help when a topic is Theory-Centric. And at higher level Math, this is the juncture when more and more Theory-Centric topics are introduced into the syllabus.
One possible way to identify whether a topic is Theory-Centric is by reading the solutions to the related questions. For instance, if, say, you are starting to learn the A-Level Math topic Vectors, you can try by skipping the theories and jump straight into reading the solutions to Vectors questions … I doubt even after ploughing through quite a few Vectors questions you will have a have a good enough idea of how Vectors work. And this is probably hinting to us that we are looking at a Theory-Centric topic. So if the student continues to just keep practicing questions to learn such topics, the cognitive returns will continue to be insignificant, hence leading to failures in tests and exams.
What we need to do is, once we have identified a topic as Theory-Centric, we should allocate an adequate amount of time to patiently understand the theories and concepts and explanations before we start practicing questions. At Achevas, when we learn such Theory-Centric topics, we will always structure the lessons such that the emphasis is placed on the theories and concepts discussions instead of mindlessly practicing questions after questions.
I hope you can really try learning Singapore A-Level H2 Math by customizing your study approaches based on whether the particular topic you are studying is Theory-Centric or Practice-Centric because I truly believe this is one of the best and most efficient way for you to learn higher level Math and score in exams!