A comparison between EOY '08 and Prelims '09

I read the archives of my blog just now and I stumbled upon a post I made last year, an analysis of my EOY (End-Of-Year Exams) '08 performance. I though that I would put it in this post, along with my performance for the Prelim exams this year, for a side-by-side comparison. So here goes last year's post, with this year's analysis.

###A preliminary analysis of my End Of Year exams 08###
Exam #1: English Language (23/9/08)
Ok, so I had originally decided to do the narrative. But, upon seeing the narrative question (I almost typed "sawing") , I thought I had better do something else. Hence, I went to the discursive question. Just hope that my arguments are good enough for the examiner. Also, for the situational writing, we had to select between 4 choices, when I was expecting 2. Of course, this meant more time for thinking. Not to forget, I could handle the comprehension in Paper 2. It wasn't too difficult, so that was quite a relief.

Prelims: English Language (1127)
Apart from the summary, I'm glad the rest of the papers went relatively well. I thought I almost killed my chances of an A when I chose to write the descriptive essay; that turned out better than I expected. Apparently I overloaded on repetition for my speech, and the summary was as good as crap. 3/10 for language? HELLO!

Exam #2: Social Studies (24/9/08)
Pure mugging, this one. Given a choice between a topic with only 2 types of questions and a topic with 7 types of questions, which one whould you want to study? Of course, the former, since you can get away with memorising 2 model essays, while for the latter, there are 7. Hence, I did Q2 in 40 mins, thanks to my memorising. The inference question was okay, but I busted my C&C and left barely any time to complete the reliability question. So that was a lesson learnt.

Prelims: Social Studies (2192/01)
I misinterpreted the Sources C, D and E (half the sources!!!), which meant that I lost a valuable 11 marks here. If not for this mistake, I could have gotten an A1 for Combined Humanities. But how can I prevent such misinterpretations from happening again?

Exam #3: Higher Chinese (3/10/08)
The letter was okay, but I'm not so sure about the compo. Just hope it doesn't fail. And Paper 2 was relatively easy, true to Ms Qin's words!

Prelims: Higher Chinese (1111)
After throwing all my firepower in for the 报章报道, I still cannot get at least 50/70. Looks like I need to replenish all my weaponry for the O' levels ...

Exam #4: Elementary Mathematics (6/10/08)
This is like riding a bike up a rather hilly terrain, before descending down gentle slopes. But it's okay.

Prelims: Elementary Mathematics (4016)
Didn't hit expectations. Though my expectations are rather high.

Exam #5: Chemistry (7/10/08)
This left me with time to sleep, but Mr Osgodby woke me up, so I decided to run through the Fahrenheit 451 quotes I'd memorised instead.

Prelims: Chemistry (5072)
Nice to know I didn't drop too many marks. Though I still made a few careless mistakes here and there, my MCQ still managed to make me happy ;)

Exam #6: Literature (Elective) (7/10/08)
I was expecting a thematic question, but that was about censorship by the dystopian government in Fahrenheit 451. I had prepared for other themes, setting and style, so I could not do the Beatty and Montag question and did the Faber question instead. And I wanted to do poem, but it's tough to me, so I did the prose. I hope I can get good grades, since I have 3 personal feelings (a personal best) !

Prelims: Literature (2192/04)
Good to know that I didn't screw my F451 essay on the "Development of Montag", but the same can't be said for my unseen prose ...

Exam #7: Geography (8/10/08)
Having prepared for plate tectonics (my bet was the questions would weigh heavily on volcanoes) , weather and climate and natural vegetation only (rivers and coasts had quite a lot to memorise) , I did Q1 and Q2. I'm feeling confident about this paper.

Prelims: Geography (2235)
I am VERY pleased with my results for this. It feels nice to be on the top of the cohort, especially after overcoming failures in the start of Sec 3.

Exam #8: Additional Mathematics (9/10/08)
Stumped at the first question! Fooled by a +/- sign! I have to find a way to reduce the occurrence of such errors that have to be corrected by checking the answers thoroughly.

Prelims: Additional Mathematics (4038)
Didn't hit expectations too. While working through the paper, I also made a few errors that could be easily avoided if I checked my paper. Time to work on error prevention ...

Exam #9: Biology (9/10/08)
I would say that this paper is definitely for someone who did not study in depth. Also, I had hinged on an enzyme question to come out. it did not disappoint, but it brought along a fresh twist to it. I look forward to such questions that allow me to learn new things from exam papers.

Prelims: Biology (5094)
This fared the worst among the sciences. I should have studied more thoroughly on ecology and Man's impacts on the environment, but otherwise it's OK.

Exam #10:Physics (10/10/08)
A killer, I admit. I thought the paper (specifically Section B) could be improved. So little space to do any calulations! Also, there are questions where a question is at the end of a page, with lines at the next page. Darn, I wrote under the question itself, and so I had to happily copy the answers onto the lines. (The "happily" was a sarcastic remark, if you do not get it.)

Prelims: Physics (5058)
I'm really surprised by my results! I had expected a rather low mark (low A1) for I encountered totally unknown questions, and I felt that I was answering them crappily, so I wasn't expecting much from the paper, like last year ...

For the September Holidays, it's time to strengthen and upgrade existing weapons, acquire more advanced weapons, and to test fire them thoroughly. There's lots to do in the September Holidays ...