Many of you will be doing GCSE maths or A-level maths courses this year. Here are a few tips that I have put together that you may find useful in helping you make progress on what can often be regarded as a difficult subject.
Maths is all about building on earlier steps. If you don’t know the basics then you will almost inevitably struggle and you will lose motivation for the subject.
There is no quick fix for making progress in maths, no magic wand that will get you a good grade. You need to make the effort and want to rise to the challenge of solving a problem rather than giving in at the first sign of difficulty.
How do you meet this challenge?
Hopefully you will have a teacher who will structure topics and questions in such a way that you will not fall at the first fence. You would expect to do some basic problems at first that would exercise the initial concepts and then to tackle questions that apply one or more of these principles and also draw from other topic areas. Expect to encounter some difficulties, that’s only natural but it is the way you go about handling these problems that will dictate your progress.
When stuck, don’t give up immediately. Read the question through again and make sure that you are using all the information given in the question. If not, look to see if you can figure out why that information maybe of use.
If you are still stuck, don’t get lazy and give up. That will get you know where. Look for similar examples from the text book you are using, generally in the preceding section. Often, it is a case of just changing the numbers or letters and following the same method as the example.
If this proves not to be useful, again don’t give in. Seek other sources of information. It is so simple these days to type into a search engine such as Google some keywords on your topic. It is extremely likely that you will find someone has written some form of notes or examples on your problem and can explain it in a way that suits your way of thinking. Suppose you were having a problem with trigonometry at GCSE, just try typing in GCSE maths trigonometry in the search bar and see how many sites offer help.
If this fails, there is still plenty of support out there on the internet. There are a number of sites that offer a maths forum where you can ask questions and receive an answer for free.
The secret is never give up until you have exhausted several lines of inquiry as mentioned above.
When it comes to examinations, you should be aiming to tackle as many questions as possible from maths past papers so that you can adapt to the style and difficulty of questions that the examiners set.
These papers should be readily available from teachers but if not then contact the publications department of the examination board and they will be able to send you maths papers. It is important that you always check your answers and methods. Mark schemes can be obtained from the examination boards or you may find your teacher has written out model solutions or they may be available over the internet.
A maths tutor is also another way where you can have help and support. It is best to ask around and have someone recommend somebody. If this fails, there are many tutoring agencies which have sites on the internet offering maths tuition.
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