Week 2 of Fraser's Comprehensive Course

Week 2 had more S1 & 2 content than week 1, not in terms of content covered during classes but with theory and post class work.

Monday was the S1 webinar, we went over the activity from last week before getting into this weeks content which consisted of familiarizing ourselves with the types of text that we may come across in S1 of the GAMSAT. Along with strategies and takeaways that I've listed at the end of this blog. Post class work for S1 was heftier than last week, videos describing techniques and common mistakes when approaching technical texts, literary proses, proverbs and short comments, poetry, plays and dialogues, diagrams,  and cartoons stems, along with ACER tactics and support videos. All of which totaling 2+ hrs worth of videos and two quizzes with a variety of stems totaling 50 questions, these also took me 2 hours to mark and log.

Tuesday was by far the biggest day, pre-class we were given textbook-style recommended readings which took 3 hours to read which also included some activities, I've listed what I learned at the end of the blog. In the webinar we discussed themes, how to identify them, then to make it specific so we can use them in our essays and finally developing a contention. Also got the marks for week 1 essay Tuesday night, it was a score out of 100, not sue if it was moderated across the cohort to create a bell curve like they do in the GAMSAT. I didn't do this on Tuesday but I also had my first essay private tutorial, which was held online due to COVID restrictions. It was only an hour and most the time was spent taking about general point to last weeks essay, then discussed ways to improve my theme. We analysed the theme for the first essay but didn't get too deep into the second or we would have ran out of time. The advice given was sort of personalized, the tutor gave me a technique to develop a good contention from a theme and write a introduction. The steps were kinda "cookie cutter" and could probably have told in the webinar and it would of fit in but the tutor used my first essay as an example of how to use it.

Wednesday was light, we went through the webinar content much slower and only had an hours worth of videos to go through afterwards. These videos were about cellular analogy, single cell exceptions and physiological anatomy. There was also a quiz with 7 questions only took 20 minutes to complete, mark and log.

Thursday was back to dense chemistry work, we discussed a general technique to use on all chemistry questions then went into concepts of addition/elimination reactions, substitution reactions, redox reactions, acid base reactions, benzene reactions, resonance, induction, Grignard synthesis, tautomerism, aldol reactions, diels-alder reactions, claisen-cope rearrangements and conjugation. Post class was just a quiz with 6 questions.

Friday, very similar to last week in terms of amount of content. We went further into force diagrams and 2D motion then covered magnetism and electricity. Post class contained an hour and a half of videos about circuits and bio-mechanics. There was also a quiz with 10 questions, took me about 45 minutes to complete, mark and log.

My takeaways:

S1

• Technical texts
• Usually segmented into literature review, contention and application
• From these you can decipher the
• views
• structure
• tone and theme
• arguments
• and main point
• literary prose
• determine what each character wants, their opinions of each other and infer what is unsaid by the way they act
•  from there you can identify the
• genre
• theme
• tone
• if there is imagery or symbolism present
• the plot
• and the characters
• then understand the relation ship from these elements
• practice road mapping
• poetry
• identify the key events in each stanza, the tone or emotions of the author or characters and identify literary techniques
• import to read widely and experience all types of poems and poetic techniques
• proverbs and comments
• identifying the themes and subjects of each comment using the halves approach
• split the comment into two the theme of the first half and second half should be the same but have different ideas on each comment
• Three steps
• situate yourself in the appropriate context that reflects the speaker
• identify the central contention
• then evaluate the argument 
• Cartoons
• identify the issue, find the humor and understand the main point
• good to have an understanding of satire and humor techniques
• pay attention to the text on the cartoon, symbols, foreground and background 
• what is the focal point? 
• is something being said about it?
• diagrams
• focus on the arrows, the big picture, titles and subtext
• questions first approach
• CHARCOAL mnemonic
• context
• heading
• axis
• relationships
• contrast 
• other table/diagrams
• arrows
• labels

S2

• General takeaway
• Outline your position on the theme
• identify a topic
• find an appropriate scope for your argument
• be more precise, usually you're broader than you think. It also helps you stay on track
• Great S2 essay topics
• moral arguments
• ethics
• politics
• culture and religion
• history
• Structural inequality is a heavy hitting topic that can be used for a variety of themes
• It refers to a form of violence wherein some social structure or social institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs.

S3

• Using the FEAR acronym to approach animal physiological systems
• Fundamental principle
• equilibrium
• alteration
• reason
• Using the CBSTI acronym to tackle chemical mechanism questions
• Count the number of carbons
• birds eye view
• what does the structure look like?
• are there major changes?
• spacing
• i.e. the rule of the reaction
• tetris
• understand where the parts of the products originated from and where they move to
• inertia
• some parts of the reaction should not change be sure to not consider the answer where it has moved
• Tips to approach classical physics questions
• Find out what you have
• what you need
• then what you can do 
• always draw a diagram if you can