SPM Tips Which are a Year Overdue

SPM Tips by Subject

Introduction

Assalammualaikum guys, today I want to share some of my tips for those of you preparing for SPM. I’m not trying to brag or anything by posting this but instead I hope that you guys can learn something from this and get results better than mine. F.Y.I. I’m a full-science student so I took 9 subjects for SPM only. I did take ‘prinsip perakaunan’ in form 4 but I chose to drop it in form 5 because I loathed accounting. Don’t worry though, I’ll try to get some tips from my friends who scored A+ for accounts and post it sometime later.

Someone edit a '+' after that A please.

Bahasa Melayu (Malay Language)

For me personally my language subjects were especially hard because I was more gifted in memorising and I loved science. Because of this, I had to enrol in BM tuition which greatly helped me a lot. I highly recommend going to tuition for BM because there are some things you can’t self-learn for BM (like the format and what not). The key thing at my tuition centre was that the teacher made us read newspapers for 30 minutes then jot down current issues which we could add to our essay. For BM kertas 1, the more facts and current issues you have, the more ‘matang’ your essay will look. Then my tuition teacher spent about an hour teaching kosa kata, peribahasa, kata-kata hikmat, komsas, and writing techniques. What really helped me a lot was the exercises we did after my tuition teacher taught us. For the first week we would do a Bahagian A essay, then the next week we would do Bahagian B. The following week we did a komsas practice paper (novel and antologi) and then the last week we did a full kertas 2 exercise. Every month the same order repeated and every week after an essay we would be given a ‘karangan contoh’ produced by a student from the tuition centre. In short, what I’m trying to say is you need to do a lot of practice for BM do be good, especially for your essay as that needs to be worked on as early as possible. For the komsas, novel and tatabahasa you just need to do a lot of practice papers but for writing karangan you need to practice a lot. Try to do a BM essay every week and get your BM teacher to check it if they are willing. To summarise what I did personally for each section of the paper, I made a short list below;

BM K1 (Karangan)

• ·      Bahagian A (based on bahan rangsangan)-This essay doesn’t have to be too long so don’t spend too much time, just be sure to put a few issues you’ve read about from the paper and add as many peribahasa and kata-kata hikmat. Memorise peribahasa and kata-kata hikmat which can be used in any essay no matter the topic like ‘sesal dahulu pendapatan, sesal kemudian tidak berguna’ and ‘masa depan itu dibeli oleh masa sekarang’. Minimum score to get A+ = 23/30
• ·      Bahagian B (karangan pilihan)- Write an essay as long as you can. A tip to make your essay longer is to add a lot of isu semasa or describe a few isu semasa in great length. Make sure you have a lot of nice kosa-kata and peribahasa. Make an impactful pendahuluan and penutup so the marker doesn’t lose interest. Minimum score to get A = 80/100

BM K2 (Komsas and tatabahasa)

• ·      For rumusan, just do a lot of practice. Copy the whole sentences and don’t lose marks for the pendahuluan and penutup as those are bonus marks. For isi tersurat try to find more than 6 in case some of your isi are wrong and for isi tersurat give at least one extra just in case. The isi don’t need huraian so just be short and precise (copy for isi tersurat).
• ·      For komsas, just read all the antologi’s. Do not rely on what teachers have spotted, it’d be better if you sharpen your KBAT answering skills. The KBAT questions for this section are normally easy and give a lot of marks (3-4). It would be best if you understood the plot of the story well, so even if you forgot the exact pengajaran or nilai, you can use common sense to think of one. If you can score in this section then you don’t need to worry about tatabahasa as it is really hard to score for the tatabahasa part if you’re not a BM genius.
• ·      For tatabahasa, just do a lot of practice, in form 4 I usually got 18-20 out of 35 but after a lot of practice papers at school and tuition I saw the pattern and was able to score 28-32. The peribahasa you memorise here can be used in your essay so think of it as hitting two birds with one stone.
• ·      For novel, make sure you read both novels (form 4 and form 5). Don’t just read the synopsis. If you know the story well, you can definitely answer well for this part. Instead of just memorising the pengajaran and the huraian, you can think of your own pengajaran and huraian. This makes it easier for you as there will be less to memorise. For the KBAT part, just write what you feel, don’t leave it black. Just write something that sounds related to the question. You may get an easy KBAT question like ‘Adakah anda suka pengakhiran plot novel tersebut?’ or you may be unfortunate enough to get something like, ‘Suggest a different title for the novel and give reasons why.’. Just be prepared by trying questions like this in class and discussing with your friends.

P.S.

·      For those of you wondering where I went to tuition, it was at Pusat Bimbingan Karya, Kuching, Sarawak (PBK). It’s really good though a tad expensive

·      For oral, I’ll make a different post about tips on how to speak well and confidently in BM and English.

Me after every essay.

English

I have to admit that compared to my other subjects, I put almost zero effort into studying for English. I don’t mean to brag but the English paper really tests your ability to write and comprehend English. As long as you can a write an interesting essay with minimal grammatical errors, you should be okay. For paper 2, just do a lot of practice. Try to score 15/15 for the objective part and don’t lose any marks at the information transfer and the comprehension questions. Summary is a bit hard because you’re expected to rephrase for the language mark but sometimes you can rephrase so much that you lose the mark for the content, so it takes a lot of practice to be able to get the content and language mark. Don’t worry though getting a 10/15 is quite okay so long as you didn’t lose any marks in the earlier sections. The poem part is ridiculously easy so long as you’ve read and studied the poem. For the novel section, try to do a lot of practices in class or by yourself and get a willing teacher to mark it. Most of the time if you have good language and your content is logical, you can score well enough. Don’t just rewrite the novel and narrate, instead you should add a lot of inferences and opinions to show your ‘kbatness’. Now we’ll move on to paper one; essay writing. For section A, memorise all the formats (report, formal letter, informal letter and etc.) as these are just bonus marks. Then make sure you put all the points given into your essay as just adding them in will give you marks. Try not to spend too much time on section A as it’s just joining all the points given into a decent essay. Do note any additional instructions below like ‘suggest two or more ways to ….’, as missing this will cause you to lose a few marks at the end. In my opinion, you shouldn’t write a super long essay for this as it would be time consuming and you would be more prone to making spelling and grammatical errors. For section B, make sure by form 5, you’ve already decided on what type of essay you want to write (factual, narrative, one-word based essays and etc.). Make sure you write a lot of essays before SPM as practice makes perfect. Do have your essay checked by a willing teacher so that you can fix your mistakes and make your essay better. You should also try to read your other friend’s essays as you can take bits and pieces from theirs which are good and put it into yours. Earlier I mentioned that you should choose what type of essay you plan to write right? Well, the point of this is because during the actual examination, you’ll only write one essay for section B, so why not just practice doing one type and perfecting that rather than being able to write average essays for each type. I chose to write a narrative so I practiced writing a lot of narratives. I chose to write a narrative as I will be free to write about whatever I want to and I can let my imagination run free. For those of you, who would rather memorise facts, then choose to write a narrative as you need to put those facts in to get a good mark. Besides writing a lot of practice essays, I also recommend reading a lot of novels, magazines, articles or biographies depending on what type of essay you’re going to choose to write. This will help you learn new words and for those of you with poor grammar, it can help you get used to seeing and writing grammatical sentences. For narratives, I recommend reading ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ as they have many short stories which are about the length you should write for your SPM essay. DO NOT MEMORISE THEM. Just take the plot and try to learn a few new words here and there. It is wrong to memorise complete essays but it isn’t wrong to plagiarise ideas from movies or books. I actually based my SPM trial essay of the movie 2012.

So in a nutshell, basically what I did was;

• ·      Read a heck load of novels and articles (in case I had to do a factual essay)
• ·      Read and collected a lot of SPM practice essay’s from my friends and from online blogs (Don’t memorise them, just get the plot and some vocab here and there)
• ·      Practiced writing many essays (My teacher made us do a lot of essays but not too many, sometimes we would just do a small mind map of our essay to practice our “plot skills”, an interesting story is an A+ story)
• ·      My grammar wasn’t too bad so paper 2 wasn’t a big problem but just like the BM tatabahasa section, doing a lot of practice helps
• ·      For your summary, try to work on it in parts, if you’re not good at locating the content, just practice doing that. You don’t have to write the whole thing just highlight it and check it. Eventually you’ll see the pattern. Once you’ve got that down, try rephrasing each content point separately than working your way up to rephrasing and restructuring the whole summary.
• ·      For the novel section, I just read the novel then had a lot of discussions with my friends about possible questions and basically what we thought about the novel. It’s best to jot down their thoughts because you can use them in your answer as KBAT answers. 

Sejarah

Sejarah I know too many of you is a killer subject. It is so important that you memorise EVERYTHING. I know it’s hard and it takes a lot of time and effort but I like to think of it as killing two birds with one stone. If you memorise facts for Sejarah, you can add them to your BM essay and they also help in your general knowledge for certain competitions like the Law Olympiad and what not. I personally didn’t use my textbooks because my teacher prepared notes in the form of i-think maps, so it was so much easier to memorise (Thank you cikgu Poh). I found it much more interesting to see the facts in a bubble map or a tree map and it also helped me memorise the facts easier as I’m a visual memoriser so the position of the fact on the map helps me rather than memorise an entire passage in the textbook. Make your own i-think maps based on the textbook or get it from a friend or an online source. Another thing I did quite regularly for Sejarah was a ton of exercises. My teacher would give us a lot of exercises after every topic. She accumulated all the past year questions by topic.  Every exam I would always buy the practice books to do. This is because if you do a million questions, you’re bound to have some of the questions come out during the exams. Make sure you do the practice questions as well as mark it and study the answer scheme. Don’t just look at and read the answers, you should recopy the answers as this helped me memorise better. It is essential that you do a lot of paper 1 practices as to get an A+ you cannot score lower than 36 for P1 (unless you can get 100 for paper 2). For paper 2, you needn’t worry too much, focus more on the structure questions as you can’t choose them. Try as many as you can, especially the KBAT questions. Discuss questions with your friends as this will enable you to share your ideas and get different answers. For the essay component, be confident on certain “tema’s”. I recommend you to choose the Tamadun Dunia ( Form 4 Chapter 1,2,3), Zaman Gelap dan Kedatangan British ke Tanah Melayu (Form 4 Chapter 9 and 10) and Malaysia dan Komuniti Antarabangsa (Form 5 last chapter). These are quite interesting and don’t have too many hard names to memorise like the first few chapters of form 5. I personally would choose Tamadun Islam over the last chapter of form 5 because the last chapter of form 5 requires a lot of concrete facts for answers, not just a “touch-n-go” answer (meningkatkan ekonomi, negara stabil, keselamatan negara sejahtera). Paper 3 make sure you come prepared, personally I had a lot of help from my teachers so I wasn’t too worried. I did research my own source material but I preferred what my teacher gave me. The main thing about paper 3 to get an A+ is how  you answer the question. Make sure you reiterate the question statement (ulang balik soalan). Don’t stray too far from the main point of the question, a long essay is not only troublesome to mark but a long and off-topic essay is hell for the marker. In short;

• ·      For paper 1, do a lot of practices and refer to the text books when in doubt of an answer. Aim to get 40/40 because the questions aren’t too hard if you’ve done a lot of practice questions and past year papers.
• ·      For paper 2, again do a lot of practices, you could do past years but I preferred doing questions that haven’t been asked because it’s unlikely questions repeat for paper 2 with the new KBAT questions coming. Try to memorise and study all the chapters from form 4 to form 5 so that your life will be easy but if time is not your ally then at least do the key chapters (F4 C1,C2,C3,C6,C9  F5 C1,C2,C3,C9). Personally, I couldn’t be bothered to do the negara part of form 5 because there was so much especially the dasar-dasar chapter.
• ·      For paper 3, prepare a lot of material to copy from during the exam. Be it from your teacher, friend, internet, books or magazines. Better to be over prepared then not having enough material. Ask your teachers on how to answer the questions according to the new ‘rubrick pemarkahan’. This is the key difference between an A and A+ mark for paper 3.

Maths

I don’t have too many tips for maths because let’s be honest, if you’re aiming for straight A+, modern maths should be easy as pie. However, don’t despair if you have trouble with maths, it’s not too late (hopefully) for you to improve your maths skills. Make sure you understand each topic and how to answer the questions. Don’t ask someone to show you how to do a question and leave them still being unable to answer a similar question like that yourself. Do a lot of exercise. Whenever I was bored, I would do a maths practice book. While waiting for my parents to pick me up from school or tuition, while waiting for class to start, in between studying Chemistry and Bio. Maybe it’s because I like maths but I ended up never scoring below 90 for my modern maths EXCEPT for one final sem exam. This is where top students slip up, their “Achilles heel”. SILLY MISTAKES. Some of us take maths so lightly till the point that we can finish paper 2 in 45 minutes but then end up getting 0 for all their graph questions (thank god I only got my graph sections wrong and still managed an 87 for my total sem 2 form 4 mark). After that incident, I did my paper not twice but thrice. The first time I would do it on the actual paper, then I would do the questions again on a foolscap paper. After that I compare my answers for both times and see if there are any which aren’t the same. Then, I would do the paper a third time but mentally instead, just me tapping away at my calculator. I have seen students get an A+ for add maths but only get an A for modern maths. Please don’t make careless mistakes during SPM, you only get one shot at your SPM maths paper.

In short, do a lot of exercises, ask your friends or teachers for help if you need it and DO NOT make silly mistakes. Do your paper multiple times if you must.

We've all done this ahahaha.

Pendidikan Islam

Personally, I don’t believe you should be asking me for tips of Pendidikan Islam. I know that everyone says agama is the easiest paper but this is the one subject which I didn’t study religiously at home (the irony). I just relied on what my Ustaz taught during class, we didn’t even cover all the topics form form 4 or form 5 by the time SPM came. Because of this, I spent the whole month before SPM preparing for agama only. I went through at least 10 practice books and trial papers as well as the past year questions. I’m not telling you to study last minute for agama but this was just how I did it. For paper 1, make sure you memorise all those names and terms. The essay part you can just ‘goreng’ for most but the objective and isi tempat kosong section you need the correct term. I heard the grade to get an A+ for agama was really high for SPM (90+), and during school exams the reason I couldn’t get 90+ was because of my paper 1 section A. For kertas 2, make sure you can answer all the structure questions. For me, there were 3 sections which worried me the most for kertas 2, jawi, ayat hafazan and tajwid. I calculated that if I could score for two out of these 3 then I still had a chance to get an A+ so I choose ayat hafazan and tajwid because my jawi is atrocious. The only problem was I had a month to learn ayat hafazan and tajwid (back then I memang takut tak dapat A+ for agama). For ayat hafazan, I just memorised all the short ones and only roughly remembered the start of each sentence for the long ones. Form 4 the longest one, I didn’t memorise at all (nasib tak keluar), the rest I memorised. For form 5, I memorised everything (pagi exam baru habis memorise lol). Try to score for this as it is essentially bonus marks because all you must do is number them or isi tempat kosong (bukannya tulis semula pun). For tajwid I made a bubble map for all the rules. I think for this section if you do enough trial papers you should be able to get the lingo.

In short, agama ni senang sebenarnya. It’s what we should know in our daily lives (yes even all the hukuman, sirah and akidah). Kita je yang malas nak belajar agama sebab senang saje kan? If you want to get straight A+, you have to study hard for all your subjects especially agama since the grade to get an A+ is extremely high.

I'm guilty of being a "moderate muslim" too.

So from here onward I procrastinated completing this tip list so the content from this point onward is a bit poor in my opinion because it’s been almost a year and a half since I left SPM. It’s still worth a read but there could be better tips out there.

Chemistry

Chemistry was one of my favourite, if not my favourite subject in school because it’s not just about memorising. You have to completely understand a topic else it’ll make you suffer from the start. If you’re an aspiring form 4 student reading this blog I suggest you really try hard understanding chemistry from the get-go. A good foundation in Chemistry opens a path for complete mastery of the topic in higher levels.

So Chemistry in form 4 and form 5 is quite basic but it is a big jump from form 3 in my opinion so it requires a lot of reading and understanding. Ask any questions you have about any topic to teachers as soon as you think of them because if you let the questions pile up, you’re just going to break under the stress of how much you don’t know. I know that a lot of my friends hated chemistry because they memorised most of it but Chemistry is actually about understanding and if you understand topic A, topic B and C will be easier. I highly suggest you DON’T focus on spot questions and instead learn everything because Chemistry will help you if you further in a science related degree later. Paper 1 is really easy if you just understand because the answer is there and if you understood the topic and the question, it’ll be hard for you to not be able to answer the question. Paper 2 requires a bit more mental power. Not only do you need to memorise and understand the course material, but these days the questions require you to figure out what the question wants (not simple direct questions). A comprehensive understanding of all the topics will aid you in answering these KBAT questions so I beg of you, LOVE CHEMISTRY. It’ll make your life so much easier. 

Form 5 is fun because the topics are simple and less on calculation. Try to do a lot of practice papers and I like to watch videos on YouTube because what better way to see the action of soap than in an animation. Paper 3 is free marks if you actively participate in the experiment during lab sessions. If you’re from a school where lab sessions are more of teachers doing it and students watching, there are a lot of videos on YouTube about the experiments so those could help too. I personally had a love for Chemistry, so it never gave me any problems so maybe that’s the secret. Love the subject people!

The Never Ending Chem Puns

Biology

From a doctor to be this may seem ironic but I didn’t really like biology especially SPM biology where in my opinion it’s more on plant biology, biodiversity and cell biology. There’s a bit on physiology but those topics are deemed to hard to be asked in SPM, which sucks because PLANT BIOLOGY IS THE STUDY OF SATAN IMO. For this subject there’s no other way. You have to memorise, memorise and memorise. Everyone has their own way of memorising but I found the understand-read-rewrite technique quite helpful. By the end of form 5, I had rewritten my reference book (not textbook) twice so no matter what the facts where ingrained in my mind. Before memorising though, you have to understand the topic. These are basic topics and they’re quite new to you so watching videos really helps. When I learned about osmolarity in class, I was like “Am I learning sorcery?”, but then when I watched videos on YouTube it made so much more sense. There are many amazing animations on YouTube on protein synthesis, digestion, respiration, etc. It’s a bit hard to score for paper 1 in Biology, I ranged from 42-48, but if you can score here it would be great for paper 2 because paper 2 is hell. Paper 2 not only requires you to remember the right facts, but you have to be able to apply it if it’s a KBAT question. I had a question on how to grow a SQUARE WATERMELON during SPM, thank god I saw a video on YouTube earlier that year. Also, don’t just stick to what’s in the reference books, try having some initiative to see how else you can apply what you learn. By learning more than what you should, you may find topics easier to understand and also certain KBAT questions become very easy. Paper 3 in bio is a bit easier than the other 2 but still requires a lot of knowledge and also the first section you really have to learn the technique from your teachers. If I recall correctly there were like formulas for the observation, inference, etc. Basically, just put in a lot of time for biology, I know it hurts but it’s only for two years. Trust me, if you have a strong foundation during SPM, your university life will be a breeze.

Every Bio Test Ever.

Physics

I hated physics and still do. Forever and always I will hate physics which is weird because I absolutely love Mathematics. Even though I hated physics I never scored too poorly, maybe around 84-93 would be my range. Physics is about calculation, theories and formulas. First you learn the theory and laws, then these laws are translated into equations and formulae, from these formulae, new formulae come forth. For physics the concepts are easy to understand because it’s what you can see in real life on a macroscopic scale. I like to learn Physics by strengthening my understanding of the theory then from there I derive the formula myself, you could always memorise them but with what you have to memorise in bio, chem, history and BM, I NEEDED to spare some brain cells. The calculation part of physics is generally easy if you know the formula. You can always check your answer by using a different formula just in case and sometimes just use intuition, if you get an answer faster than the speed of light for velocity, you may have added an extra zero or two somewhere. The process questions can be easily answered by imagining it so watching videos also helps here. I loved answering paper 2 for physics because you could draw your answer, illustrations are accepted in SPM even definition, so you can forget about memorising that paragraph on superposition. Though, it does help to memorise the definitions because then you have a complete understanding on the topic. Do a lot of practice for physics and you should be fine but don’t take it lightly, I’ve had friends who focused more on chem and bio because physics was so easy and then they get an A instead of an A+ for SPM Physics.

Don't give up!!!

Add Maths

I absolutely loved add maths, from the first lesson the last. Maybe it’s because it came so easily to me, I could see one example being done and then emulate it and even do other questions with a basic from that. However, some of us find it harder to understand topics compared to others. Add Maths to me is more of a process than memorising or thinking. When you do a question, if you’re good, you just do it and there’s no explanation because that’s how it. That’s how you integrate, how you sketch graphs, how you complete the square. How do you get to this point in your Add Maths life? PRACTICE! After doing a hundred exercises on integration, it’d be hard for you to not know how to do it. Sure, it’s hard the first few times but once you’ve braved through the storm, it’s smooth sailing then onward. Before thinking about the KBAT questions do a lot of simple practice questions. How to calculate sum and term, median, price index. Then once you completely understand how to these questions, the KBAT questions become easier to solve. Personally, in between studying my other sciences my break was doing Add Maths questions. I finished through 30 maybe 40 practice books and trial papers in total. I absolutely loved Add Maths so doing it was releasing stress because you didn’t have to think much, it’s more of muscle memory after you understand it.

Effort, determination and prayer.

Anyways, these are just some tips which helped me score 9A+ for SPM 2016, you don’t have to exactly follow them because we all have our own learning paces and tactics in tackling life. This post is more on my experience studying but there are some useful tips especially for the core subjects. I hope this can help you score for SPM and know that you can do it, belief can get you far in life. Compounded with effort, nothing is unobtainable.

 

And in traditional 9gag fashion I shall end this long post with a potato.