Subject Selection Advice on the Humanities

Hi! I’m Maya and I take English Extension 2, Modern, Ancient and Extension History, and Economics. When I started Year 11, I also did many Sciences and Mathematics so I’ve had some experience with a variety of subjects and I’m here to give my main thoughts and advice for Year 10s thinking about picking humanities.

Advice for choosing the Humanities

• Don’t be daunted by content-heavy subjects! Adopt productive memorisation techniques. Instead of using brute force and blurting, some ways you can learn your content without it seeming too hard are:
  • For Modern and Ancient History, draw lots of mind maps after you finish your notes. Use your notes to inform this and pick small sections within syllabus dot points to do this. Also, try to condense your notes as much as possible to constitute mainly specific details, sources, statistics, and interpretations. Structure them by syllabus dot points and try to find ways to structure them really well e.g. using tables and lists.
  • Doing lots of practice responses for all subjects with your notes will help you naturally memorise statistics and quotes. I haven’t found purposefully memorising quotes for my English essays to be as helpful as doing paragraphs, essay plans, and practice essays, which will make them naturally stick anyway.
  • Wide reading for history and economics is also really helpful – your teachers will give you things to read, and they’ll always be more material in your booklets.
• Do practice responses when you have time. Not only will you practice writing, but often you’ll find gaps in the content you’ve learned and be able to go back to your notes and fill it in. Using your feedback will help you increase your marks and remember things to include in the exam. I would also recommend doing timed practice responses, which are quite useful for English and short answer questions in History subjects.
• Make essay plans for history and economics. I found a good way to prepare for writing essays is to make a table under each Modern History syllabus dot point with a rough essay plan. For example, if the syllabus dot point was Reasons for Stalin’s Rise to Power, your table might include 5 reasons with statistics, sources and interpretations.
• There’s no such thing as too many writing subjects – doing many humanities can seem daunting at times but they do all help to strengthen your overall skills, and it’s lots of fun!
• With English, have conversations with your friends about what you’re studying – it will help you come up with new ideas and is enjoyable more generally.

This week’s edition of Clued In was created by Maya Garg from your Student Communications Leadership team:

Maya Garg (Year 12): Student Communications Prefect 2025
Abby Christopher: Year 12 Leader
Kitty He: Year 11 Leader
Catherine Li: Year 10 Leader
Nicole Fan: Year 9 Leader
Charlotte Pang: Year 8 Leader
Sahana Shashidaran: Year 7 Leader