Preparing for MAT4 entrance exam

[Seastallion]

I have been asked to prepare a lad for doing the maths MAT 4 entrance exam. The lad finished MAT 3, went to a vocational college for a couple of months, but has decided he wants to do better and so go back to high school. Good on him, I say, and so would like to help him. Obviously I don't want to fill his head with calculus if basic algebra and trig is what he needs.

I've been searching online for MAT 3 maths syllabus to get an idea of what level and what branches of maths I should be giving him.

Can anyone point me to a place where I might get an idea? Previous MAt 4 entrance exam papers? MAT 3 curriculum? Your own experience?

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks.

Edited August 23, 2014 by Seastallion

[TerryLH]

Book stores usually have loads of stuff for every test the students have to take.

[SlyAnimal]

MAT4 ?

Not sure specifcally what that is, if it's a special type of test or just a regular M4 maths test?

However, I previously taught maths to M1 - M3, and I assume he'd be tested on the M3 curriculum?

If so, I think from memory that the following was included in our text books/curriculum:

Surface Area / Volume of 3D shapes (Cylinder/Sphere/Pyramid/Cuboid etc + Pythagoras Theroem)

Simultaneous Equations (Elimination & Substitution methods)

Basic Statistics (Interpreting data & constructing pie graphs/pictograms/bar charts etc)

They were also expected to already know about, I forget the area name, but basically the style of problem where you say "If brought a ring for $150 after it had had a 50% discount applied, what was the original price" and variations of that. However I think this might have been in the M2 curriculum, rather than M3, but is useful to teach anyway.

They were also expected to already know about positive/negative indices and scientific notation from M1, including the multiplication/division/square root/cube of these (Although from memory these didn't feature prominently in M2/M3, so would be unlikely to appear in an exam). Likewise number sequences and patterns was covered in M1.

I've included a bit about some of the areas which were covered in M1/M2, but didn't really feature in M3 just incase the test expects them to know these anyway.

None of the maths in Thai high schools require/allow a calculator, so when giving questions try to ensure that the questions can be done in their head/on paper (e.g. Triangles are either 3, 4 5 Triangles or can be solved via Pythagoras theorem).

As a bit of a disclaimer though, I taught to the text book, which I believe followed the Thai curriculum, however I'm not 100% sure on that. As the kids should have been getting taught the same stuff in their Thai maths class, yet the majority found a lot of stuff more challenging than it should have been (Although the majority also just copied their homework from the smart kids every night, which would have also been a factor).

[Seastallion]

Thanks both of you, particularly Slyanimal....very useful.

Cheers