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, 201411 yr by Seastallion

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

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).

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

Cheers