by Quelloquialism » Wed Mar 07, 2007 10:32 pm
The one time that I practiced UIL Mathematics the most effectively was in the summer between 9th grade and 10th grade, nearly two years ago, now.
My practice method was this...get a test ready, printed out and everything. My choice was 04-05 UIL A. Then, get out a notepad and a few pencils. Open the test, no time limit or anything like that, and write out verbose explanations outlining how to do every single problem on the test. When you run into a problem you don't know how to solve, ask somebody to help you. After they help you with the problem, write down a detailed procedure of how to solve the question.
You get to have a pretty nice grasp on how to solve a problem when you've written a paragraph or two about it, and with familiarity comes speed. The only problems with this method would be that it takes a pretty long time to do (that's why I used the summer), and you need to have somebody around who can help with the ones you can't solve (this wasn't a problem for me, because the summer between 9th and 10th for me was just before my brother Christopher went off to Caltech, so asking for help was an issue of walking into his room and bugging him =D).
I'm planning on doing this again for Spring Break as a preparation for TMSCA State, as I'm not improving nearly as much as I ought to be in Mathematics. I'll probably start posting lots of questions here, then. =D
Of course, this method won't work too well with a team of people who have any significant lack of free time or dedication to the cause. Still, at least in my case, it helped very much.