I'm doing OCR Biology and I used the OCR endorsed textbook at first, I found it ok but then I looked at a CGP textbook and I seemed to learn a lot more from that, is it just me?
IMO, the main differences between CGP at GCSE and A level are these:
1) At GCSE reading a CGP revision guide the night before an exam without doing anymore revision will get you an A*. (ok not in all cases exactly, but you get my drift)
2) At a level the CGP explanations and example questions usually don't go deep enough to get you an A*, so you have to use it alongside a proper textbook.
Definitely agree with the first point. In both my biology and chemistry exams I did this and got an A*. With my physics exam I was 2 marks off an A* because I only read half of it.
I'm doing OCR Biology and I used the OCR endorsed textbook at first, I found it ok but then I looked at a CGP textbook and I seemed to learn a lot more from that, is it just me?
It's not just at a-level, in my opinion they always sucked. All they ever had in were the bare essentials and what's the point in learning something if you're not going to do it properly.
I think they are great to use along side more in depth text books, but maybe not quite enough to get the best grade on their own. I like to use them to explain the basics of anything I don't understand.
IMO, the main differences between CGP at GCSE and A level are these:
1) At GCSE reading a CGP revision guide the night before an exam without doing anymore revision will get you an A*. (ok not in all cases exactly, but you get my drift)
2) At a level the CGP explanations and example questions usually don't go deep enough to get you an A*, so you have to use it alongside a proper textbook.
Reading stuff like this makes me feel crap, because I revised hard for two months before my GCSEs Wish I had a good memory ...
CGP books are really good at setting out what you need to know for the exam as they tick every single spec point even for A-Levels.
All I did was memorize Biology OCR, Chemistry A OCR, Physics A OCR CGP books for both unit 1 and 2s and did the past papers and ended up with AAB respectively..
For maths, I think they're a great alternative to the textbooks, but only the full, individual module ones. Otherwise, I think CGP is too brief, so you only get half the information. Worked fine for GCSE, but at A level? Not too much help. Nice for covering the basics, but otherwise not so much.
For AS physics, I found them really useful to get my basic understanding sorted, since I didn't pick it up as fast as the rest of my class, but then I revised with practice papers and the official textbook. CGP only gets you so far.