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Biology =(

Is anyone else finding Biology the hardest subject imaginable? It just seems to be fact after fact after fact and I can't believe the amount you need to remember, its crazy!

I'm supposed to be targetted an A, but the way things are going I'll be surprised if I get a D. Its awful :frown:

I'm already doing 5 subjects so thankfully I can drop it after this year but I don't know whether I should even bother continuing with it. Its stressing me out so much :s-smilie:

Plus, the teachers are hardly that fantastic... one reads out copious notes and expects us to be able to scribble what he's saying down, without time to take any of it in... and the other uses slides which condense the information down so much that you need to read the whole thing yourself anyway. Neither of them actually seem to put an effort into making sure we understand it and the coursework is just a joke...

We've now handed it in, even though the teacher hasn't even looked at it once. Apparently, he's too busy with "meetings" every night of the week and uses this as an excuse every time we ask if he has looked at them yet...

I also have no confidence whatsoever due to them constantly ranting on about how we're not meeting our targets and the disastrous Health and Disease test we did last month. The thing is... I revised soo hard for it and I thought I knew the topic pretty well. But the test was so short that if you didn't know one question it could completely ruin your chances of getting a good grade. Hardly any of it seemed related to what we learnt in class and most of it required no prior knowledge of the subject at all. If I had done no revision, it would have made no difference...

Another thing that really annoyed me was when we had our first lesson after the test and the teacher started by saying, "Oh, the test was very easy. The examiners were very generous this year!" I was so angry. And naturally, she went through the questions stopping every now and then and saying "We looked at this in class! You should have been able to do this!"...

Realistically, we should have done all of it in class, what hope have we got if she's only taught us a few random chapters (two of which we had to learn all by ourselves, with no help from her whatsoever). Its just ridiculous...

Arrrgghhh, its driving me mad! :frown:

[Rant over]

Reply 1

Alan Grant

1

Lol same here. I'm doing Maths, Further Maths, Biology and Chemistry. Out of the 4, Biology is by far the hardest. There seems to be endless information, ad they dont ever give you time to absorb it unlike Chem and Maths, where they usually tell you something and do a few questions about it until you understand.

Reply 2

wackysparkle

14

firstly - i know exactly what you are going through - this is like a deja vu of what happened to me in a level biology - i had crap teachers - they did the same thing your teacher is doing now - minimal notes + speaking so fast and missing parts all the time
i got a D at AS biology - but i took resits and got an A - then i took A2 - and got a B over all -- so this should show you that it is possible to over come this
this is basically what happened to me and what i did:
all the notes were minimal - so i looked up the stuff in the endorsed books, memorised each of the processes + memorized the terms - you can do this by simple tricks like:
Is Pure Maths Another Troublesome Course
interpahse
prophase
metaphase
anaphase
telophase
cytokenisis

Start your revision now - learn about 4-5 pages a day
then the next day learn another 4-5 pages and go over the stuff that you learnt the previous day
if you keep this up - all those terms will just stick in your mind
seriously - if i was able to pull my grade from a D to an A - then there is no reason why you can't do it! have faith in yourself - you have to have confidence - that way you will bring yourself to easily remember stuff + learn stuff quickly -

and most importantly - do lots of past papers - that way you can see that most questions are repeated! then you can have set answers for those questions that you can memorise so its easy when you have to answer in the exam -- remmeber time is always a constraint in biology!

if you need additional help, as the endoresed books are sometimes a bit too complext to understand use: advanced biology for you -- it makes it easier to understand and doesn't remove the detail which is absolutely necessary when you do this a level

please feel free to PM me if you need any further assitance :smile:

Reply 3

Lil_T

ryanwilk

Is anyone else finding Biology the hardest subject imaginable? It just seems to be fact after fact after fact and I can't believe the amount you need to remember, its crazy!

I'm supposed to be targetted an A, but the way things are going I'll be surprised if I get a D. Its awful :frown:

I'm already doing 5 subjects so thankfully I can drop it after this year but I don't know whether I should even bother continuing with it. Its stressing me out so much :s-smilie:

Plus, the teachers are hardly that fantastic... one reads out copious notes and expects us to be able to scribble what he's saying down, without time to take any of it in... and the other uses slides which condense the information down so much that you need to read the whole thing yourself anyway. Neither of them actually seem to put an effort into making sure we understand it and the coursework is just a joke...

We've now handed it in, even though the teacher hasn't even looked at it once. Apparently, he's too busy with "meetings" every night of the week and uses this as an excuse every time we ask if he has looked at them yet...

I also have no confidence whatsoever due to them constantly ranting on about how we're not meeting our targets and the disastrous Health and Disease test we did last month. The thing is... I revised soo hard for it and I thought I knew the topic pretty well. But the test was so short that if you didn't know one question it could completely ruin your chances of getting a good grade. Hardly any of it seemed related to what we learnt in class and most of it required no prior knowledge of the subject at all. If I had done no revision, it would have made no difference...

Another thing that really annoyed me was when we had our first lesson after the test and the teacher started by saying, "Oh, the test was very easy. The examiners were very generous this year!" I was so angry. And naturally, she went through the questions stopping every now and then and saying "We looked at this in class! You should have been able to do this!"...

Realistically, we should have done all of it in class, what hope have we got if she's only taught us a few random chapters (two of which we had to learn all by ourselves, with no help from her whatsoever). Its just ridiculous...

Arrrgghhh, its driving me mad! :frown:

[Rant over]

OK You sound so much like i did last year when i did biology at AS
i wanted to drop it on a various number of times but neither the biology teachers or my tutor would let me.
i struggled my way through it and ended up failing and this also reflected in my other exams
the teachers were useless and instead of helping me they spent most time lecturing me on how i need the confidence and they can't spoon feed me etc
if i was able to drop it i could have focused more on my other subjects
just glad i could drop it at A2

hope things get sorted for you, i can understand how you must feel lol

Tina xx

Reply 4

ryanwilk

OP

Thanks for all your help =]

I’ve sort of decided not to give up just yet… hopefully there’s still time to learn it basically all myself. I’ve ordered a half-decent revision guide since the book we use is terrible, so hopefully it’ll all work out after nights and nights of rereading my notes and going over what we’ve learnt in class (however little this might be lol).

The change from GCSE to A level is overwhelming. In comparison to my other subjects (Maths, FM, Chemistry and Physics), the workload’s just crazy.

Oh well, I guess I’m stuck with it for another few months lol =[

I’m not sure that if you drop it after this year, you can still resit or if you can only resit AS if you take it into A2, hmmm. I’ll probably have to take the tests at least 3 times until I get one I can do =p

“i struggled my way through it and ended up failing and this also reflected in my other exams
the teachers were useless and instead of helping me they spent most time lecturing me on how i need the confidence and they can't spoon feed me etc
if i was able to drop it i could have focused more on my other subjects”

That’s what I thinks gonna happen to me. I don’t want it to affect my other subjects too much =/ Your so right about the teacher’s on about spoon feeding us lol, they say that every lesson. Very annoying.

Thanks for giving me confidence wackysparkle =]

Reply 5

Lil_T

ryanwilk

“i struggled my way through it and ended up failing and this also reflected in my other exams
the teachers were useless and instead of helping me they spent most time lecturing me on how i need the confidence and they can't spoon feed me etc
if i was able to drop it i could have focused more on my other subjects”

That’s what I thinks gonna happen to me. I don’t want it to affect my other subjects too much =/ Your so right about the teacher’s on about spoon feeding us lol, they say that every lesson. Very annoying.

we get it too but i think some of the staff have realised that they have to in order for us to work because our year are just plain slackers
except for the goody-goody's that are the teahcer's pets :rolleyes:

Reply 6

lil one

2

Same here tbh. I'm in year12, and I used to love biology now I hate it. My teacher is a complete moron - we're currently trying to get rid of him. Have you tried complaining to the head of biology/science? or the deputy heads?

Reply 7

jesus_navas

To the op: Are you doing aqa b?

Reply 8

ryanwilk

OP

Erm I'm doing OCR.

And we've tried complaining to the head of sixth form and the teachers themselves but they've been teaching the same way for years and don't seem to see their teaching as being a problem. They just shout at us and say that they know best. So that doesn't look promising...

Reply 9

wackysparkle

14

no problem :smile:

argh - teachers! :rolleyes:

a levels right through with all the sciences was pretty much as i described - and nothing has improved this year - just happy i ain't there anymore! - can't see much happenening - but i have complained to them - and they said that they would do something bout it - but hey -- the only solution to these things is to full on work hard + get a tutor if you need one + get revision books if necessary

Reply 10

Wangers

16

Break it down and learn the facts slowly and throughly, you might have to do some more work off your own bat. Such is the A level course. Failing that, learn markschemes.

Reply 11

wackysparkle

14

i resorted to memorizing answers from the marking schemes as well!

Reply 12

abc101

17

I hate Bio...at AS it was just memorising stuff, but this year it's really hard and boring! I'm so angry I'm taking it, I really really want to drop it, it sucks. I'm meant to get an A but I'm looking at Us, Es and Ds lol!

Reply 13

wackysparkle

14

which one are you doing then? human or the regular bio?
coz if i remember [i did human] - the regular bio was pretty boring! -- dunno --- just a case of forcing yourself to go through it all the time - coz the more boring it is the more difficult it is to learn the material - sooo put up with it, learn and learn each day - its not long now -- just a few months of solud commitment :smile:

Reply 14

herbal bug

12

Erm I'm doing OCR.

eeek i'm doing ocr...just write notes as youu go along and learn them all...as there's so much to cram in. they tend to spring questions up on anything they want...so remember the nitty gritty details.i mean just keep at it.share notes. and its often the ickle points which fail you. for examplesicle my mocks before my human health papers were all a's and b's. in the exams i didnt write the nittry gritty and got a d :frown:

Reply 15

Spiffy

11

wackysparkle

i resorted to memorizing answers from the marking schemes as well!

Thats what im doing for AQA B too. Its all well and good knowing all these facts but the markschemes for AQA are so specific its just rediculous!

Reply 16

arpeggio

12

Biology is a major step up from GCSE so even with the best teachers I'm sure anyone would find it a struggle! I know that poor teaching makes such a difference - one of my teachers has gone on maternity leave so we're doing four topics each week with four different teachers and it's really messed up what we're learning. It's so hard to keep up with in class! But recently I've been finding Biology to be my easiest A-Level, mainly because I've been going over what we're doing in class at home. I'm also doing OCR - the textbook has basically everything you need to know, and I find it a lot easier to follow that any of my teachers! I think it's the endorsed textbook (I've found it here on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Biology-1-Cambridge-Advanced-Sciences/dp/052178719X/sr=8-1/qid=1171318580/ref=pd_ka_1/026-8797954-6686835?ie=UTF8&s=books) Luckily I think Biology lends itself to self-teaching more than, say, Chemistry, which has calculations and things that really need to be explained by someone. Read the textbook, do past papers, and if you're still stuck then ask people here on TSR! Loads of people on here would be willing to help (and I'm sure they're tons better than your teachers :wink:

) Good luck!

Reply 17

Girl_Anachronism

I found (and find) Biology stupidly hard. I went from A* at GCSE to D at AS. I resat and got a B overall (after cocking up my transport / practical etc which I'll resit). It is a lot harder than GCSE.. all I can advise is just to revise loads and do some practice papers.

Reply 18

STENDEC

Exactly.

It is difficult to jump to this sort of thing from GCSE to further / Higher Education methods (Especially in Science based subjects) but I think you may need to start applying self learning more here to help you.

Your teachers seem to be giving you an early taste of some degree level teaching. As this is exactly what you'l need to do at UNIVERSITY. Take notes and run with them to develop ideas / discussions through your own research!

Stick with it, you are obviously capable of independent learning, so use this skill to your advantage. Lets just say I know a thing or two about Distance Learning Science subjects from GCSE level through to Degree level.... It is entirely possible for you to teach yourself the theory side of things.

Just remember - the course syllabus is your bible!