An A2 Study Journal

Damn your organisational skills are impressive! I'm retaking, and doing the same subjects as you (apart from biology, which I got an A in last year), but I'm nowhere near as organised How did you manage to get such a high grade in physics last year? It is the bane of my existence

Thank you *mega-blush.

That's fair enough, so chemistry and physics huh? Well done in biology
Physics can be a real pain. You've got to lift definitions and long, wordy-answers directly from mark schemes (more recent answers are better than from the legacy papers). Write down a booklet/poster of "standard answers".

Calculations can be weird too, practice helps to a large extent. Don't neglect the really old past paper questions, or questions from other exam boards, but be wary that some topics are beyond what you need to know.

There are also many resources online. This is what has pushed me up from what was probably a B/C grade.
http://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/physics-revision/
https://isaacphysics.org
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZzatyx-xC-Dl_VVUVHYDYw
https://www.boundless.com/physics/textbooks/boundless-physics-textbook/the-basics-of-physics-1
https://www.khanacademy.org

Congrats on completing all of your content! I have am 95% complete so I can't wait to be in your position

I'm glad to hear, good job!! It feels like such a relief when you study that last little bit, good luck and you deserve to take the rest of the day off once you're done

Thanks, you done all the past papers available for your subjects yet?

X

How do you work on application? Do you have tips you could suggest to me please?

How do you work on application? Do you have tips you could suggest to me please?

For which subject? My answer would vary slightly depending on which science you're talking about

Biology! I understand and revise the knowledge; but when it comes to papers I don't seem to understand what the question asks


Posted from TSR Mobile

For biology, as ribenas said, past papers are a very good way to go! I'd argue that application questions in biology are the most difficult ones.

Make an educated guess. Use what you have learnt about and keep linking it in with the specifics in the question. For example, a specification point might be to describe the synthesis of a polypeptide, whereas an application question might ask you to describe the synthesis of a certain protein they've written about.

If all else fails, sneak in as many key words (any biological words) as you can that link in e.g. Write about "complementary base pairs" and "sticky ends".

Write about things in excessive detail, you can pick up quite a few "any valid point" marks in long-answer questions.

Think before you write! Before you go into answering the question, jot down a few key words to summarise any ideas of what answer they are looking for. This gives you a chance to form some alternative ideas in those "suggest" questions and make short plans to structure your work. That way, if you have the time to check your answers, you can re-decide which idea was more likely to be wanted by the examiner.

To be good at these questions, you need a fairly solid understanding of biology. If you have a bit of time during revision, read around the topic slightly. Watch a khan academy video or a crash course biology video on YouTube about it. This can be surprisingly helpful!

This is my biology revision wall! There's one more A4 poster I need to make, then that's the entire A2 course in all it's glory. Each paragraph covers a bullet point from the specification and I've written exam-style answers to all of them (some of which are based on mark schemes).
This is a slight variation of how I revised for biology last year and for GCSE, and it works as long as I keep reading and testing myself on it regularly.
Content-heavy subjects don't look as intimidating in tiny (colourful) hand-writing!