Revising A2 Psychology

I am self teaching A2 AQA A Psychology but having trouble learning everything, I had this problem last year with the AS, waited until 3 days before the exams and crammed everything in but then I didn't have a university place depending on the result and there wasn't as much to learn so any ideas, hints or tips?

I am doing relationships, dreams and evolutionary explanations of human behaviour for unit 4

Haven't decided what I'm doing for unit 5 other than the psychopathology section for individual differences.

I have the complete companion and exam companion books

Rep available for any help :biggrin:

Reply 1

Charlurr

Right, the one thing that I cant stress enough is do loooaaadddsss of sample essays and get them marked. Especially for PYA5. We have to write an amazing essay to get in the range of 25-30 marks. Then all you need to do is learn that because the content of the essay will pretty much be the same for the different questions.

Gotta be honest with you though, PYA4 is an absolute douche bag. All I did for that was write notes and revise like a biiiaattccchhh. Didn't do any essays then. Because a lot of the stuff will cross over and there's far too much variety in the questions they ask. Just make sure you know your stuff.

Goood lucckkk! I dont envy you at all having them both in the summer! "/ The three day cram/full geek sesh will help you at the end [;

Reply 2

GodspeedGehenna

The best way to revise for Psych, in my opinion, is to go onto the AQA website and copy down each exam question to individual A4 pieces of paper. Then i'd go through a revision guide (or notes) picking out studies that support/disagree for AO1 and AO2 marks. Then I'd tack on any little evaluation points about those studies. To make them revision friendly, I'd highlight them into different colours for each little section.

PYA4 is by far the nastiest exam; so much content to remember. For PYA5, I'd definetly go for Psychopathology. You can just learn schizophrenia, uni-polar depression and anxiety disorders. In doing so you can also easily learn how they are treated, which would then provide you with a backup question choice if you don't like the first.

I would upload some of my revision notes, but I'm not on my PC, sorry!

Reply 3

Purple

Thanks guys, I'll rep you both :smile:

I dont have anyone to mark any essays I do but I was thinking of doing something like:
- Reading the section
- Get some questions for that section
- Do plans for each one
- Writing them up

Do you think thats enough? I'm just terrible at making notes, I cant cut things down to the important parts :redface:

Reply 4

ninety_nine

Psychology is all about considering subjectivity, debates and issues. Read through these topics and then THINK about them. Consider evidence for and against theories for example, and decide what your personal opinion is. It's similar to History and Science subjects because you have to analyse and scrutinise everything!

For high marks compose your essay points as: arguements, counter-arguement, counter-arguement to the counter-arguement (e.g FOR, AGAINST, FOR or vice versa).

Remember that the mark scheme is always really lenient for Psychology so you don't have to be word perfect to score highly.