AQA A-level Biology 7402 - Paper 3 - 17th June 2019

I’m retaking so this is my second time doing these exams and that’s the advice my teachers have always told me and I find works best for me. I tend to just make a little spider diagram on the question I think I like and add a couple ideas to it, then build on it. It helps having it in the back of your mind as you can think oh what topics will be good and things like that! You can always spend these next few days doing lots of essay plans so you have some frame works for some general questions.

I wonder if anyone else here does this method too then curious to know, might try it on a practice paper, and hope your retake is successful best of luck

I wonder if anyone else here does this method too then curious to know, might try it on a practice paper, and hope your retake is successful best of luck

Thanks for these - I do think cycles might come up in questions since we've gotten very little nitrogen/phosphorus/cardiac/etc. this year so far.

Having said that, didn't cycles of biology come up in a recent essay for a previous paper? Or was that old spec?

Also do you not think immune system/phagocytosis is a big topic that might come up? Wasn't really on the paper 1 except for that HIV question.

Also just wanted to ask a few questions about the essay:

How long is ideal to spend on the essay out of the 2 hours we get? And will you be doing the questions first or essay first?

How much should we be aiming to write and how many topics? (I've been told at least 3 sides with 4-5 relevant topics puts you in a good position to get into the top band, and content outside the spec is required to get into the uppermost mark of this band)

Also kinda concerned about how much detail we should be going into for each topic and at what point to just move on to the next...and whether you should relate concepts outside of the scope of the question - for example, talking about ATP a little bit in the context of why the phosphorus cycle is important, if we're given cycles in biology - would this be considered off-topic and thus drop an essay down to the next band? Unsure about these things.

I wonder if anyone else here does this method too then curious to know, might try it on a practice paper, and hope your retake is successful best of luck

if anyone has the locked aqa alevel specimen papers would be great

Bit late, but do you still want them?

Can I get them please? Any papers 3s especially

Yeah loads of people do this method. You won’t realise but your brain is subconsciously planning what to say in the question. By the time you get to it ideas may just flow out (happens with me). I did that for my English Literature a-level because it’s all just ESSAYS.

Guys im looking at the a level spehcification and it says for paper 3 and it says:
• 38 marks: structured

questions, including
practical techniques
• 15 marks: critical analysis
of given experimental data
• 25 marks: one essay from
a choice of two titles
so i would say do loads and loads of practical, maths and data analysis questions as i feel they are going to have questions where sometimes you need common sense so familarise urself with this. what im going to do: learn all as and a2 content with topic q on the 14th, do essay planning and practical/data q and topic q on 15th, do essay planning and pure practical/data/maths q on 16th. what do you all think? because for the other 2 papers this was what they said was going to be on the paper:
76 marks: a mixture of
short and long answer
questions
so i dont think too much content is gonna be on the actual questions itself, but make ur self familiar with all the content for the essay.

hi mate, just wondering where you get your practical/data/math based questions? i dont wanna have to pick my way through loads of past papers and search for them, do you have a source of these kind of questions?