Take our quiz to find out what your revision personality is! >>

Chemistry A level

Hello,
I need some help. I am studying Chemistry A level (currently 1/2 way through AS level), and I have hit a frustrating wall. I completely understand everything we do in class, and I have no issues explaining it, but when we come to a test, I seem to do very poorly, and nowhere near where I want to be.
Has anyone else had a similar issue, and how did you overcome it?

It is frustrating because I understood GCSE so well and that was reflected in my grades, but A level seems a completely different ball park

Reply 1

MP_25

i think it really depends on exam technique and practise since the alevel is much stricter on bits rather than gcse haha, i'm in yr 13 now but i still get that same block where i understand the content but applying it in an exam causes struggle. my advice is working through exam style questions and really making sure you have your definitions and mechanisms in tact, PMT has a good definition bank for each module (at least for OCR, but should be the case for all). for organic there's a few great youtube mechanism walkthroughs but you can also find a mindmap of all synthetic routes (for the whole a level, but also just yr1 synthesis) which are great cause it shows all reactants and conditions + you can even follow the route for example for how an alkane can go to an aldehyde (alkane>alcohol>ketone)
this is pretty much what i follow for my working per module so hopefully its helpful, i also struggled with chem at first but by doing this i went up 2 grades from yr 12 to yr 13 (and hopefully even further up 🤞)