Original post by AT_17Core 4 definitely made me feel uncomfortable.
A problem that I found this year with the maths exams was that it required a lot more thinking.
I had this approach to maths when I was younger, all the time, but now not so much. What I found in this year's core 2 and 4 paper was that it required so much thinking.
Some teachers like to teach the typical 'robotic' route of learning, others don't.
For example, one maths teacher I had taught maths this method, got a D in an exam. Had a different teacher the following year to resit the exam, 4 lessons with him, came out with close to full marks.
AQA seemed to have changed their ways with exams without mentioning the concept they want candidates to think rather than revise the same types of questions.
I prefer thinking, but because past exams were more about 'remember that question you did that is similar,' I panicked and lost my confidence due to myself revising via this method. Can you understand what I'm saying.
I think some teachers need to realise that sometimes learning from a basic textbook doesn't work, you need to flip around things and ask questions from each topic in as many ways as possible.
Adding on to this, this years Core 1 paper was pretty similar to past exams, whereas core 2 and 4 were completely different.
There needs to be consistency in each exam, in terms of whether to need to think etc.