A2 - Edexcel Psychology June 2016

How do you evaluate your practical? Would you evaluate it like you would any study or do you evaluate the actual issue it's about?

I barely have any evaluation for mine, but for the child one I have issues with subjectivity, poor generalisability as the articles were from one newspaper, good inter-rater reliability (but there was some disagreement) and then it's valid because they were real articles published.
Do we actually have to evaluate it?

I wasn't sure whether we had to but saw someone say it could come up as a 12 mark question (describe and evaluate) earlier? But I just looked and I don't THINK it's on the spec so idk

I don't think evaluation has come up before? And if it is a 12 marker I think it would involve you describing your key issue and your practical? I don't think the practical alone is enough for 12 marks, but then again I'm not sure as it's never come up as an essay before.

I'm 99.9% sure the practical wouldn't be a 12 marker on its own because you can just make it up and there's no way of checking, they are frequent in AS but I think at A2 they aren't so bothered.. they just put a small Q in from time to time so as to avoid repetition

we have been told practicals are likely to be 12 marks especially because they are the last year of the spec :/ and if not they will probably come up as 9/10 marks worth of shorter questions :/

Oh dear
There will still be a paper next year though, in case anyone is resitting right? So it's like the second to last paper

we have been told practicals are likely to be 12 marks especially because they are the last year of the spec :/ and if not they will probably come up as 9/10 marks worth of shorter questions :/

take a look at my revision notes for any last-minute preparation you might be doing - I got an A* in my A-Level so you can trust them! Also feel free to drop me an email if you need any help if I haven't covered anything you're struggling with.

edexcelpsychologyrevision.tumblr.com

xx

I know it's late considering the exam is Wednesday, but how did you revise?? I have my notes done and I've done a checklist for everything on the spec but I find myself just reading my revision poster, seeing if I can recall everything and then moving on

Hey,
I'm not going to lie, I have a really good memory (wouldn't go as far to say photographic but I have never had to sit and revise for hours on end for something to get into my head). I also really enjoy the subject which I guess makes it easier to remember. But other than me sitting and writing out all of the notes that you see on the website which took me a really long time, my method of revision was reading through every single mark scheme and making sure I knew how to get marks. So many of my friends failed their exam for not knowing how to answer a question - most of the time with edexcel you don't even need a lot of knowledge, you need to justify and/or evaluate every single point you make!! Once I had finished writing the notes I went through them and highlighted the key words, i.e. the bits you need to remember to get a mark without all the rest of the waffling. Once I did this I started looking at exam questions and writing bullet points of all the key points I would write about - again this is where knowing the mark scheme comes in handy because you can cut out a lot of unnecessary learning of things that won't get you any further credit.
Considering the exam is very soon I would say the single most important thing to do now is to look at past papers! Be familiar with what could come up and make sure youve at least got a few points in mind for every answer - even if you don't know it in detail you can manipulate other information to fit the answer.
Hope this helped, tbh I never did revision flashcards or posters so this is just my personal method that worked for me!!!

in my revision guide it says that structured observations have no manipulated IV so they cannot establish a cause-and-effect relationship??? I thought that they did? very confused right now!

Ooh, got an answer! Don't worry

Remember: we're all in this together *HSM motivation right there

Anyone have any helpful/useful tips? I keep getting an A in past papers but need an A* to make up for how bad I did last year

Make sure you have 6 AO1 and AO2 points for everything and you'll be fine