Getting an AAA from ABC? (Advice for improving German / Maths / Economics)

Is an AAA attainable from an ABC current predicted? I am currently studying Mathematics (B), German (C) and Economics (A). I am going into Year 13 this year. Let me know any experiences and advice you have! Are there ways to improve German grades in particular as I am struggling the most with it.

Reply 1

Dylan478

for maths I would just do a practice/ past exam questions, and a LOT of them.
Avoid relying on textbook questions as they do not reflect exams and their difficulty
if you're doing Edexcel maths I recommend Madasmaths website

Reply 2

Bazyli

Original post by undercovereconom

I got an A* in German and honestly you have to read around each and every topic you cover, picking up and noting all new vocab along the way. I also advise that you buy a workbook to go through the grammar topics as this will help immensely in the reading and listening especially. If you just want to do something a little lighter I suggest watching something on Arte or reading the news in German and downloading the news app🙂

Reply 3

undercovereconom

Original post by Bazyli

What exam board did you do german with? I am currently doing AQA. Which grammar workbooks would you suggest? There aren't that many past papers as it is the new spec so what questions did you practice with? Thanks!

Reply 4

undercovereconom

Original post by Dylan478

As the new spec has not a lot of past papers, what resources would you suggest? Did you use old spec papers? If so, which modules should you use as I have no clue which ones to do (C1, C2, C3, C4?). Thanks!

Reply 5

Dylan478

https://www.madasmaths.com/archive_iygb_practice_papers_mp2_practice_papers.html
https://www.madasmaths.com/archive_iygb_practice_papers_mp1_practice_papers.html

Reply 6

undercovereconom

Original post by Dylan478

https://www.madasmaths.com/archive_iygb_practice_papers_mp2_practice_papers.html
https://www.madasmaths.com/archive_iygb_practice_papers_mp1_practice_papers.html

Are MP1 AS and MP2 A2? Thanks!

Reply 7

Dylan478

every thing is A2 ( how it would be in an exam so some q's are AS difficulty)

Reply 8

invisiblebird

Original post by undercovereconom

I got A*s this year in both Maths and German.

For Maths I agree with the advice to do as many practice questions as possible. For practice with questions in the same style as the new spec I found the CGP exam practice workbook for my exam board really helpful as I feel like the questions were of a similar difficulty to the real thing.

For German I did AQA as well. I feel like the absolute most important thing is to learn your vocab, because it affects everything. I actually put all of the vocab in the textbook lists onto quizlet. I don't know if you like using quizlet, but if you do want to use my quizlets my username is opijkl :smile:

.
If you want to practise your listening skills https://www.dw.com/de/deutsch-lernen/s-2055 has loads of audio tracks which come with transcripts and exercises to do. New ones also get added all the time.
For speaking try to record yourself, it really forces you to try to speak fluently and makes you pick up on your mistakes. Also try to do as much research for your IRP as possible. I actually wrote a list of questions for myself on my IRP and tried to record myself answering them, which I felt really helped. For the speaking cards just record yourself answering the questions on the specimen cards.
If you use Google chrome, there's a really useful chrome extension called Rememberry which lets you translate any word you highlight on any webpage and also lets you add words you've looked up as flashcards. Every so often it will notify you to revise the flashcards you've made. I really wish I'd discovered it earlier as it's so useful if you're reading webpages in German.

I hope this helped. Good luck and feel free to ask me any questions! :smile:

Reply 9

undercovereconom

Original post by invisiblebird

Hi sorry for the late reply, I've been away! As the reading / listening / translation is such a big part of the A level, how did you specifically target revision for it? Furthermore grammar is a particular issue of mine as it affects the writing, speaking and components of the paper. What were ways you learnt it? Many thanks :smile:

Reply 10

invisiblebird

For both reading and listening I really only used https://www.dw.com/de/deutsch-lernen/s-2055. If you want to practise listening, just listen to the audio recordings, and if you want to practise reading, just use the transcripts. Although it's not made specifically for A level, a lot of the topics are actually very relevant to A level, especially if you use the Top Thema section https://www.dw.com/de/deutsch-lernen/top-thema/s-8031 .

I don't know what textbook you use, but for translation most of what I did was just complete all the translation exercises in the textbook and all the translation exercises in past papers/specimen papers from all the exam boards I could find. Also there's this booklet from AQA which although is AS is still useful https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/german/AQA-7661-TP.PDF.

To be honest I've never had much trouble with grammar, so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to help there. A good in depth resource to learn grammar is http://www.dartmouth.edu/~deutsch/Grammatik/Grammatik.html . I think the main thing with grammar is to make sure you understand everything and then practise as much as possible to use the structures you learn in your own work. I think it's very hard to learn grammar just before an exam. You really need to let it 'sink in' till you can use it correctly without much thought, so make sure you understand everything as you go along. Remember though that your grammar doesn't have to be 100% perfect (eg. with adjective endings) for you to get a good mark, so focus on things like cases and word order which might prevent you from getting your point across.