The Student Room Group
Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>
Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>
Competition - post a photo you've taken of nature >>

A Level Chemistry

Hi. Just a random question. How do you people study A Level Chemistry? Do you read books or do you think your lectures and lecture notes are enough?
Also when do you start attempting questions from topics you've studied?

And by the way, I'm in Year 13. Not being able to focus at all. Need some help :tongue:
Original post by Knightrises10
Hi. Just a random question. How do you people study A Level Chemistry? Do you read books or do you think your lectures and lecture notes are enough?
Also when do you start attempting questions from topics you've studied?

And by the way, I'm in Year 13. Not being able to focus at all. Need some help :tongue:

Hi! With chemistry just memorising/reading your notes is not enough, it could help to a certain extent but it definitely isn’t enough to get you those top grades. What I did was, after every chemistry lesson when I went home, I condensed my notes onto flash cards so that when I had in class exams or mocks I didn’t need to panic about making flash cards. In year 12 I made the mistake of memorising the content instead of actually understanding it and applying it, hence I was capping myself at C/D grades. However when I got to year thirteen I made sure I actually understood and learn the content and then just did lots of past paper questions to familiarise myself with the content. I used one colour to answer questions I used my flash cards to answer and another colour for questions I didnt have to use my flash cards for, that way I knew what sorts of questions/topics I needed to actually focus on. The more past papers/exam questions you do, the quicker you’ll realise that a lot of the same questions pop up again and again.
A great website that I found very useful for exam questions was physics and maths tutor. On the website they also have revision notes that you could print out before an exam and read and they have all three exam boards - AQA, edexcel and OCR.
Our teachers got us to do lots of AS papers at the end of y12, now going into y13 and they're already recommending papers for us to do rn. I think the best method is to do some often, like once or twice a week, and then the rest of the time you can use for chemistry homework or content learning (like memorising flashcards or whatever else you normally use). If I was to use one method only, I'd definitely only do the past papers since they include everything, you get some practise of applied skills like calculations, and it tests your memory of content too :smile:
Original post by Knightrises10
Hi. Just a random question. How do you people study A Level Chemistry? Do you read books or do you think your lectures and lecture notes are enough?
Also when do you start attempting questions from topics you've studied?

And by the way, I'm in Year 13. Not being able to focus at all. Need some help :tongue:

I did AQA Chemistry A Level and the advice I would give is to do question after question after question. As soon as you have completed a topic, do the questions to make sure you have understood it. You can normally find the mark schemes online or ask your teacher to mark it for you.
Also, use flashcards and post-it notes, they're amazing for writing down definitions that you need to know by heart to obtain marks.
I am a visual learner so I also often watched videos like SnapRevise to help me absorb information after I had finished reading about a topic in my textbook. Mind maps are also amazing to use.
Since you are Year 13, I suggest you start making notes that can also be used as revision material, this will especially help as you won't need to worry about it later on because you will have everything you need on hand.

As for not being able to focus, I totally get that, I was the same. You do need to discipline yourself though otherwise you will regret it when you have to sit your exam. Don't have any distractions around you whilst you're working, get proper sleep and give yourself breaks so you don't lose motivation.

Hope this helps :smile:
Chemguide, and past paper questions. I occasionally made some sheets of notes for topics I needed to totally go over.
www.alevelchemistry.co.uk and wwe.physicsandmathstutor.com use this for past papers - all the other sites are irrelevant- don’t even bother making notes, just do questions I guarantee you, you will get an A
Original post by KateUpdate
I did AQA Chemistry A Level and the advice I would give is to do question after question after question. As soon as you have completed a topic, do the questions to make sure you have understood it. You can normally find the mark schemes online or ask your teacher to mark it for you.
Also, use flashcards and post-it notes, they're amazing for writing down definitions that you need to know by heart to obtain marks.
I am a visual learner so I also often watched videos like SnapRevise to help me absorb information after I had finished reading about a topic in my textbook. Mind maps are also amazing to use.
Since you are Year 13, I suggest you start making notes that can also be used as revision material, this will especially help as you won't need to worry about it later on because you will have everything you need on hand.

As for not being able to focus, I totally get that, I was the same. You do need to discipline yourself though otherwise you will regret it when you have to sit your exam. Don't have any distractions around you whilst you're working, get proper sleep and give yourself breaks so you don't lose motivation.

Hope this helps :smile:


Do you think lecture notes would be enough? And later if I condense them into flashcards?
Original post by Knightrises10
Do you think lecture notes would be enough? And later if I condense them into flashcards?

Lecture notes are not enough. You should definitely have them beside you and look at them to get the general idea but the best place to look is your textbook as it will often have the exact wording and phrasing you should be using as the textbook is written by the exam board. In order to score marks you have to play by the exam boards game (i.e. using the correct terminology etc). Normally in the back of your textbook there is a glossary where it has all of the words and their meanings. This is brilliant to use to make flashcards to learn the definitions.
Original post by KateUpdate
Lecture notes are not enough. You should definitely have them beside you and look at them to get the general idea but the best place to look is your textbook as it will often have the exact wording and phrasing you should be using as the textbook is written by the exam board. In order to score marks you have to play by the exam boards game (i.e. using the correct terminology etc). Normally in the back of your textbook there is a glossary where it has all of the words and their meanings. This is brilliant to use to make flashcards to learn the definitions.

Thank you!
So basically the memorization stuff from textbook mainly :smile:
Original post by Knightrises10
Thank you!
So basically the memorization stuff from textbook mainly :smile:

If it's written by your exam board then yes!
Make sure you do a lot of questions and look at what answers the mark schemes give as well. That combined all together should sort you :smile:

Quick Reply

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you