As chemistry help!

So basically, for chemistry I feel as though I know all the content thoroughly. For my exams I revised so much! I had already done my notes, done Q cards on mechanisms and reactions, memorised all the trends,reacions and content and thought I understood it well. Then I got my result back and received a D. I just don't understand where I went wrong!!! On top of this I also did loads of questions for each topic of the book.... Also, I can't imagine how this can be a question of not revising enough because I revised for weeks!

My question is what am I doing so wrong and how can I improve?

Reply 1

xxNoodlezxx

13

Have you had the actual paper back? If not, I'd request to see it from your teacher. Whenever I do a Chemistry past paper, I will go through and correct everything I have gotten wrong by adding my corrections on post-it notes so they can be easily moved around the page. I then make sure to thoroughly go through each question that I got wrong and make sure I know exactly why I got it wrong - is it because I simply forgot something? was I not able to access what that particular question wanted? I then make a list of all the topics that I got questions wrong for and will revise them further and watch more videos on them to make sure I know them inside and out. I completely get what you feel, AS chem is hard. :redface:

If you have been revising for weeks and know all the content, maybe it's your exam technique that is letting you down? I'd say the way to improve this is to just constantly do past papers so that you know what questions are looking for. I know this is difficult due to the changes in a-levels, but when I was revising for my AS chem exam a few weeks back, I would use some of the old papers too. Hope this helps :h:

Reply 2

wxyzz

OP

9

Original post by xxNoodlezxx

Have you had the actual paper back? If not, I'd request to see it from your teacher. Whenever I do a Chemistry past paper, I will go through and correct everything I have gotten wrong by adding my corrections on post-it notes so they can be easily moved around the page. I then make sure to thoroughly go through each question that I got wrong and make sure I know exactly why I got it wrong - is it because I simply forgot something? was I not able to access what that particular question wanted? I then make a list of all the topics that I got questions wrong for and will revise them further and watch more videos on them to make sure I know them inside and out. I completely get what you feel, AS chem is hard. :redface:

If you have been revising for weeks and know all the content, maybe it's your exam technique that is letting you down? I'd say the way to improve this is to just constantly do past papers so that you know what questions are looking for. I know this is difficult due to the changes in a-levels, but when I was revising for my AS chem exam a few weeks back, I would use some of the old papers too. Hope this helps :h:

Thanks so much! I'm going to make sure that if I did the paper again I would get full marks ( not just memorising but understanding why and how also).