Struggling with A Level Chem...help please

Do you have any tips or ways of revision if you do A Level Chem? I was aiming to A and keep getting Cs, I study the content and can mostly recite it, nearly done all past papers available but when it comes to new exam questions it's like everything is new and I've never seen it before? Mostly organic chem as well that I can't seem to grasp the content, I think it's just I don't understand rather than know so I can't apply? Any tips?

Reply 1

m4riammmm

Original post by username6139750

hey first of all what exam board do you do? I did OCR so ill share my experience on that, after resitting the subject and going from a B to an A looking back I realise the content itself is not difficult at all and its the application that catches us out sometimes. I think if after doing all those exam qs and you still struggle on new qs then I think you may not have understood the content well in the first place.

I can recommend to you Allery chem on YouTube and also the ocr chemrevise revision guides. I would watch his module summary videos and use them along with the guides and my notes to create flashcards. [edit:: make sure you're using your specification also, this is so important it tells you what you need to know and how it may be tested so don't waste your time learning things you don't need to!] top tip: make sure you understand the content before making flashcards rather than rushing to make them as this won't be helping you at all but just wasting your time. try to attend drop ins at school if that's available or speaking with your chem teachers to help guide your thought process on those harder questions, after a certain period of time all questions are basically repeats of themselves.

in the exams in general you wanna make sure you're able to recall those facts to easily gain those 1 or 2 marks as it all adds up for definitions, processes etc. for calculations it helps if you do maths a level, the acid calculations and logs will be slightly easier for you. notice in those big mark calculations that the steps tend to always be similar so even if you don't fully understand try to just think what you can do with the knowledge provided, for example do you have the items needed to calculate moles? can you think of any equations that would be useful in these scenarios and how we can proceed from there? its those baby steps that end up gaining you the marks its possible to receive a few marks on this 6 mark calculations from simple working outs. something I used to add to my flashcards were recipe cards: illustrating clear steps to tackle different types of calculation questions for example step 1. calc moles of given substances, step 2. calc excess moles {these are just random steps but hopefully you get the gist}

when it comes to those harder questions the students that get those higher grades are the ones that stick to the basics and know them well. try reviewing your class papers and highlighting areas you get wrong and perhaps you notice common theme for patterns in mistakes that you can work on to help build your grade. it also helps to not think of it as grades themselves but as a test to you of how well you know the content, those that get those A and A*s just happen to know the content well and are able to secure their marks, each question in the paper is a mini obstacle and you can tackle them.
good luck in your future studies I hope this helped in some way :wink:

(edited 2 months ago)

Reply 2

thegeek888

Original post by username6139750

Given the fact that just under a third of the marks in A-Level Chemistry are Calculations, then you should get Jim Clark's book:

chemistry calculations (chemguide.co.uk)

Also, take a look at the ChemGuide website, as it covers the entire A-Level Chemistry specification. 🙂