Chemistry a level: U to A?...

I'm in year 13, we just did two AS papers and I got E and a U... im predicted an A but this feels really unachievable. My teacher said I seem to know the content right but I'm just not saying the right thing the mark scheme is asking for. She does seem to be a really harsh marker as we went through the first paper and I was so close to writing exactly what the mark schemes said for some of them but because I didn't write one or two specific words I didn't get the mark.

So my biggest issue is exam technique I guess? But I don't know how that could be improved by so many grades...

Has anyone gone up so many grades in 6-7 months before the real exams? I'm getting more and more worried that I won't see any improvement :frown:

Does anyone have any tips?
I do AQA btw

Reply 1

Scotland Yard

Volunteer Team, Clearing and Applications Advisor

That's a big gap and I don't think that exam technique explains this huge gap between your predicted grades and your achieved grades, but... yes, mark schemes are just incredibly pedantic. They were the crux of my existence in sixth form, particularly those for my science subjects because some questions, you could answer correctly without getting any single marks.

So if you haven't done so already, do more past paper questions and mark them yourself with the mark scheme. That way you'll familiarise yourself with what the mark schemes want.

Reply 2

Scotney

Original post by njkwde

I'm in year 13, we just did two AS papers and I got E and a U... im predicted an A but this feels really unachievable. My teacher said I seem to know the content right but I'm just not saying the right thing the mark scheme is asking for. She does seem to be a really harsh marker as we went through the first paper and I was so close to writing exactly what the mark schemes said for some of them but because I didn't write one or two specific words I didn't get the mark.
So my biggest issue is exam technique I guess? But I don't know how that could be improved by so many grades...
Has anyone gone up so many grades in 6-7 months before the real exams? I'm getting more and more worried that I won't see any improvement :frown:

Does anyone have any tips?
I do AQA btw

Go and find videos on YouTube that go into detail about how to get the marks from questions
https://youtu.be/QtWSH-6Icao?si=U7bbfrYDvy81HWkv
Things like this.