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How to revise organic - AQA A-level chemistry

So i have my mocks soon (like 2 weeks time) and I havent yet revised organic chemistry.
The bulk of my chem exam will be on organic as we'll be doing paper 2.

Was wondering any ways to effectively revise organic chem, preferably finish all content in 5 days (ive done so for physical but physical was essentially memorising so when doing qs i found it quite easy).
Memorising for organic isnt working so ik i need to understand, i did try to watch AlleryChem but I think it's too time consuming and again, nothing goes in my head unless i memorise and memorising for organic isnt it.

My friend says to do past papers and revise off of mark schemes to get my content in but if sum1 could expand on tht or give me other ways plss xx
Original post by limbobimbo
So i have my mocks soon (like 2 weeks time) and I havent yet revised organic chemistry.
The bulk of my chem exam will be on organic as we'll be doing paper 2.

Was wondering any ways to effectively revise organic chem, preferably finish all content in 5 days (ive done so for physical but physical was essentially memorising so when doing qs i found it quite easy).
Memorising for organic isnt working so ik i need to understand, i did try to watch AlleryChem but I think it's too time consuming and again, nothing goes in my head unless i memorise and memorising for organic isnt it.

My friend says to do past papers and revise off of mark schemes to get my content in but if sum1 could expand on tht or give me other ways plss xx


Which year are you in?

What your friend recommends is exactly what it says on the tin. You attempt a past paper (or selected questions from a past paper), you mark it with the mark scheme and you annotate the paper with corrections and any points on the mark scheme you missed as you go along (and of course you revisit the paper every so often - this usually involves reattempting it, repeating the procedure and comparing how you did each time to see if you are improving or getting worse in certain areas, which helps you to focus your revision more). You can always try consulting the examiner’s report, volunteers here on TSR or your teacher where the mark scheme doesn’t make much sense.

As excellent as past papers are for revision, you do need to also consider learning all your organic reactions etc as these could come up and you may not have found any past paper questions that assess particular ones. The fastest way to do this is to look at sporcle.com https://www.sporcle.com/search/quizzes/?s=A+level+chemistry, attempt some quizzes and check both the answers and comments once you are done, taking note of anything relevant you didn’t know beforehand.
(edited 1 month ago)
Reply 2
Original post by TypicalNerd
Which year are you in?
What your friend recommends is exactly what it says on the tin. You attempt a past paper (or selected questions from a past paper), you mark it with the mark scheme and you annotate the paper with corrections and any points on the mark scheme you missed as you go along (and of course you revisit the paper every so often - this usually involves reattempting it, repeating the procedure and comparing how you did each time to see if you are improving or getting worse in certain areas, which helps you to focus your revision more). You can always try consulting the examiner’s report, volunteers here on TSR or your teacher where the mark scheme doesn’t make much sense.
As excellent as past papers are for revision, you do need to also consider learning all your organic reactions etc as these could come up and you may not have found any past paper questions that assess particular ones. The fastest way to do this is to look at sporcle.com https://www.sporcle.com/search/quizzes/?s=A+level+chemistry, attempt some quizzes and check both the answers and comments once you are done, taking note of anything relevant you didn’t know beforehand.


Currently in year 13 doing A level chemistry
Original post by limbobimbo
Currently in year 13 doing A level chemistry

I see. That gives me a rough idea of where you are at with organic so far.

I’d say you should ideally follow specification order when going over notes etc (https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/chemistry/a-level/chemistry-7405/specification/specification-at-a-glance) as you must have done all the year 12 stuff and are presumably at least up to carboxylic acids by now, or if your class is at a fast pace then maybe up to amines.

In terms of resources I’d recommend for AQA chemistry, I listed a number here: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7522364&p=99878600#post99878600
Reply 4
Original post by TypicalNerd
I see. That gives me a rough idea of where you are at with organic so far.
I’d say you should ideally follow specification order when going over notes etc (https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/chemistry/a-level/chemistry-7405/specification/specification-at-a-glance) as you must have done all the year 12 stuff and are presumably at least up to carboxylic acids by now, or if your class is at a fast pace then maybe up to amines.
In terms of resources I’d recommend for AQA chemistry, I listed a number here: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7522364&p=99878600#post99878600


Yeah we've done amines, my problem isnt mechanisms, its the content in general. Im pretty good at doing the mechanisms but when it comes to understanding the mechanisms for eg biofuels etc, i struggle on.

Ive used resources like chemrevise to help me but i feel like its not the best + allery chem whom i believe skips parts of content etc
Original post by limbobimbo
Yeah we've done amines, my problem isnt mechanisms, its the content in general. Im pretty good at doing the mechanisms but when it comes to understanding the mechanisms for eg biofuels etc, i struggle on.
Ive used resources like chemrevise to help me but i feel like its not the best + allery chem whom i believe skips parts of content etc

I never particularly liked allery chemistry or chemrevise personally and most students I mentored found better resources, which I have compiled together.

I don’t believe I specifically highlighted mechanisms as a weakpoint - when I referred to organic reactions, I meant what functional groups they affect, what products you get and what reagents and conditions you need. It is incredibly common to be given an organic synthesis question where you are asked to just identify all the reagents and conditions needed to convert one molecule into another (especially with the AQA board) and these can be easy marks (especially the smaller 1 - 3 mark questions of this type).

One thing I did was identify common question types and how to approach them. In terms of the organic questions that come up a lot, AQA asks an awful lot of synthesis questions, a handful of mechanism questions, a handful of organic spectroscopy questions (IR and NMR come up a fair bit, though you probably haven’t done NMR yet) , tests for organic functional groups frequently come up and you will probably have at least one question requiring you to name organic molecules or deduce their structures from the name.
Reply 6
Original post by TypicalNerd
I never particularly liked allery chemistry or chemrevise personally and most students I mentored found better resources, which I have compiled together.
I don’t believe I specifically highlighted mechanisms as a weakpoint - when I referred to organic reactions, I meant what functional groups they affect, what products you get and what reagents and conditions you need. It is incredibly common to be given an organic synthesis question where you are asked to just identify all the reagents and conditions needed to convert one molecule into another (especially with the AQA board) and these can be easy marks (especially the smaller 1 - 3 mark questions of this type).
One thing I did was identify common question types and how to approach them. In terms of the organic questions that come up a lot, AQA asks an awful lot of synthesis questions, a handful of mechanism questions, a handful of organic spectroscopy questions (IR and NMR come up a fair bit, though you probably haven’t done NMR yet) , tests for organic functional groups frequently come up and you will probably have at least one question requiring you to name organic molecules or deduce their structures from the name.

Alright thanks xx
I'm going to make flow diagrams for all my reactions

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