The Student Room Group

A-Level Psychology

How can I boost my grades up to a B or A as someone who has been stuck on C's forever?
Emulation points… nail them
Evaluation I mean
Original post by elishajames06
Emulation points… nail them

but how, im struggling with the specific structure for my evaluations, and my teacher keeps marking me down for "poor structure", please help if u can, thanks
Original post by Vanillaporridge
but how, im struggling with the specific structure for my evaluations, and my teacher keeps marking me down for "poor structure", please help if u can, thanks

if you have been given structure strips just apply them to past paper questions you are answering, and for evaluation comment bit is the most important you need to go into detail at least thats what my psychology teacher suggests us to do, is there any specific area you are struggling with or is it general?
Original post by mutlubuse
if you have been given structure strips just apply them to past paper questions you are answering, and for evaluation comment bit is the most important you need to go into detail at least thats what my psychology teacher suggests us to do, is there any specific area you are struggling with or is it general?

It's just General evaluation points for example I state that a study is generalisable because it involves a wider range of participants but I don't know how to elaborate it from that point on, btw are you y12 or 13? Thanks for the reply
Original post by Vanillaporridge
It's just General evaluation points for example I state that a study is generalisable because it involves a wider range of participants but I don't know how to elaborate it from that point on, btw are you y12 or 13? Thanks for the reply

so for evaluation questions like that (strength and weakness) my teacher taught us to do PEC (point, evidence, comment) if youre talking about generalisability, an example would be, One strength of *** is that it has ecological validity. This means that it can be generalised into real life. An example of this is that it is a field experiment.... obviously give context here. This is a strength because generalisability can improve the interpretation of the findings and relate it to the real life, which can further increase the usefulness of the research etc etc comment bit can change making it more relatable to the context mine is a bit random as i did not have a context, I hope this is making sense. I am in year 13.
Follow a PEEL structure. For example, from my notes:

P: One strength of the multi-store model of memory is that there is naturalistic case study research evidence from patients with neurological damage that supports the model.
E: For example the patient HM (studied by Scoville and Milner in 1955), who underwent surgery to decrease the symptoms of his epilepsy where his hippocampus was removed, was still able to form new short term memories but was unable to form new long term memories (he thought the date was the same as when he had surgery: 1953).
E: This suggests that the short term memory store and the long term memory store are located in different parts of the brain since the stores were affected differently by the surgical removal of his hippocampus.
L: Therefore the multi-store model of memory is credible since the model claims that the short term memory store and long term memory store are separate stores, aligning in the findings from the case study of HM.

To get high marks you need specifc evidence (names, dates, quantitive data) that is fully elaborated on (in the explanation part of the peel). In explanation you fully explore what this evidence means, then in the therefore you show the implications of the explanation on the theory/study in question, while linking to your point at the start of the paragraph. To find the info for these evaluations use the pdf essays online from tutor 2u (however they have been wrong in the past e.g. the multi-store essay said that the duration of short term memory was 20-30 seconds when it’s 18-30 seconds). Also the green hair girl textbook is very helpful but some evaluations are lacking imo so I use a combo of both this and tutor 2u essays and it’s usually enough to get 4 full PEELs for each possible 16 marker.

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