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hey doing A-level computer science and AM struggling

- I do A-level OCR computer science and am struggling with the Coding section so the whole of paper 2 , i did not do this for GCSE my parent thought t was a good i idea to do this so i agreed and here i a, struggling so much , is there any tips to answer those coding exam question , thanks good bye

ALSO am in year 13 (so asking immediate help)

(edited 2 months ago)

Reply 1

StaffsRep Aura

Official Rep

Original post

by uniqueen8888

Hi,
Hope you are well. I'm Aura, a rep from the Uni of Staffs studying Computer Science. I did my a-levels back in 2022 and one of my options was OCR Computer Science. For this question, I'm going to assume that you are referring purely to paper 2, rather than the coding project that goes alongside the course.

If that is the case... you're in luck! Don't panic, as most of the coding questions in paper 2 are pseudocode, requiring yourself to fill in small gaps for identifiers and keywords. Most of the paper is made up of sorting algorithms, Big-O and core coding concepts such as IDEs, abstraction, OOP and so forth. You do not need to be amazing at coding to pass these. Most of the marks will come from memorising the advantages and disadvantages of the concepts mentioned above. Remember what a variable is, types of loops, types of data structures e.g. graphs, trees, queues, stacks. For the coding side, half will be in pseudocode with the final couple questions in your chosen language. For my exam, I memorised pseudocode for different sorting algorithms that commonly come up and tried to understand it, they usually rotate between different ones each year. Have a read of the guides and specs from the exams to see what it is you are missing for your revision. I used to tick them off and practice past papers as I went to make sure I understood them.

Sherpa Guide
OCR Guide
PMT Sorting Algorithms Code, PMT Advanced
BBC Guide
OCR Past Papers

If you memorise the typical responses for the theory section of paper 2 you can usually already ace half the paper, practice practice and practice as this is how I got an A*! I recommend you get flashcards and re-write the code and typical answers until you have them memorised. Practice basic coding too like using recursion, loops (for and while), conditional statements and common functions like "len" (length of). Hope this is of use.

Thanks,
Aura (Uni Of Staffs)

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