A-Level Biology Week 1 Exam Preparation Tips

A-Level Biology. Sometimes you might feel like yeeting your textbook into the bin and question why you ever took in the first place. I know I did! But, please rest assured – it’s normal to be feeling frustrated at this time of the year, and flat-out exhausted. My name's Syed and this blog will focus on helping you get through the next few weeks of revision and hopefully making them as painless as possible.

Start Now / Stay Concise

Unlike GCSE science, in the big leagues of A-Level Biology, we are introduced to essay-based exam questions. Now, this may be the moment where you have intense flashbacks to your GCSE English years and start vomiting the textbook onto the page. This instinct is understandable, but misguided. What examiner's care about is quality not quantity, as such it’s important to reign yourself in and remain concise!

Let’s say we need to write an answer worth 8 marks for one of our practice questions this week, it's best to think of these as ‘8 key-point’ questions which is what the examiner's are looking for. This doesn’t mean you should start filling up every inch of the page with writing and long explanations or anecdotes. Biology, is a science. In the sciences, we love things to be explained concisely - not with ridiculously large paragraphs or metaphor or similes *yuck*. All you need to do for a question like this is think of the 8 key points that actually answer the question, once you have these in your mind, just form them into sentences and connect these sentences into paragraphs. Maybe 4 points in the first paragraph and 4 in the other. This structure should save you time, and your hand muscles! Remember, each point will not require it's own paragraph!

Positivity and Mindset

I'm not here to tell you Biology is easy, and admittedly, it can be quite difficult sometimes! However, by demonising a subject and constantly telling ourselves ‘this is hard’ or ‘this is impossible’, we are creating a fixed negative mindset. Now this sort of stuff SAPS all our motivation, makes us want to procrastinate and in time can have a really damaging effect on our mental health.

As such, to get through the next few weeks, we need to forge ourselves a resilient and positive mindset! However, it's not easy to change a mindset or long-held beliefs. So let’s start small and start thinking about it gradually. If you have successfully completed a past paper you should be proud of yourself. An achievement is an achievement, no matter the size of it. Which is why my suggestion for this would be to start congratulating yourself for the smallest things. Maybe a well-deserved chocolate bar after doing a past paper. If you are eating healthy, then I guess an apple – it’s up to you! But if you dislike the work/revision then linking it to something you enjoy is a great motivator (be moderate with is of course! No 4 day trips to Spain after each practise paper...)

“A goal without a plan is just a wish"

Some of us may be in the position where we still have content left to revise, or we haven’t started at all. Hey, I was in that position too once! Just know that it is completely normal. The first step would be to definitely compile what is actually coming up in the exam. You should print out the specification so you have a physical copy to reference to.

Once you have all the info in front of you, grab your specification and your textbook and start ranking how you feel about subjects. This could be by colour – ye olde traffic light system always works a treat with green for good, orange for iffy and red for PLEASE NO.

By listing the topics in terms of difficulty, having the most difficult one on the top and going down to the easiest, you give yourself a solid framework to base your revision on.

Let’s say we are in the position where we have 8 or 10 chapters to cover in few weeks. Like I said before, rank these in difficulty and start with the most difficult one. By doing 2 or 3 chapters a week you will be able to cover your content in time.

Now that you are ready to go, what is next?

So, you have done all your notes and content revision, you have a clear plan, and are ready to go. You may be wondering, well what should I do next? I have the best tool for you: past papers!

Past papers help put us in the shoes of a student in the exam hall, before our real exam. They help us practice using the information we've learnt – after all, just because you have learnt a definition from the textbook it doesn’t mean you can use that information in order to answer a question!

Try to seek an environment which mimics the exam hall, maybe the library. For those 2 hours, just try to complete a past paper and see how you do. This will help you determine your shortcomings and improve on them before the exam. Once you improve on these, there is no doubt that you will do better in your exams.

For now, let us assume exams are two weeks away and you have done no past papers. First of all, do not worry! So, what can we do? Well, try and attempt at least 2 past papers in exam conditions and time constraints. Once you are done with these, you can go through a secret little tool called the examiner’s report for each past paper. These reports are an extension to the mark scheme and provide people with feedback on where student who sat that paper went wrong and how mistakes in the paper could have been avoided. These take less than 10 minutes to read!

It is sad to be leaving you for this week, but good luck and I promise I will be back soon with even more advice!

Have any questions about how to prepare for your A-Level exams? Having problems with any hard to understand content or tricky past exam questions? Then ask Syed. Syed will be hosting a series of Q&A webinars in the 2 weeks before final exams. Post your questions here, and Syed will answer them in these sessions.