General Advice For GCSE And A Levels
General advice for GCSE and A levels
So I was asked a question by a follower and I thought it might be beneficial to post some general advice for all the future candidates whose GCSEs and A levels aren’t cancelled because of a pandemic. Here’s a short list of what helped me get through these exams.
1) Getting exam technique down is IMPORTANT! Do not underestimate this importance - knowing what the examiners want from you is (sadly) almost more important than knowledge of content (though you do have to know that, too!)
2) Understand the question words. For example, explain means give detail, and list means don’t waste time with such detail.
3) Answer the question as it is written, not what you want the question to be. Some questions are really long winded - they’ll wrap up the question with some background material that you haven’t learnt about per se but is still relevant and applicable to your course. You have to be able to unravel the core of what the examiners are asking. Don’t worry about the wall of information. Do read it as be ready to glean clues from it, but find the question first.
4) Read the mark schemes AND THE EXAMINERS’ REPORTS! Last year’s documents are locked because teachers like to use them for mocks, but if you’ve already done those papers, ask your teachers to send you them. These are gold! Use the mark schemes to know which buzzwords and details the examiners will reward and use the examiners reports to see which questions candidates struggled to answer. There is almost always detailed analysis of common mistakes and advice to future candidates there!
5) Look through the teacher-oriented documents. I know for OCR A Biology A level, there were sample documents that gave examples of full marks, mid marks and low marks for long response questions. They literally hand you “what a good one looks like” (and it was easy to find because of how new the specification is). I was never given these documents in class! Nobody you have contact with knows the course better than a teacher who is meant to teach it. For A level languages, I read every single document, no matter how boring it seemed, which perhaps was a bit overkill, but it helped me know what exactly was expected of me. I’m talking everything from the specification to exemplar work and speaking exam conduct (which actually was useful because I then knew what would happen if I got too distressed to continue for example, as I knew what the teacher/examiner would be required to do in that case). It sounds nuts, but seeing it from a teacher’s perspective helped me. I knew the structure of my course by heart; I knew weightings of different aspects of exams and the learning objectives by which I was assessed. A lot of it is irrelevant admin, but there are actually some useful documents so do have a root through!
6) Don’t be afraid of old spec questions if the subject matter is relevant.
7) Revising using past papers is always the best way, ultimately. If you run out of past papers, make your own questions and file them away and come back to them! I buddied up with a friend and we tested each other, swapping our own exam-style questions at periodic intervals and marking our partner’s answers. You get to be the examiner, the marker and the candidate in one simple activity!
8) Learn from your mistakes. Don’t look at a lower mark and think you’re doomed; rather, think about where you went wrong. You’d be surprised at how many marks are lost to silly mistakes for which you’ll absolutely kick yourself in hindsight! Little mistakes might be avoided by doing something as little as slowing down, taking a toilet break to clear your head and generally being aware of them.
9) If there’s a certain type of question you struggle to answer, it may help to make a checklist of what to include. For example, whenever I’m asked to draw a graph, I write down things like “suitable axes using more than half the available space, x is independent variable, labels, title, units, correctly plotted points, line of best fit” in a corner somewhere out the way - and I’m at university rn! I do this before I start fumbling about with the question; it takes less than 30s to jot it down in a shorthand I understand.
10) Teach someone else, or pretend to! Even now, I remember stuff and understand it better if I’m “explaining” my thought process out loud as if I were teaching it. Understanding things will make subjects like chemistry a lot easier, because then you can apply what you know rather than blindly rote learn a bunch of examples. Mechanism you’re not quite sure of? Draw it out and talk it through! You’ll quickly pinpoint exactly what you’re struggling with.
11) Breathe and look after yourself. It’s not impossible; so much of success is about confidence. If you convince yourself you can’t do something, you absolutely won’t - attitude is everything and so is your health.
More Posts from Chemistry-and-cupcakes and Others
Walking home from a long day at sixth form
Ft my old primary school :)
I did a lot of reading today and caught up with my old head of year.
The weather is gorgeous but it should NOT be this hot in February :(
12/09/18 - 1/100 days of productivity
Today is an inset day (even though we’ve only had 2 days back haha) and I’m using it to research the author of the German book we are studying.
I will also do some maths today and write up yesterday’s biology notes.
(Sorry for not posting in a couple of days - I’ve had a nightmare trying to readjust and I was panicking a bit. I’m ok now!)
18/3/19 Essays in the fading light
So my mental health is struggling but I am self-aware enough to know that and I am actively getting some help because I don’t want a second bout of severe depression HOWEVER I know that my stress is transient and I will have the summer to recover. It isn’t worth destroying my brain and wellbeing for A Levels!
I decided to just write a plain old paper essay for German but then quickly remembered I can’t double tap the pen to erase my mistakes sooooo Tippex is my friend!
Notes —> Revision
I love whiteboards. They make me feel smart!
This was an intro to inorganic solid state synthesis and was essentially just a bunch of information that was handed to us. It’s rare that this type of thing happens in a chem degree... we are normally far more problem-solving than that. This reminds me more of GCSE or A level where we had to know a bunch of advantages and disadvantages for different processes and describe how they work. Hated it then, hate it now!
A Levels 2019 - an update
I’m not dead (yet!), although after my maths exams I’d like to be 🙃
I’m mad at the paper (Edexcel pure maths paper 2) and I’m even more mad at myself - I didn’t have time to think and overcome the obstacles that presented themselves so I came out of the exam facing the possibility of getting less than 20% and just realising my mistakes and how to do some questions. I was upset. There were tears.
HOWEVER, what’s done is done and I know that whatever letter I get at the end is not representative of my abilities. (I’m talking I might get an E or a U when the lowest I’ve got in my hardest mocks was an A... yeah it was bad.) I have done 7 exams and have 6 left. 2 of them are today, 13th June, the day after my most horrific exam yet - I have to pick myself up and move on.
I can do maths. I have learned so much that will be helpful to me in the future and that’s the main thing. I am 100% not stupid and I am ready to kick arse in my last exams.
Also a word of advice: don’t try to revise a whole module of biology the night before your exam. According to my mum, I woke up with a manic look in my eye xD
Being kinder to myself
Many of you will have noticed this blog has been very dormant for a while. I have really stepped back with the constant studying in order to recover from severe burnout, depression and anxiety. If there’s any good year to do this, it’s my first year of uni: my marks don’t count towards my final degree classification. I have indeed been going to lectures and labs and diligently doing all set work, I’ve just cut back the time I spend studying outside of contact hours a bit. Taking a break has helped me feel better, and I’m ready to jump into second year and read around and really engage with the chemistry I’ll be doing. There is no shame in this, and I’d really like you all to remember that it’s okay to cut yourself some slack when you need to x
OMG I needed this
How to teach yourself linguistics online for free
Wish you were enrolled in an intro linguistics class this semester? Starting a linguistics major and looking for extra help? Trying to figure out whether you should study linguistics and what comes after? Whether you’re just trying to grasp the basics of linguistics or you’re trying to construct a full online linguistics course, here’s a comprehensive list of free linguistics websites, podcasts, videos, blogs, and other resources from around the internet:
Linguistics Podcasts
Specific episodes:
The International Phonetic Alphabet and vowels
Constituency
Gricean Maxims and presuppositions
Kids These Days aren’t ruining language
Learning languages linguistically
Phonemes
Prepositions and determiners
Morphemes and the wug test
Podcasts in general:
Lingthusiasm
The History of English Podcast
Talk the Talk
Lexicon Valley
The World in Words
A Way With Words
Linguistics Videos
Modular topics:
NativLang (cartoons)
The Ling Space
Tom Scott’s Language Files
Arika Okrent (whiteboard videos)
Structured video series like an online course:
Introduction to Linguistics (TrevTutor)
Another intro linguistics series (DS Bigham)
Phonology (TrevTutor)
Mathematical linguistics (TrevTutor)
Syntax (TrevTutor)
Another syntax series following the chapter structure of a free online syntax textbook (Caroline Heycock)
The Virtual Linguistics Campus at Marburg University
“Miracles of Human Language” (on Coursera from Leiden University)
Blog posts
General
How much do I need to know before taking intro linguistics? (Spoiler: not much)
28 tips for doing better in your intro linguistics course
How to find a topic for your linguistics essay or research paper
For typesetting linguistics symbols: What is LaTeX and why do linguists love it? (with sample LaTeX doc to download and modify).
Further linguistics resources about specific areas, such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition (first/second), historical linguistics, neurolinguistics, prescriptivism.
Phonetics & Phonology
How to make your own paper model of the larynx
Teaching phonetics using lollipops
How to remember the IPA vowel chart
How to remember the IPA consonant chart
IPA transcription practice
A detailed explanation of sonorants, obstruents, and sonority
A very elaborate Venn diagram of English phonological features
The basics of how Optimality Theory works, with coffee analogy
Allophones of /t/, explained with internet gifs
Several good visualizations and explanations of the vocal tract
How to type IPA on your phone (Android and iOS)
Various ways to type IPA on a computer
Morphology & Syntax
Morphological typology cartoons
So you asked the internet how to draw syntax trees. Here’s why you’re confused.
Types of trees: a sentence is an S, a sentence is an IP, a sentence is a TP
A step-by-step guide to drawing a syntax tree, with gifs
Distributed Morphology
Garden path sentences: how they work, some examples
Structural ambiguity and understanding people in Ipswich
How to draw trees on a computer (TreeForm and phpSyntaxTree)
Pronoun typology and “the gay fanfiction problem”
The solution to violent example sentences: Pokemon
Semantics & Pragmatics
The difference between epistemic and deontic, necessity and possibility (with bonus modals as Hogwarts houses)
Why learn semantics? Comebacks to annoying people.
Presuppositions, implicature and entailment, and more presuppositions in Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Gricean maxims in Welcome to Night Vale
Scalar implicature and a duck gif
Giving a shit about Negative Polarity Items, NPIs explained using Mean Girls references, and a follow-up on Free Choice Items
The lambda calculus for absolute dummies
The Lambda Calculator (software for practising in Heim & Kratzer style)
Teaching & Academic/career advice
Linguistics resources for high school teachers
Teaching linguistics to 9-14 year olds
On writing an IB extended essay in linguistics (& follow-up)
IPA Bingo
IPA Jeopardy and IPA Hangman
Practising syntax trees using cards and string/straws
Find a linguistics olympiad near you!
Editing linguistics Wikipedia articles instead of writing a final paper that no one but the prof will read (see also wikiedu.org)
Should you go to grad school in linguistics? Maybe
Figuring out if you actually want to go to linguistics grad school
How to decide which linguistics grad school to go to
How to look for linguistics undergrad programs
How to interact with someone who’s just given a talk
An extensive list of undergrad and/or student-friendly conferences - apply to one near you!
Advice for linguistics profs on increasing enrollment and supporting non-academic careers
Linguistics jobs - a series about careers outside academia
Languages
Linguistic approaches to language learning resource roundup
Will linguistics help with language learning? / Will learning a second language help with linguistics?
The problem with “economically useful” as a reason for language learning
Further link roundups
This list not enough? Try these further masterposts:
A very long list of linguistics movies, documentaries, and TV show episodes
A list of books (fiction and nonfiction) about linguistics
A comprehensive list of language and linguistics podcasts, from Superlinguo
A very long list of linguistics YouTube channels and other free online videos about linguistics
20 linguistics blogs I recommend following
How to explain linguistics to your friends and family this holiday season
4/3/19
I hate electrochemistry so much but I’m trying not to make life harder for myself by creating a mental barrier
22/3/19
Real studying is messy
Also if you haven’t heard Lewis Capaldi’s “Grace” I THOROUGHLY recommend you do because it is amazing
Happy Friday folks! Enjoy your weekend x
9/1/18 - 3/100 days of productivity
Today has been awesome. I had chemistry first thing, and then double German (my favourite class!), then I had some Galette des Rois in French and ended the day with Biology. No frees today but a really positive time all round :)
I’m sat doing homework now and I’ve promised myself I can watch a new TV programme that’s on later if I get it done haha
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Lauren, 22 - England - chemistry PhD student - studyblr - English, French (fluent), German (B2) - original and reblogged content - nice to meet you!
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