Exam best practice
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The revision period should focus on taking material you have learnt and ensuring you can remember facts and demonstrate your understanding.
Revising for exams is most effective when done actively. The best techniques involve mental processing of the information and active recall.
- Do practice questions and mark them
- Create and use flashcards (cover–recall–repeat)
- Brain dump topics and check for gaps
- Identify where you lose most marks and target your revision to these areas
You may need to return to learning if you find subjects you don’t understand. In this situation, re-reading and highlighting notes, despite being passive revision, can help you plug your gaps.
You need to master the command words used in an exam. These direct how you answer the question and ensure that your writing matches the mark scheme.
When completing calculations:
- Do not round any values until the final step
- Annotate your working with what each value refers to
- Give your final answer an appropriate number of significant figures
- Check units throughout the calculation
You just need to learn some elements of the specification by heart. Fast recall here can save you time and earn you marks in the exams.
The most critical areas to memorise are:
1. Reaction observations, especially qualitative tests and metal ion colours
2. Reagents and conditions
3. Units for key equations
4. Molecular shapes and bond angles
5. Nomenclature rules
6. Definitions
When using a mark scheme, pay particular attention to the DO NOT ALLOW section. These link to common misconceptions.
If you have written something that is ‘not allowed’, review the topic and work out why you thought this answer was OK.
Timing is key.
The AQA A-level chemistry papers allow for around 80 seconds per mark. This is an average and does not allow for review.
Answering simple recall questions quickly allows more time for answering complex questions.
One strategy is to answer the whole exam paper using a one-minute-per-mark strategy to ensure completion and then to use the remaining time to review and improve answers. Mark answers that you wish to return to with a star.
Multiple choice questions are only worth one mark each.
All marks are equal – spend too much time on the multiple-choice questions at the expense of the rest of the paper.
Use the answer choices on multiple-choice questions. Eliminate wrong multiple-choice answers with visual annotation.
Every wrong answer you eliminate improves your chances of a correct random guess.
Where a multiple-choice question has statements to select from, tackle the simplest statement first, eliminate appropriate answer choices, then assess another statement.
There is only ever one correct answer – it is possible to select the correct answer after assessing only two of the three statements.
Where multiple choice questions are numerical, it can be possible to narrow down answers, or even select the correct answer without picking up your calculator.
A good example of this is excluding negative enthalpies when you are told a reaction is endothermic.
Where answers vary by order of magnitude, then unit analysis is enough to identify the correct answer.
Some multiple-choice questions do require more time to answer correctly.
Identify these with a star, and return to them later when you have attempted the whole paper.