Hey guys and girls. So exam season is truly here and I’m trying to get back into the flow of revision and being productive. However, let’s just say I tried small small to get work done over Easter and it’s been quite hit and miss, but my God is on the throne sha.
This post is specifically for anyone doing A level psychology, as that’s the main focus (I may do a general revision post but we’ll see).
When revising you need to go back to the beginning. What I mean by this is the beginning in terms of why you are studying what you are studying. Without a why, motivation often becomes a distant cousin to your success. So why did I study psychology at A level (and also now at degree level)? I’ve always been interested in human behaviour and wanting to know why people behave in certain ways. My first realisation of this interest was seated in my love for crime documentaries, investigation shows, Crimewatch, shows like Criminal Minds and The Mentalist. I realised that I didn’t just watch the shows and leave it there, I would find myself thinking about why a criminal would act the way they did, why did the crowd not respond the way you’d expect them to or why did the victim react like that? So when it came to picking my A levels Psychology was a clear choice and my genuine love for the subject (and God’s grace) helped me to get the A* I was able to achieve.
Even if your why for studying psychology isn’t a passion for the subject, still find a why. Whether that be, so I can get into my firm choice uni, so my parents are proud with my results, so I can be proud of my results and myself or so I can get an understanding of a new subject. Just have a why and keep that in mind when revising. Once you have your why let’s start getting organised.
A level psychology is a dense subject. From novice concepts, case studies with dates and et als, theories, models, experiments, A01s (key points/details) and A03s (evaluation points) – there’s a lot of information to digest, understand and remember. Organisation is key, so here are some steps to organising and getting on top of your (psychology) revision:
1) Print out your specification
Your specification tells you exactly what can be asked of you in your exams. The backbone of your revision should be your specification. Everything you write down when revising or condensing notes should correlate to a specification point. This helps to keep your revision focused, concise and hopefully accurate.
For AQA A level psychology this is just the list of topics, but print out a physical copy of the specification and also use it as a checklist to monitor your progress through your revision. The specification will also help you understand the structure of your exam, in terms of what topics are in what paper and what information you need to know for each topic. So from this topic list, 1-4 are Paper 1, 5-7 are Paper 2 and 8 plus one topic from each option makes up Paper 3 (so in my case I did topics 8,9,12 & 15).
2) Condense your notes
Reading straight out of your dense class notes will most likely won’t help you take in the information you need, its way too passive. Whether you do it by hand or typed up, condensing your notes will help you when your exam is closer and you need key points to look over.
For me personally I condense my notes in stages and the amount of times I condense it depends on my initial understanding of the topic, how dense I perceive that topic to be and how much time I have. So I remember for topics such as social influence and memory, as they were the first two topics I learnt I condensed the notes many times. I typed up the notes, made mind maps, key word lists, listed experiments and case studies and finally made revision cards. Psychopathology I made a summarised PowerPoint and made mind maps and revision cards. While topics such as research methods I only did revision cards.
So my general advice for this point is to get to know what materials you need to revise effectively and condense your notes accordingly.
3) Practise your exam techniques
With practising exam techniques, I found it effective to be progressive when doing this. So my first way of practising exam techniques was simply recalling facts and key points using summary questions (given by my teacher, I’ll leave them below) that I answered. These questions are quick and cover the breadth of each topic.
My next way of using recall skills needed in the exam, was by answering questions in my textbook (the textbooks I used were The Complete Companion for AQA A level Psychology which can be bought from Amazon, year 1/AS & year 2). These questions were weighted with marks, which would occur in the exam. At this stage weighted questions help you to know what kind of question you’re dealing with. So 1/2 markers requiring short/one worded answers to be answered in less than 2 minutes, while 6 markers may require 2 extended A03 points or detailed A01 recall. With 8 and 16 markers showing that you need to spend between 8-20 minutes structuring an essay using both A01 and A03 points (possibly needing A02 points if it’s an application question). This helped to develop my skill in structuring different answers for differently weighted questions.
The best practise you can get are past exam papers under timed conditions. Timing myself doing past papers, got me into the habit of answering the paper like I would need to when my exam came around. You put everything you’ve learnt into practise, timing, structure of answers, recall of facts, reading and understanding the question then answering accordingly.
At all of these stages, getting your teacher to check over your answers, mark your practise runs and give you feedback is very useful. They are there to support you, so don’t feel like your bothering them (this has always been what I thought, but really and truly they’re paid to help you through your studies and I was lucky that my teacher was super proactive in supporting us). Some of your teachers may have masters in the subject or better yet be examiners that can critically help you navigate how to answer the paper, so don’t waste their expertise by not utilising it.
4) Do as many essay plans or practise essays as you can!
This helps to ensure that you get used to evaluating, which can often be the most tasking part of the essays. It also just helps you to feel more prepared for the extended questions that may not be essay questions, but may appear as 6 markers instead.
Go to your exam board website and go through the past papers and answer the 8 markers and 16 markers or make detailed essay plans for them. As you are writing these essays and essay plans get your teacher to mark them and then you can improve them until they are model essays. Then compile them onto one Word document and coming up to your exams, you can read over these essay plans and highlight key points to help you remember what’s needed in the essays.
I found this step very helpful once I had all my revision material, actively writing up essays kept me recalling information and structuring them effectively the more I did 8 and 16 markers. (At the end of this post I’ll leave a link to my essays and other revision material I could find to share x)
I hope this has been useful to anyone in year 12 or year 13 studying A level psychology and I hope anyone with their psychology exams coming up (and exams in general) is feeling a bit more equipped. Below will be some general tips that you should already know, but hopefully work as reminders. I will also have some revision materials you may find useful.
Tips:
- Remember research methods can be asked in any paper
- A02 questions are questions that require you to link concepts to the context of the question (e.g. a question including a name gives it context, so ‘Ben may have schizophrenia because he has shown signs of having 3 positive symptoms for over 6 months’). So extended/essay questions will reward some marks for linking your answer to the context of the question
- Try to answer a mark a minute or be a bit quicker for shorter questions so you can give yourself enough time to do your essays justice
- BECOME BESTIES WITH YOUR SPECIFICATION –> http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/psychology/specifications/AQA-7181-7182-SP-2015.PDF
- Mark your practise papers to see what the examiners want and also get your teacher to check it over
- Know key names such as: Asch, Milgram, Ainsworth, Bowlby, Zimbardo, Moscivici, Schaffer & Emerson, Lorenz, Harlow, Van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg, Baddeley & Hitch, Atkinson & Shiffrin, Ellis and any other key names from your optional topics (Disclaimer: there are hundreds of names in psychology you don’t need to remember them all, remember key ones and what they did)
- 30 minutes per section of a paper (AS papers = 1.5 hrs, A2 papers = 2 hrs)
Question structures:
- 1/2 marks: tick box, one/two worded answers or one sentence answer –> (1 minute)
- 3 marks: short answer –> (2 minutes)
- 4 marks: 2/3 sentences – A01 descriptive paragraph or 2 in depth A03 points –> (4 minutes)
- 6 marks: detailed A01 paragraph or 3 explained A03 points (6 minutes)
- 8 marks: 3 marks for A01 points & 5 marks for 2-3 explained A03 points (8-10 minutes)
- 16 marks: 6 marks for detailed A01 & 10 marks for 3-4 explained A03 points ‘OR’ 6 marks A01, 4 marks A02 & 6 marks 2-3 A03 points (20 minutes)
Revision materials:
Attachment Revision – List of Names
Social Influence notes & revision
Test your knowledge Psychology Questions
Everything in this post is just to help any A level psychology students to feel a bit more prepared and is just a rough guide based on what I did. Wish everyone the best as exam season is now upon us. We can do all things through Christ that strengthen us (Philippians 4:13).
If anyone is considering taking psychology at degree level and wants to know what my course is like or wants something explained a bit more in terms of A level psychology just let me know xx ~ ChidinmaE
MWC 