A guide to smashing A-level Biology

A-level biology is not an easy subject...

A huge specification, very specific mark schemes and difficult to understand concepts are all things that you come up against in A-level biology. Regardless of your specification, it's often the case that you can spend hours revising the content, but still not see your hard work reflected on topic tests and mocks. This guide compiles advice from our tutors who have sat A-level biology themselves to gain top scores, as well as tutored the subject for several years. We know what works and what doesn't and we'd like to share that with you.

The process

I like to tell my students that mastery of biology comes as a 3 part process. This is split into understanding concepts as they are taught to you, regularly revisiting concepts and thorough practice of exam technique.

Understanding concepts

A very important part of the process is making sure things make sense when they're being taught to you.

Some days, you can passively sit in lesson and let the content go straight over your head. I speak from experience when I say its also very easy to lose focus for a couple minutes in a lesson, then be completely out of sync for the rest. In these instances, its best to ensure you go over the content again and make sure it sits well in your head. This definitely isn't always easy, and difficult concepts will not always go in the first time. You have to be persistent, and access different resources available to you. This can be notes online, textbooks and revision guides, YouTube videos and definitely tutoring. Our tutors are always happy to spend as much time with you as you need to make sure you understand concepts at the right level.

Revisiting concepts

By the time you've finished going through the (huge) specification, topics that you covered in year 12 or at the start of year 13 may be feeling a bit alien to you. This isn't how you want to be feeling around exam season, which is why it is essential that you cover topics regularly to keep them fresh.

We recommend the use of Anki flashcards for this. This is an app you can install on your computer that helps you make flashcards and even use pre-existing decks that have been made by other students. Where Anki excels over websites like Quizlet and physical flashcards is the scheduling. The app learns what cards you are struggling with and schedules them for you to study more frequently until you are feeling more confident. Say for example the stages of the Kreb's cycle just won't go in - Anki will schedule these cards to be studied frequently, until they make sense.

Ask one of our tutors to give you a quick demo on how to set-up and use Anki. One of the only caveats to this amazing app is that it may be a little daunting to get started with, but once you get going it becomes very easy. Anki is the way all of our tutors are currently preparing for (and excelling in) medical school exams!

Regardless of whether you end up using Anki or not, make sure to revisit content several times. Print off a copy of the specification and highlight the content you have covered and plan to revisit. For example, you could highlight a section in amber if it is something you have covered once or twice, and change that to green when you have gone over it sufficient times that you feel an expert on it. Red can be used for topics that you have not yet covered. You should note - most of your specification will be amber and red until close to the exams! Don't be hasty in telling yourself you're an expert on something!

Mastering exam technique

As an A-level biology student, you're probably all too familiar with the feeling of thinking you really understand a topic, only to be extremely humbled by exam questions. The exams are usually structured in such a way that the majority of marks are not purely from recall, but rather from application of knowledge. The way to become an expert on these questions is not all that obscure; practice! The more exam questions you do, the better you get at scoring those top marks. We recommend that you also study mark schemes. There's often a lot to gain from looking at the columns there, to find out what key phrases examiners are looking for and what phrases are not awarded any marks.

In fact, a technique some of our tutors have used and recommended to great success is making flashcards of difficult exam questions. Say there is a weird five-marker that you have never seen before and scored zero or only one mark out of the five, turn it into a flashcard with the question on the front and the mark scheme on the back. Over time you should build a collection of these cards (on Anki or otherwise), that you are reviewing regularly. The point of this is that by the time your exams come around you have committed to memory a lot of difficult exam questions. Exam boards like to re-use very similar questions with minute changes, and this means that a question that might have left you confused before should be straightforward when encountered in the exam.

When answering questions, be that in your own timed practice or during mocks and even the real exam, we think you should always answer in bullet points*. From 2 to 6 markers, bullet points show that you have confidence in your answer and makes it easier for the examiner to see where your marks are coming from. Easier said than done though, as there's always the temptation to start blurting whatever you think is remotely relevant whenever you're not sure what the question is answering. Hopefully, by the time of the exam, you would have done lots of practice questions and seen many mark schemes, so you should know what specific exam questions are looking for.

*with the exception of essay questions such as the 25-marker in AQA A-level biology.

Thank you for reading this article! If you have any suggestions on how we might improve, or any questions, please get in contact!