I know, you’re studying Chemistry not English Lit but the one thing that sets A* grade students apart from the rest is that they write well thought-out answers using key language, a skill that the examiners’ reports comment on EVERY year.
And yet how often do you focus on this in class?
The good news is that it is a skill that everyone can master and the secret comes in three parts …
1. writing perfect answers for definitions and explaining concepts
2. adding them to your notes (colourful post-it notes are brilliant for this)
3. and learning them 🧐
1. Writing perfect answers
Let’s look at a common AS exam question on oxidation states.
Question: Chlorine reacts with aqueous sodium hydroxide to form sodium chlorate(I). Explain why this is a disproportionation reaction with reference to the equation below.
Cl2(g) + 2NaOH(aq) ⇾ NaCl(aq) + NaClO(aq) + H2O(l)
The examiner awarded this answer 1 mark – it is obvious that the student understands the concept of disproportionation perfectly well but they have cleverly left out all the crucial parts to this definition!
They haven’t explained what disproportionation is, which part of the reaction is reduction, which part is oxidation or what the numbers in their answer actually refer to.
A perfect answer might look like this …
- in a disproportionation reaction the same element is both oxidised and reduced ✔️
- chlorine has an oxidation state of 0 in chlorine but it is oxidised to +1 in NaClO ✔️ and it is reduced to -1 in NaCl ✔️
Basically the same answer but it ticks all the marking points.
Exam technique tip: A* answers are always well structured and include all the relevant terminology. It’s good practice to use bullet points to plan an answer, then you can simply run them together to make a crystal clear paragraph.
2. Adding them to your notes
Who doesn’t love a post-it note? They are just perfect for adding definitions and examples to your notes.
Study skill: you should be reviewing your notes after every lesson. You can use different coloured post-it notes to add questions on details that need clarifying, craft a model definition or explanation, add learning points after homework or test feedback etc.
3. And learning them
There are quite a few definitions that can be learnt parrot fashion and creating a deck of study cards is a first-rate revision activity. You can write them from your notes or from the mark schemes of recent exam papers.
A* students are proactive – flip through past papers and you’ll see that examiners really don’t have much imagination and the same questions come up year after year, just in a slightly different context. Using mark schemes is an excellent way to fine-tune your use of chemical terminology and to learn how to explain things the way examiners like them explained.
Action points
There is no time like the present to make a start. Go and get yourself very large packs of coloured post-it notes and study cards 😊.
Work through the syllabus from the beginning, reviewing each topic and using your text book or https://crunchchemistry.co.uk to identify terminology that needs defining. It might seem overwhelming but if you start with a simple list then you can pick off a few each week.
E.g. atomic structure
- definitions: isotope, relative atomic mass, 1st ionisation energy, empirical formula vs. molecular formula
- explanations: trend in 1st ionisation energy down a group and across a period
If this has been useful then please forward it on and thank you very much for reading,
