Biology › How to revise

How to revise A-level biology

Biology is the subject students most often revise by rereading notes, and the evidence on retrieval practice says rereading alone is one of the weakest uses of the time. What follows is what tends to move a grade in this subject, in the order to do it.

Write the answer before you look at one

The single largest gap between people who know biology and people who score in it is that the second group has written answers under their own steam and marked them. Reading a model answer feels like learning and is nearly all recognition: the words are all familiar, so nothing tells you that you could not have produced them. Every question in the question bank keeps its mark scheme shut until you ask for it, for exactly this reason.

Mark yourself point by point, not by feel

A-level biology mark schemes award a mark per point made, and the points are specific. An answer that flows beautifully and makes three of the five points is a three. Marking by feel gives it a four or a five, and the difference between what you scored and what you thought you scored is the information you were revising to get. The command words page sets out what each kind of question obliges the scheme to accept.

Learn the terms, and what makes each one precise

Many marks turn on exact terms in biology. “Water moves from high to low concentration” and “water moves down a water potential gradient” are not two ways of saying the same thing; the first is wrong because concentration is the wrong quantity. Learn what each term means and why the loose version fails, rather than a script: an examiner credits accurate meaning expressed in the necessary terminology, and your own board’s mark schemes are the authority on accepted wording. The definitions page carries every term the lessons define, and the flashcards drill them.

Space it out, and let something else pick the order

Revising a topic three times in one evening feels far better than revising it on three separate days, and does less. The card player here brings a card back sooner when it went badly and later when it went well, which is the whole of what spacing means in practice; it also means you do not spend the session on the topics you already like.

Use the diagrams as things to redraw

Every figure in this library was drawn to carry one idea. The useful thing to do with one is not to look at it: it is to shut the page and draw it, then compare. A diagram you can reproduce from nothing is a diagram you can explain in a written answer, which is what the question will ask for.

Practical work is examined in the written papers

Every board assesses practical biology, and the questions about it are in the written papers rather than in the lab. The twelve capabilities set out what you have to be able to do at the bench and in the field, with the maths each one carries and the places marks go missing.

Rate honestly, then work the red

The revision checklist holds every objective in the curriculum. Rating them takes twenty minutes and the temptation is to rate optimistically, which wastes the exercise. Rate what you could write down now, not what you would recognise, then use the filter to show only what needs work.

One caveat, said plainly: this library teaches its own curriculum, written to hold more than any one board asks for. Nothing here has yet been checked statement by statement against a specification, so use your board’s own specification for what is and is not on your papers.