Practice will make perfect for Leaving Cert paper

THERE a few basic things that all leaving cert chemistry students should be doing in the run up to the exams.

At this stage, most students will be finished or be close to finishing the entire course. Students will therefore most likely have realised that the leaving cert chemistry course is a relatively short course and will have noticed that there is great structure to the leaving cert Chemistry paper.

Analyse the Paper:

The paper is divided into two sections A & B, students have to answer a total of 8 questions, 2 of which must come from section A (each question is worth 50 marks).

Students should draw up a chart outlining what can appear at each question, due to the friendly structure of the paper this is easily done, as the same topics tend to appear at the same question each year, for example Question 1 always = Volumetric Analysis Experiment , Question 2 = Organic Experiment etc.

Practice Exam Questions:

Do not spend ages writing out notes, chemistry needs to be practiced. Spend time going over and over the exam papers.

You will notice that some questions appear regularly. While practicing the exam papers it is very important to be aware of the marks awarded to each part of a question.

It is so important to ensure you write enough to get the maximum marks. Also, a very common mistake among students is to miss a part of a question.

For example if a question says “State & Explain”

then students must do both. I would encourage students to practice underling exactly what the question is looking for and bullet pointing their answer accordingly

Organic Chemistry

Organic Chemistry is an integral part of the leaving cert chemistry and in recent years has been dominating the paper.

Students should ensure they have all Organic questions from recent years completed, corrected and practiced a number of times.

Timing

Finally, on the day of the exam students have approx. 20 minutes per question, it is good practice to time yourself while practicing the exam questions to ensure you are fully prepared for the exam in June.

Chemistry teacher- Orla Dineen.