Chemistry › How to revise

How to revise A-level chemistry

Effective revision requires you to retrieve and apply knowledge, not only reread it. Write answers without looking at the notes, mark them against your board’s current mark scheme, revisit weaker topics over several sessions and practise interpreting diagrams and data.

Write the answer before you look at one

Reading a model answer is mostly 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.

To work on paper, every lesson ends with a printable workbook of its questions and a separate book of mark schemes. Each printed question has a code beside its number. Type inklearning.co.uk/q/ followed by the code and that question opens online with its mark scheme, so you can check one answer at a time.

Mark your answers against the scheme

Many short questions award marks for specific points. Extended responses may use a different marking structure, so follow the scheme supplied with the question. Record the points you missed and practise them again later. The command words page sets out what each kind of question asks for.

Learn the terms, and what makes each one precise

Many marks turn on exact terms in chemistry. “Bonds break and release energy” and “bond breaking is endothermic” are not two ways of saying the same thing; the first is wrong, because energy is always taken in to break a bond and is given out only when new bonds form. And “the equilibrium shifts to the right” earns less than “the forward rate rises more than the backward rate until the two are equal again”, which says why. Learn what each term means and why the loose version fails, rather than memorising 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 flashcard player brings a card back sooner when it went badly and later when it went well, so it spaces your reviews for you; it also means you do not spend the session on the topics you already like. The day planner builds a session from the same schedule: due cards and questions first, then topics you have not read.

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 to shut the page, draw it, then compare. A diagram you can reproduce from memory is a diagram you can explain in a written answer, which is what the question will ask for. The revision posters put each topic’s diagrams on one page, which makes them easy to test yourself against.

How practical skills are assessed

Practical skills are assessed differently by each awarding organisation. AQA, OCR A and Pearson assess practical knowledge in written papers and report a separate practical endorsement. Cambridge International 9701 includes a timetabled practical examination and a separate planning, analysis and evaluation paper. Check the assessment structure for your qualification.

The practicals page sets out each method inside the lesson that teaches its chemistry, with a guide that works it in full. Your board’s own list is on the pages for the AQA required practicals, the OCR practical activity groups and the Edexcel core practicals; Cambridge’s Papers 3 and 5 have a section of their own on its route map.

Use the checklist to choose weaker topics

The revision checklist holds every objective in the curriculum. Rate what you could write down now, not what you would recognise, then use the filter to show only what needs work.

Move on to past papers

Use the topic questions while you are still learning a unit, and full papers once you can sit one. The questions are also filed under your board’s own specification sections, in the order it prints them: AQA A-level Chemistry, OCR A-level Chemistry A, Edexcel A-level Chemistry and Cambridge A-level Chemistry. The past papers pages give each qualification’s paper structure and link to the board’s own papers and mark schemes; sit them in the time allowed and mark them with the board’s scheme.

Where the tools are

The revise page puts every tool named here on one screen. Questions about cost, accounts and offline use are answered in the FAQ; how the pages work with a keyboard, a screen reader or a phone is on the accessibility page; and who writes the library, and how it is checked, is on the about page.

Coverage maps are available for AQA 7404/7405, OCR Chemistry A H032/H432, Pearson Edexcel Chemistry 8CH0/9CH0 and Cambridge International 9701. Use the relevant route map to check what InkChemistry covers, and use your awarding organisation’s current specification as the final authority on examinable content.