Hey there!
If you’re looking for some colored reference books, here’s a website I recently discovered that has links to plenty of great books, especially for Cambridge. Even so, Edexcel students might also use these for further reading. Hope it helps!
Namira
Now that your O levels are over, and my AS level too, I’ve decided to follow up this blog with another, to guide you through the Edexcel IAL
Here’s the link:
https://acingalevels.wordpress.com/
Best of luck for results day, to you and to me!
Hello examinees!
I have been very busy with IAS, and hence I haven’t been able to upload the Chem, Econ etc notes. However, if any of you every need help, don’t hesitate to message me.
Some things I recently learnt about Edexcel awards, are that the more subjects you have at IGCSEs, the more credit you get (provided you have As in all/most). Also, if you’re giving your IGCSEs in two sittings, make sure you take the Jan, Jun session of the same year to be eligible for the recognition of all those subjects in the edexcel awards. The eligibility criteria is 7 As minimum, but I’ve seen people with 11 As too!
Once again, I urge all of you to read through the examiners’ reports; there’s a reason why they took so much time to make that report and publish it. Also, in the last few days before Olevels, don’t make the mistake of thinking “Oh I did all my studying, now it’s time to rest and see how it goes.” I cannot emphasise the importance of revision enough. You don’t need to stay up nights revising; do a little at a time, a chapter a day? Or go through the mistakes you’ve made in tests, make correction sheets, and take 10 minutes to look through them. Speaking from personal experience, I did better in the subjects I kept coming back to and revising than the ones I was confident I was “done” with.
Best wishes,
Namira
A word of advice to you all: UNLESS YOU’RE AIMING FOR HIGHEST MARKS IN THE WORLD in particular subjects, DO NOT, and I repeat, DO NOT allocate a larger share of your time in any particular subject, while neglecting others which you might think are easy. Distribute your time equally when revising. Also, DO NOT worry about the marks, worry ONLY about getting the A* or As; once you know you’re prepared enough for the grades, the marks will come naturally.
Why am I saying this? Because, when you get your Edexcel O Level Certificate, they certainly won’t have your marks stated, regardless of whether you were 7, 5, or even 3 marks away from a 100%. Your certificate won’t show the dramatic improvements you’ve made in subjects in terms of marks, whether you scored higher than the ALL A* students in your batch. A* or As, your GPA will be a 4.0, unless you happen to have anything less than an A.
Also, it must also be noted that most of the “difficult” IGCSE questions are often those which will be required in A-level years.
I must also add that although it may seem that getting As and A*s are what matters when you’re in 10th grade, let me assure you that learning is what matters in the long run. Be open to learning new things, and try expanding your knowledge beyond the textbooks for your curriculum. You are most likely to do your best when you know you have acquired all the required IGCSE knowledge, and you’re excited to be learning more, i.e. you’re ready for A-levels and the course-load it’ll bring.
On that note,
Best of luck for the coming exams!
Namira
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 240 times in 2015. If it were a cable car, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
For Edexcel IGCSE Biology, I did the following:
Pure Maths was one subject that I struggled with initially, but I kept at it nevertheless, and somehow managed As in class. My best advice would be: PRACTICE. And practice A LOT. I remember times when I was failing in my class tests, and then when I got a week’s holiday from school I spent each of those 7 days practicing 4 pmath papers, checking them, and then doing them all over again as corrections in a separate copy. This helped me improve dramatically.
For a beginner, I would advise you to follow your teacher’s lessons well. When you go home, read the chapter from the Edexcel Further Pure Mathematics book, following the given examples well till you fully understand what to do. Follow that by doing at least 10 of those sums from the chapter. You can also use the Lee Peng Yee book, but remember that neither book is a substitute for the other.
Once you feel as if you’ve got the books covered, practice the sums from the Unique Chapterwise question papers. The end of the Unique Chapterwise also has essential formulae which you may find useful for solving the sums in the relevant chapters. After you’ve practiced from each of the chapters, and have somewhat covered the entire syllabus, start on the yearwise question papers.
Remember that when you’re first starting on the yearwise question papers, there might be plenty of sums you’re not being able to do. This happened to me, and I would give up, often cry in frustration too! But once you’re in a better mood, and feel courageous enough to have another go at it, resume your practice. Once you’re able to solve more or less half the number of sums given, and can do the papers without it demotivating you, start timing yourself. Do a paper, don’t get up to go to the bathroom, talk, or drink water. Spend 2 hours solely concentrating on the paper before you, and finish it within the allotted time. After you’re done, put the paper aside and come back to it later in the day, and check it thoroughly with the markscheme. Pay attention to where you went wrong, and note it down. See if there’s a trend in the kind of sums you’re messing up in, and note down the trend, making sure it doesn’t happen again. Do your corrections in a separate loose paper and file all the papers, so before a test or exam you can go through the file and focus on those, or have a separate copy. This helps A LOT, especially before exams when you’re feeling lost as to what to practice or concentrate on.
Start keeping track of which papers you’re doing, for example, are you starting from the recent years and going backwards or vice versa? Set a goal to finish 10 years’ question papers, but relax and go easy on yourself if you aren’t able to, because what matters more is whether you’re learning and perfecting your skills rather than the bulk of question papers you solved. Mark yourself, and see whether your marks are improving in general or not. Remember that some papers of certain years are generally more difficult than other years so don’t get stressed out if you come across a paper like that (e.g. 2012 papers)
Lastly, best of luck with Further Pure Maths. There has been plenty of times when I felt inadequate, and wanted to drop the subject. But where’s the fun in that? The best part about pure maths is the real satisfaction you feel when you finally get a two page sum correct, all on your own!!!
For Maths B, I would suggest the following books:
After having done each of the chapters from the books (selectively of course, since you possibly can’t do all), you should proceed to the question papers. I think it’s not wise to ignore the text book because often, the tricky sums that we have never come across before often are from the book itself.
Now comes the Unique Coaching question papers, chapter-wise and year-wise both. Unique Coaching question papers have a list of all possible formulae you will need in Maths B, derived from the past papers. Reading the formulae, and writing it down will help you learn them up. For those of you who don’t have access to Unique Coaching, I will be posting the formulae soon.
Besides that, chapter-wise practice helps a great deal initially. For your first revision, I would suggest you to read the formulae for each chapter, and then solve a few sums from each chapter. Eventually, after you have practiced every chapter thoroughly from the books and Unique Chapter-wise, you should spend 10th Grade just solving at least 10 years’ past papers from year-wise Question Papers.
If you have exhausted all these resources, you can also try the Maths B “R” papers, which are generally harder than the Paper 1s and Paper 2s.
It’s also helpful to have a separate copy where you note down all the formulae, and also some pointers you would generally make mentally, such as “be careful of brackets/ recheck your sign changes/ make sure you give the units when wanted” and so on. You could also do sample sums in which you most frequently make mistakes, or some for which you made errors in format.
For Bengali, I’d advise you to do the following:
Hope these help you in your prep!
I wish there was one exact book or website or anything telling me how to prep for English. But I guess that’s the challenge and freedom English brings you, ’cause you just never know how you’ve done till you have your grades before you! Throughout my IGCSE course, I’ve wondered time and again, ‘Will the examiners like what I’ve written? Is my style of writing acceptable? Is it A* worthy?’
Honestly, there’s no correct answer to this. But what I’ve seen helped me throughout was reading lots of storybooks. If you’re not a reader, but IGCSE English Language B is compulsory for you, don’t worry. Just give the English A&B book a read if you have time, note down several important points from (at least that’s what I did, and I’ll add pictures of them soon), read BBC bitesize to get an idea of the formats for Section B. Also remember that although you’re supposed to pick as many points as you find appropriate to the topic from the texts given, you’re also free to add a pinch of your own creativity which will definitely give you an edge over others who don’t. Practice past papers for section A and Essay? Honestly, I don’t have many tips. Just write what comes to you, because, from experience, exam conditions might not be the best place for many creative geniuses.
Overall, my prep for English included going through the English specification, practicing exactly 4 past papers and then matching my answers with those on the markscheme, followed by the Examiner’s Reports. Honestly, Examiner’s Reports help most, along with Exemplar materials available on the Edexcel website.
I also found it helpful to read my own essays and writings (whichever I liked most), because when I was out of practice, these helped me recall exactly how I write and should write, basically showed me where I stood. It might be school assignments or something I’d written for pleasure, but either ways, it was helpful. I also found it helpful to read a book of short stories if I lacked inspiration.
One thing which was disappointing was that I noticed how IGCSE essay topics sometimes coincide with GCE ones. I mean, if we have practiced those essays before then where does that creativity come from? Anyhow, some important points to keep in mind is to:
You might also want to check out this site.
Edexcel IGCSE Resources 