Biology is tooo lengthy!!!!

craxsham

hay!..
i'm a repeat student n i've taken bio as a new subject!.. im finding it awrite!!>. but i have to cover 2 years course in ONE year!:eek:.. n ive seen the exam papers that theres lots of choice!.. i just wanted to know if i could leave few topics .. but i dont know which onez to leave ,.... n the course is soo lengthy.
any help?.. THANKS LOTZ!;)

decdec456

I know!

but if you just study every day and consistently do exam questions i'd say A1 is very attainable if the work is put in!

i hope for the A1 in August!!!

mardybumbum

(Copied from a previos thread)

Youre right, the whole course is quite long but it can be cut down quite considerably. The exam is split into three sections.

Section A is the short questions, 6 questions overall, 2 q's from unit 1, 2 from unit 2, and 2 from unit three of which you must answer five. So even if you only know unit 1 and 2 (half of the course) you can still answer four of the five questions there.

Section B is the experiments, 3 questions of which you must answer two, one from each unit. Again, if you only know unit one and two you can get full marks there.

Section C is the long questions, 5 questions of which you must answer four, Im not sure how this section is broken down but last year there was one full question from unit one and one full question from unit two.

ooPabsoo

dont worry,im in a worse position than you!!
in 6th year at the moment, absolutely f***ing DREADFULL teacher,seriously she is the worst,just underlines everything and skips half the chapter and when one of my fellow students started questioning her she just tells us to study it!! like we do need the basics in order to study!! im dropping to ordinary as a result,after a year and 2 weeks listening to this teacher and still have no idea about anything. im seriously gona hve to study my ass off to pass biology

Piste

Biology isn't long enough!


I was studying a chapter and thought "Tell me more, Mr. Biology book!"


But then I realised if the book went into the detail I'd like you'd need about for years to cover it.

biology.

insinkerator

I dont think the biology course was too long, in fact most of the time i though the class was going too slow, and i reckon i could have gone into much more detail had we not been held up.....

But i do see how people can struggle with it, i just happen to have an interest

gaybitch

I'm not sure about totally leaving anything out. You could probably get away with leaving one chapter out, maybe the chapter you find most difficult. However you can't leave out Ecology or Genetics - and don't leave out any of the experiments either!

There is a lot of choice in the long questions, but they mix up topics in the different parts if you look closely, so one question might require a knowledge of several different parts of the course all smushed into one question. Plus, if you leave a whole chapter out then you're leaving yourself open to not being able to answer an entire short question!

I was surprised to get an A1 in Biology because I felt exactly like you do - I thought the course was so huge! But really once you've covered it all once, revision is okay, and if you read away in the months before the LC and do all the past Qs (Qs repeat themselves a lot) then you'll be grand.

Think positive!

Fad

You think its too long! Be grateful we dont still have the old syllabus it was insanity!

And they leave stuff out now that, can kinda aid understanding of stuff.

ALSO, why? of all the subjects you could of picked did you choose Biology, which is renowned for its long course!

ironictoaster

Piste wrote: »

Biology isn't long enough!


I was studying a chapter and thought "Tell me more, Mr. Biology book!"


But then I realised if the book went into the detail I'd like you'd need about for years to cover it.

biology.

Amen sister.

I'm always amazed what the body can do and even more amazed how people figured out how it works.

Piste

Yep, and my biology book is full of interesting facts, like if all life except bacteria were wiped out bacteria would still survive but if all bacteria were wiped out all other life would cease within 30 years!


I can't believe I chose religion over it at the end of TY!

K4t

Do not complain about Biology before you do LC History :eek:

Aisling(",)

im dong both historys course is miles worse

die parnell die

mardybumbum

Piste wrote: »

If all bacteria were wiped out all other life would cease within 30 years!

Not true, Chuck Norris would still be around.

KnifeWRENCH

Piste wrote: »

Biology isn't long enough!


I was studying a chapter and thought "Tell me more, Mr. Biology book!"


But then I realised if the book went into the detail I'd like you'd need about for years to cover it.

biology.

Lol, you should look at the old syllabus. It was way longer.
I know because my sister did it. She had to study moss. MOSS FFS!!! WHO CARES ABOUT FCUKING MOSS?????

So while the current course is very long, and probably one of the longest in LC, it is at least much easier than the previous course.

OP - the course can be cut down quite considerably.
Remember that there are three units in the syllabus:
UNIT 1 - Study Of Life
UNIT 2 - The Cell
UNIT 3 - THE ORGANISM
UNIT 3 is by far the largest unit, covering the five kingdoms of life as well as viruses.
But in Section C there will be one question from UNIT 1, two questions from UNIT 2 and two questions from UNIT 3 (this is in the syllabus)
So you are pretty much guaranteed* a question on Ecology, a question on Genetics and a question on Photosynthesis or Respiration. If you study those sections then you will only have to answer one other question in Section C.

With this in mind, work really really hard on Units 1 and 2, along with the experiments. Doing this should get you full marks in Section B and 3/4 of your marks in Section C. You will then just need to answer the short questions on Unit 3 in Section A and one other long question in Section C.

Hope this helps.

(*not 100% guarantee)

Fad

square_igloo wrote: »

Lol, you should look at the old syllabus. It was way longer.
I know because my sister did it. She had to study moss. MOSS FFS!!! WHO CARES ABOUT FCUKING MOSS?????

Not only is it shorter, its less graphic, no mouse dissections and the diagrams are a bit more anatomically correct


(We saw one of the old books in school and it had testes on a diagram, round about the belly button region , and it had a disturbingly full on diagram of reproduction :S)

Malmedicine

craxsham wrote: »

hay!..
i'm a repeat student n i've taken bio as a new subject!.. im finding it awrite!!>. but i have to cover 2 years course in ONE year!:eek:.. n ive seen the exam papers that theres lots of choice!.. i just wanted to know if i could leave few topics .. but i dont know which onez to leave ,.... n the course is soo lengthy.
any help?.. THANKS LOTZ!;)

Lengthy was the old course that ended in 2003, this one is short in comparison!

JSK 252

I wouldnt agree that the new course is easier. In the old course there was no mandatory experiments, because there was so many of them, to the point teachers picked and chose the most important ones for examination purposes. The course was defo longer but the exam more predictable.

Not the case with this new course. Its great that the course is shorter but you have to do all the 23 mandatory experiments as they can be asked in not just Section B but also C. Its still a lovely subject though and I should get an A1 in it fingers crossed.:)

Carsinian Thau

Malmedicine wrote: »

Lengthy was the old course that ended in 2003, this one is short in comparison!

This is completely true. I'd even question if the new one is too short.

Lucas10101

Well it's definitely true that the old course of biology was way longer indeed. One of the main problems as mentioned above was the amount of experiments...along with other things obviously.

But from studying the New Syllabus myself, I've found that I thought it was just too short. I wanted to rid myself of studying ti continuously slowly all year, so I managed to completely cover the syllabus minus experiments in the first 3 months of 5th Year. This isn't bragging here, but I realised it was short at the start of 5 th year and went to work on it. As people mentioned above, you do say "I wish there was more" in the Biology textbook on certain topics, as it seems they only give titles and definitions for some things rather than go into detail, even small detail on them. I think there should be a 25% increase...preferably in the area of Biochemistry.

metoyou

craxsham im in the same position as you.
I did my LC in 2006 but I got an E in bio... i was very lazy come 6th year!!!
Anyway, im now repeating bio to get into a course i want..
and it only dawned on me that its a 2 year course in one year!

are you repeating through your school? or doing it yourself or through somewhere else?
Im thinking of doing it myself for the next few months and then stock up on grinds come march till the exam.
Ive looked up classes in bio on the internet in various colleges that offer them, but theyre ranging between 400€ and 850€, and i cant afford that!
found one in Kilroy college though that you can pay by the month for @ €80 a month. which isnt too bad.
Might look into it over the next few days!

SexyColxx

they actually reduced the course loads. new sylabuss started for 5th years this year. still hate it though

Fad

SexyColxx wrote: »

they actually reduced the course loads. new sylabuss started for 5th years this year. still hate it though

WHAAAAAAAAAA?

RavensCall

All Of Unit One
All Of Unit Two
All The Mandatory Experiments 80% of the marks available

Know it all off by heart = Your B1, and then you could pick a few likely chapters from Unit 3.

Thats if you wanted to shortcut your way through it, I'd just study it all imho

Doctor Dee

square_igloo wrote: »

Lol, you should look at the old syllabus. It was way longer.
I know because my sister did it. She had to study moss. MOSS FFS!!! WHO CARES ABOUT FCUKING MOSS?????

So while the current course is very long, and probably one of the longest in LC, it is at least much easier than the previous course.

OP - the course can be cut down quite considerably.
Remember that there are three units in the syllabus:
UNIT 1 - Study Of Life
UNIT 2 - The Cell
UNIT 3 - THE ORGANISM
UNIT 3 is by far the largest unit, covering the five kingdoms of life as well as viruses.
But in Section C there will be one question from UNIT 1, two questions from UNIT 2 and two questions from UNIT 3 (this is in the syllabus)
So you are pretty much guaranteed* a question on Ecology, a question on Genetics and a question on Photosynthesis or Respiration. If you study those sections then you will only have to answer one other question in Section C.

With this in mind, work really really hard on Units 1 and 2, along with the experiments. Doing this should get you full marks in Section B and 3/4 of your marks in Section C. You will then just need to answer the short questions on Unit 3 in Section A and one other long question in Section C.

Hope this helps.

(*not 100% guarantee)

Oh, so tempting, oh so risky, but oh so true.

Moss. And seaweed. And liver fluke. Can you fcuking imagine....:eek:

cautioner

Fad wrote: »

(We saw one of the old books in school and it had testes on a diagram, round about the belly button region , and it had a disturbingly full on diagram of reproduction :S)

Pics?

Fad

cautioner wrote: »

Pics?

A slightly tactless student pointed out the diagram to the teacher and she hid the book:pac:

Its a long (width ways, not A4) Black book, another teacher called it the bible for Biology for 20 odd years.