The Difference between ordinary and honours Biology?

Crow92

The questions in th title, Is the difference that big??
I;ve had to take up biology and it took me the last week to read the rapid revision to get a general jist of the course, now i'm looking the papers and the difference to me doesnt appear to be that big?

I have to study the course in my own time and need a minimum of a D3 in pass, but i actually enjoy the subject so i'm debating wether of not to do honours.

aoifeX

im doing honours and im not sure what the deal with pass is i think that its the same course except easier questions and less detail but i could be wrong !

my teacher told me that in honours if your not looking for an A in it that you can just do all Unit 1 , 2 and the experiments and leave out unit 3 (which is the biggest unit). i think you can get anything up to a B1 this way..

Professional Griefer

I think that pass requires less detail.

I loathe Biology, and my biology teacher. I cannot wait to be done it forever.
I did pass for the JC, which wasn't really my fault, but doing higher now and its not that bad, but I still hate it so much!:mad:

jd007

I think pass might be slightly easier/marked easier. The structure of the paper is the same as the honours as far as I can I remember. I considered doing pass when I was doing my LC. I had the worst teacher in the school, couldn't teach to save her life! I did higher though and ended up with a C3 somehow.

Orlaladuck

I'd say do honours for the mocks and see how you get on. I'm pretty sure it's just less detailed in pass and a few things don't come up but that said it's not a massive cut to the course - there's still quite a bit on it. Give it a shot first before just dropping down

monaghanmissus

jd007 wrote: »

I think pass might be slightly easier/marked easier.

Yep, with ordinary level, marks are alot easier to get. Three girls in the class do ordinary level and when the teacher is going through the marking schemes theres sometimes one word answers worth up to 9 marks. According to her anyway, they give out the bigger marks for the simpler questions.

spurious

The syllabus is available on http://www.education.ie and it itemises the differences in the material to be covered and what is required at the different levels.

littlebsci

Essentially there's two differences:
1. The higher level course has more in it - mainly it involves extensions of the basic information required by the ordinary course, you learn certain topics in greater detail.
See:
http://www.education.ie/servlet/blobservlet/lc_biology_sy.pdf?language=EN

The ordinary course is all the text in red while the higher level material is in black at the end of each section of the syllabus.

2. The wording of the questions in the ordinary exam is simpler and marks are more easily obtained.

Seloth

My teacher said theres never really a hard paper...just hard marking schemes.

such as they wont accept organism(s) in place of plants or animals.

RHunce

i'm in the same position as the OP, so glad i found this thread in search, its been a huge help so far so thanks already!

just one or two more things, so i've got a revise wise OL biology book which seems good!! OL exams papers and an experiment copy.

i am in 5th year and only took up the subject as i needed a science and alls i need is an OL D3

recently lads doing bio in my class went on a fieldwork, is this only required for HL or will i have to do it also? oh and do i need to write out experiments to be handed up like at JC?

thanks:)

Professional Griefer

RHunce wrote: »

i'm in the same position as the OP, so glad i found this thread in search, its been a huge help so far so thanks already!

just one or two more things, so i've got a revise wise OL biology book which seems good!! OL exams papers and an experiment copy.

i am in 5th year and only took up the subject as i needed a science and alls i need is an OL D3

recently lads doing bio in my class went on a fieldwork, is this only required for HL or will i have to do it also? oh and do i need to write out experiments to be handed up like at JC?

thanks:)

Not sure if you needed to go, you could just get the stuff from them?

But no experiments need to be handed up, in the exam there are experiment questions, well there are in the HL so nothing needs to be handed up.

pathway33

Ix Deadmau5 wrote: »

But no experiments need to be handed up

unless the inspector calls :eek: ....think they only do 5% of schools though and you probably get a week or twos notice

Crow92

What if an inspector calls into the school where you are doing it as an extra subject?
Would i be expected to have an original write up done?

pathway33

Crow92 wrote: »

What if an inspector calls into the school where you are doing it as an extra subject?
Would i be expected to have an original write up done?

I expect you would need to provide a lab copy with the same experiments written up as the rest of the class at a very minimum. Whether the teacher will cover for you and say you carried out the experiments is another matter!

You could always say you did the experiments independently at a private weekend school or at one of the experiment days the colleges like nui maynooth run. Dunno if you'd need proof.

Wardy92

I hate my biology teacher sooooo much. He doesnt teach fast enough. The difference is only really in the long questions, they requires more detail in HL

Whats up with definitions? My retarded teacher said that they dont want students learning off by heart but you still need to do definitons perfectly