igcc chemistry is one of those subjects that can seem incredibly difficult or unapproachable at first but once you get the hang of it it's actually really easy to score marks on trust me I went from kind of struggling with Organic Chemistry to getting a 96 on the final exam in just a few months and you can too it comes down to a simple set of tips tricks and strategies not sure what these are and not sure how to go about this don't worry you're in the right place to find out hi I'm Arian and today I'm going to walk you through my complete guide to getting an AAR on igcs chemistry based on my own experiences getting a 96 on the subject first things first plan it all out using the official igcc chemistry syllabus document is an excellent way to track everything that you're going to be tested on this is really important it's very easy to get caught up studying a slightly outdated textbook and then only realizing the day before exam that there's an entire subtopic that you haven't studied just because it wasn't on your textbook it will also prevent you from getting confused when you start doing past papers since if you come across a question or topics which you haven't studied you'll be aware of any removals to the syllabus which have occurred in recent years for example if you're doing a paper from 2016 and you come across a question about say the extraction of zinc you might be confused cuz that's not something that will have appeared in your textbook book if you're using one that was published in the last few years however if you've read through the subject content in the syllabus document then you would know for sure that this is a topic the extraction of znc which has been removed from the syllabus just a few years ago so you can skip those questions and move on from them on the other side of the spectrum topics which have recently been added to the syllabus are almost guaranteed to appear on your exam paper this means that you need to pay special attention to topics like hydrogen fuel cells or chemistry of the environment which have been added to the syllabus in the last couple years while researching this video I came across a lot of people both on YouTube and elsewhere who say that you should disregard your textbook and instead study using alternative sources now if you've already seen my gcsc maths or physics complete guides then you know where this is going but trust me don't underestimate your textbook it is the singular most efficient resource that you can use throughout your preparation yes it is it's true that the textbook can sometimes have a little bit of extra information or sometimes be lacking a little bit of information but trust me none of the other resources that you find elsewhere will be as thorough as the textbook let me give you a quick example of a place where the textbook was useful to me all right so when I gave my igcs chemistry exam I gave it in the Feb March 2023 exam series we had a question where we were required to write down the formula and color of hydrated copper to to sulfate a lot of people got this question wrong the reason for this is that they didn't know exactly how many water atoms are bonded to each molecule of copper 2 sulfate or they didn't know what the color was however me personally I remembered reading the formula in my textbook which allowed me to answer the question correctly the answer is c4.5 H2O by the way other than just being a thorough source of information your textbook will also have unitwise practice problems which are a great way of revising the subject as you go along learning it after you finish learning each chapter go ahead and solve these questions it's a great way of testing out individual small chunks of knowledge using your textbook in conjunction with the syllabus document is in my opinion the ultimate way to learn IG gcsc chemistry subject content however that's not to say that there areen times when you might want to read revision notes or solve topical problems this is where online resources come in for a full guide to online resources from notes to topicals to everything else for igcc and a level students check out the video which I'll have Linked In the description down below anyways here's a quick guide to a lot of the resources which you can use for igcc chemistry zotes is great for last minute revision since their notes are concise and to the point save my exams as more indepth F length notes and they also have topical questions which are arranged by difficulty nerd Cafe shout out to them by the way they're new to the scene also have incredibly indepth igcs chemistry notes last but not least you have physics and Ma tutor which has notes flashcards and topical questions now that you've gotten all your resources together what are some topics that you should be paying special attention to first of all remember even though you might be given things like the periodic table of elements or the notes for qualitative analysis at the end of some of your papers it doesn't hurt to have some of the details from these resources memorized make sure that you have the atomic and mass numbers of commonly used elements like oxygen nitrogen or hydrogen memorized it'll help you save a lot of time when you're solving numerical questions also make sure that you memorize the basic cation anion and gas tests which are given in the notes for qualitative analysis something that I saw a lot of people do when I was giving the exams was that they neglected memorizing the things from the notes for qualitative analysis however something that's important to recognize is that you'll only be given the table that contains these tests in paper five or six that is practical or alternative to practical you won't be given this table in paper two or 4 so McQ or Theory and if questions relating to these tests are asked in those papers as they often are you're on your own and you do need to have the test memorized so don't ignore them make sure to memorize them now let's look at numerical problems these are usually stochiometry problems as in problems which relate to the proportions in which molecules or compounds react with one another it's really important to pay attention to units when you're doing these problems you might be given the mass of one substance in kilog and the other in Gams make sure to pay attention to units and convert correctly across these whenever required another common conversion is between mole per DM Cube and gam per DM Cube and between CM Cube and DM cube when you're dealing with gases organic chemistry is something which I've seen a lot of students struggle with I get it it's a new topic and it's a whole new kind of reactions that you're going to be dealing with however once you get the hang of it it's actually really logical and very easy to score marks on the questions that you're usually asked are also pretty straightforward they typically involve getting from point A to point B or what method you'd use to convert one substance to another honestly I'd say that the best way to go about studying igcs organic chemistry is making a mind map of all of the reactions that you're going to be tested on write down all the basic kinds of substances first so basically all of the functional groups so alkanes alkenes Esters carboxilic acids alcohols and the two kinds of polymers look at your list identify which kind of compound can be converted to another kind of compound draw an arrow between them and write the conditions required for that reaction mechanism along with the name of the reaction mechanism if it has one then when you're actually solving problems try to think in terms of the mindmap so in terms of basic conversions from one functional group to another trust me this will simplify the way in which you think about any question and it'll make them seem much more approachable much like the other Sciences igcc chemistry Theory papers usually have a lot of information tested which you can have learned or memorized in advance or which you don't need to figure out in the context of the question a common question which I've seen appear a lot is to State the properties of transition elements or to State the conditions required for the contact process or the hab process these questions appear so frequently that it's very possible to just understand and prepare based on official mark schemes exactly what examiners will be looking for in your answer to them a good way of doing this is to maintain a notbook or a spreadsheet where whenever you come across one of these knowledge based questions you write it down alongside the official explanation given in the mark scheme so that you can refer to this quickly on the day before your exam if you do your preparation right all of these questions are basically free marks since there's no way for the people setting the paper to trip you up you just need to write exactly what you've learned or memorized speaking of official past papers and mark schemes though by far the most efficient way to revise igcc chemist chemistry and well any other igcc subject is to do as many past papers as possible I'd say do at least the Last 5 Years of papers if you can and if possible do even more the more papers you solve the more you'll be able to identify Trends and the better you'll perform on your final exam whenever you encounter a question that you're not sure how to solve Mark or Circle it and then move on to the next one if you want to take a guess on the question just so you know how you would have performed an actual exam condition go ahead but also make sure to leave some kind of Mark on the paper indicating that this is a problem which you weren't sure how to answer this will help because when you're checking the paper you'll know to pay special attention to this topic in the mark scheme and also to go ahead and revise it before you attempt any further pass papers and hey if you find yourself in a situation where you're not able to solve as many pass papers as you'd initially thought you'd be able to do it's completely fine just go ahead and read through the past papers and the mark schemes paying attention to all of the points given in them this is a great way of understanding exactly what is required from you when you write your paper make sure to practice a healthy mix of all three of the papers that you're going to be appearing for a lot of people I know tend to ignore the ATP or alternative to practical paper and instead focus on solving as many Theory papers as possible while yes the theory paper does have a higher weightage and you should definitely put more time into preparing for it it's it's not all right to just ignore the other one also while we're on the topic of ATP this is another paper where the syllabus document can be extremely helpful the igcc chemistry official syllabus document also has an entire section dedicated to the Practical assessment this contains a list of all of the reactions and quantitative experiments which you're expected to know it also contains much like the rest of the subject content a full list of everything that you're required to know or everything that you might be required to do when you give the exam so make sure to go through this before your exam and ensure that you're comfortable with each and every Point given in the document there's also a really helpful list given of all of the apparatus and reagents which might come up in the exam you can use this to make sure that you're familiar with any apparatus that you might be required to identify or use trust me this is a really common question the first question of the paper often has you identify some or the other apparatus while this may seem like an easy question having gone through the entire list in advance helps you look at this question as a sort of McQ since you know what you're dealing with the syllabus document also contains a list of a lot of command words which you need to be familiar with when you're writing really any igcs paper not just chemistry these command words are words like design discuss analyze and so on Words which indicate to you exactly what you're required to do in the question there's a table given in the syllabus document of every IG gcsc subject which has all of these command words alongside a short list of concise descriptions of what exactly you're required to do when you come across a question that has that command word so make sure to go through this before you give your exam so those are all of the tips tricks and strategies which I have for igcc chemistry as long as you prepare the right kind of way and use the right resources getting an AAR is a piece of cake and hey if you found any of this advice that I gave in this video helpful make sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel thank you all for 1,000 subscribers and hey if you want me to do something special for this Milestone make sure to leave a comment in the comment section down below you can also leave any questions or doubts that you might have or share your own igcs chemistry success stories I'll try to respond to as many of your's questions as possible anyways that's all for today I'm out and thank you very much for watching