aqa biology essay mark schemes

aqa biology essay mark schemes

Effective Strategies for Achieving High Marks in AQA Biology Essay Questions

1. Introduction to AQA Biology Essay Questions

This collection of essays is built on advice that will work for biology students, their teachers and their mentors – be you a parent, a professional tutor or members of any number of the learning partnerships that support students in today’s world of lifelong learning. Only you can build an understanding of the factors that limit top marks in this A Level.

If you are interested in enabling your students to get the very best grades in their AQA A Level Biology exams, then constant practice, practice, practice and self-awareness about your marks are the essential pathway to perfect essay success! When students receive their exam marks, they are disappointed when they don’t get an A*, A or B – understandably so, because those three grades are likely to be the factor behind their next steps in education or employment and opportunity. What is less consistent is the students’ responses in understanding how they managed to get the marks they did. Only great minds manage to support their public examination performances by thoroughly discussing and accepting responsibility for their finite preparation choices, planning goals and achievable future strategies.

The pages that follow give some detailed advice about how to write great essays for A Level Biology, whether the panics, anxiety and timing issues last for 6 months or 6 hours. These recommendations are honestly tried and tested. They have been used successfully by the author and are a distillation of her experience in marking the real thing.

2. Understanding the Marking Scheme

Once you begin to understand and can deliver what the examiner is looking for in your answers, essays become very predictable and easy to score highly indeed. AQA also publishes another very useful guide on the assessment objectives which chemistry students should also familiarize with. Understand and familiarize with the levels and marking criteria for the full marks and you should not go far wrong! Note that “Complete” and “Adequate” are not written in your textbook. It is your interpretation normally fueled by practice which will separate one mark from another. It is rare that everything from the mark scheme can be included in one essay so do not obsess too much about marks higher than 90%.

One often neglected aspect of the art of writing is understanding what the examiners are looking for and delivering it. Essay questions are never ‘off the wall’ and obviously examiners will be looking for this content in your answers. Also, examiners take into account the difficulty of the question. Remember that getting stuck into an essay question always gives you the chance to bump up the high scores and is worth practicing from all angles (since you cannot predict the essay question accurately!).

3. Key Components of a High-Scoring Essay

Firstly, the thesis statement that is developed in the introduction should present an idea that guides the reader. Then, the main points (outlines of an argument) presented in the form of two or three arguments should be supported. These arguments are developed using logical transitions and cannot exist without the main idea of the essay. Afterward, they should be connected using examples that define, explain, create controversy, and/or provide analysis. Lastly, the conclusion should summarize the presented passage without restating the main idea. It should not be a duplicate of a previous paragraph but should illustrate the actual thought using different words. It should also show that the essay has come to an end.

It may be confusing to determine whether an essay question should consist of five paragraphs or be extended to two pages. In any case, it should contain 3 key components.

An essay is a single paragraph that consists of a group of related sentences. To write a high-scoring essay, you should consider the preceding and following elements. Sentences in an essay represent a logically organized group of ideas, which should connect together using logical transitions in order to create a thought that describes a positive or negative causality. Typically, an essay consists of 5 parts: the introduction, the essence, the pros, the cons, and the conclusion. There are no rights or wrongs as to how long the essay should be.

4. Tips and Techniques for Improving Essay Writing Skills

All essays in AQA biology are marked using levels of response. However, it is not that simple since they are not actually linked to specific marks. The final consequence of these non-specific statements is that students can never be 100% sure of the standard that is required to obtain desired marks. Another problem is that topics are not specified in the paper. If an essay response contains a statement such as “In the UK,” then it can only achieve credit for a UK-based statement because that is what is mentioned. Of course, no credit will be given for a broader statement such as “In the world.” The same mistake applies to “during exercise,” “in animals,” or “in plants” as they restrict answers to fewer marks. In an AQA essay, if a student lists four valid features of a hormone-controlled mechanism, then up to 3 marks can be attributed to this section. The student is, therefore, usually required to note a fact in 4 different sections if they wish to achieve full marks.

Every essay, for example, whether it is an informative essay or an analysis essay, has to contain the essential elements common among all essays. By following this format, the writer will have a guide to follow throughout the entire writing course. It is also important to remember that there are a number of tips that can help in improving essay writing skills. These can be incorporated in the course to improve the quality of the information being moved from one person to another.

5. Practice and Feedback: Enhancing Performance

Try to be as clear and concise as possible when answering these types of questions. With a timed exam, time is of the essence, and getting your points across succinctly will give you added time to check over your answers. Make it easier on yourself; it is easier for an examiner to find your points if he is not wading through superfluous narrative. And you know what that means…maximize your chances of error hunting. This is the main area used by examiners to mark answers so the more you give them, the more they give back to you. Try to apply this technique when making points in your answer. If there are sections in your response – number them. Compartments within cells should also be numbered. In this way, your direct answer should help guide the examiner to the relevant point. Relevance, after all, is exactly the qualification they’re looking for.

Some examiners love the clarity of bullet points, so discerned students are always rewarded for using them in essay questions. Where bullet points are used in essay responses, they must, of course, contain clear and succinct biology content. Bullet points must not be convoluted or appear mechanically derived. Each bullet point may be worth one mark to you as long as it is relevant to the syllabus.

You should aim for the highest marks if you answer essay questions in your AQA Biology examinations. This is purely because essay questions are given higher importance in A Level Biology exams. You will have 2 hours to write long answers to 3 essay questions. If you address these discrete points individually, you not only optimize your marks but also enhance the legibility of your answers.