Paper 2 - General advice
Read all of the questions carefully.
Questions often start with information/structures that are useful for multiple parts of the question.
Read all of this information before looking at the questions themselves.
Highlight or underline key information. For example, to carry out a calculation it would be worth clearly marking the following:
- volumes
- concentrations
- masses
Make sure your answers are related to chemicals. This is especially important for questions about industrial chemistry and reactions.
Calculations
Show your working for calculations.
If you get the final answer wrong but your working is correct then you may get the initial marks.
If you make a mistake early in the calculation you may still get follow through marks if your final answer matches what you did.
If a question says 鈥榮how by calculation鈥 you must show working to access all the marks.
In a calculation your units must be correct if you include them. If the units are given in the question, e.g. 'calculate enthalpy in \(kJ mol^-1\)', then they are not needed in your answer.
You will lose a mark once in the whole paper if you write the wrong units.
Things to avoid
For written questions don't add extra information beyond what is needed for your answer.
It might lose you marks if you cancel good information with an extra wrong answer.
For example, if you write 'A substance that is red with universal indicator is an acid, this means it has a pH of greater than 7':
- the first part of this statement is correct and would gain you a mark
- but going on to write that an acid has pH greater than 7 is incorrect, and you would lose a mark for this - cancelling out the first.
If you are writing a formula don鈥檛 include charges unless they are needed or asked for. If you do include them they need to be correct.