“This topic will definitely come out in the exam! You better study or you’ll regret it.” How many times have you heard this?
It’s true, teachers don’t usually encourage students to spot topics for the exams. When you study only selected topics, you take a big risk in forgoing your marks in other questions. However, taking note of the question types that come out in previous years exams can still be useful.
If you’ve been diligently tackling past year papers, be it from past year A Level exams or other school papers, certain trends will emerge. You’ll see which topics usually have a bigger weightage, and which topics tend to make up the lower weightage questions. From there, you can focus more time on building up your confidence for the high weightage topics, and spend less time on the lower weightage questions (but yes, still study it!).
Let’s look at how this works with an A Level prelim paper. Below is an analysis by our A Level Math Tutor using the 2021 Mathematics paper from RI.
Differentiation features heavily in the paper. That’s because differentiation is a huge topic, with various techniques and applications that can be tested. Not only will you need a strong footing in algebraic expressions, you also need to know how to deal with trigonometry and logarithms. In your revision, make sure to cover all types of differentiation questions, from practicing the methods to applying them to word problems.
Integration is another huge topic that comes hand in hand with differentiation. These questions often come together, with differentiation being tested in the first part of the question, then integration in the later parts.
Graphical concepts and questions involving sketching appeared numerous times in this paper. The challenge is that graphs can cut across many topics. Ensure that you are familiar with how graphs relate to the various math concepts. For example, when you see ‘find gradient of the tangent’, you should immediately think of differentiation.
You also need to know how to derive important parameters such as the y and x intercepts of different kinds of equations to sketch graphs and label their key points quickly. Don’t forget your transformations and translations!
This paper focuses on probability and statistics, and we can see that probability questions featured prominently (more so than hypothesis testing and sampling related questions). There are multiple concepts you should be confident in to tackle probability questions, including set operations, permutations and combinations.
Across both papers
Although topics like vectors did not appear in many questions, it appeared as questions with high marks. That’s precisely why it is not worth it to give up studying certain topics, as they may still come up as high weightage questions that you wouldn’t want to miss.
Above, we have gone through the topics in the 2021 RI A Level Prelim Paper. As this is just one school’s paper, it is also worthwhile taking a look at other schools’ papers to compare the type of questions they have set.
But once again, we do caution against trying to ‘spot’ questions! The A Levels is not something you should take a gamble on – if you can study all the topics thoroughly, it is best to do so!
Looking for more study resources for the A Levels? Instead of scouring the internet or bookshops yourself, why not join us and let our tutors do the work for you? We have A level tutors as well as IP Math tutors who will provide you with guidance and materials, so you can focus solely on practicing and studying, and achieving more efficient progress!