Got an exam in three weeks, two weeks or even one week? Great, then have a look at my words of wisdom below.
THE SYLLABUS IS KING!
The syllabus is king – not you. The syllabus comes direct from the IBO themselves. This is what they’re going to test you on, this is what they’re going to slap you around the face with during your final exam. So have a look at it carefully. Treat every assessment statement as if it were a question on an exam that you managed to sneak a peak at.
DON’T BE OVERCONFIDENT
Do you think you know the material like a biology professor? Do you think you can dominate the final exam eyes closed and half drunk? Well wait until you do this…
Get hold of an exam or an assessment statement from here and select two questions/assessment statements that you haven’t studied for a while but you think you know them well enough.
Have a look at the time and say to yourself, “right, it’s 7:30 pm now, and I’m going to stream through these two questions by 7:38…Time starts now”
I did this to test myself on two questions that I was completely sure of – and I was. I just had trouble expressing myself, conveying my ideas and converting them into a format suitable for an IB examination. This step is crucial. Have a look at what I managed to do below:
All unsaturated fatty acids have at least one double bond in the carbon chain with hydrogen atoms bonded to the carbon atoms on either side of the carbon chain. The variation exists between cis and trans fatty acids with the position of the hydrogen atoms on the double bond. Cis unsaturated fatty acids have hydrogen atoms on both sides of the carbon chain whereas trans fatty acids have hydrogen atoms on both sides of the carbon chain. The difference between monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids is that monounsaturated fatty acids have at least 1 double bond in the carbon chain whereas polyunsaturated fatty acids have more than 1 double bonds on the carbon chain.
A.1.7 Evaluate the health consequences of diets rich in the various types of fatty acid
A.1.7 Evaluate the health consequences of diets rich in the various types of fatty acid
An excess of all fatty acids will cause fat to be stored as adipose tissue around the organs. This increases the risk of obesity, which is also linked to type II diabetes. Excess fat consumption can also cause fat to accumulate in the arteries which could lead to atherosclerosis.
Excess saturated lipid intake also increases the risk of atherosclerosis because it increases the amount of hamful LDL cholesterol, which builds up in the arteries and thus impedes blood flow.
Unsaturated fatty acids increase the amount of beneficial HDL cholesterol while reducing the amount of LDL cholesterol, which thus decreases the risk of developing atherosclerosis or CHD.
On the other hand, people living in countries that have a high average saturated lipid content have low rates of atherosclerosis………
Of course, this is from the option A syllabus and for the options there are no extended response questions for the exam - so dot point form is acceptable. But just get into the habit of writing a full explanation anyway, because it helps you to remember the causes, mechanisms and results of why things work.
As you can see I ran out of time above in the second question because I was trying to figure out the exact country that had low rates of atherosclerosis/coronary heart disease. I was typing so fast that typing errors were inevitable – but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you acclimatize yourself to exam conditions, because as you all know, they are much more stressful than sitting at home listening to music while completing a few pages of notes for biology.
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