GCE O Level: A Comprehensive Guide To Chemistry

Introducing my new book:

GCE O Level: A Comprehensive Guide To Chemistry

The ‘O’ Level Chemistry Comprehensive Guide is written with one main goal in mind, to provide students with handy revision notes, facilitating revision before the examination.

This book contains everything students need to know before taking the ‘O’ Level Chemistry Examination. It is written in point forms as much as possible to make revision painless. Useful examples are included for better understanding. Important diagrams and graphs are provided where necessary.

Understand the points, diagrams and graphs in this book and students will be well equipped to tackle the ‘O’ Level Chemistry Examination.

GCE O Level: A Comprehensive Guide To Physics

Introducing my new book:

GCE O Level: A Comprehensive Guide To Physics

It contains all you need to know to score well for O Level Physics.

It is written in point forms as much as possible to make revision painless. Equations are written in boxes for easy reference. Important diagrams and graphs are provided where necessary.

Understand the points, diagrams and graphs in this book and you will be well equipped to tackle the Physics Examination.

Hunger For Grade or Knowledge?

Over the years, quite a number of students ask me if results are really very important. They know its importance, but have doubts at times and are not sure of the extent of importance.

I throw back a question to them, "what do you want in life?"

I don't know

If you don't know what you want in life, result is very important. It can land you a place (in most courses) in a university, which in turn can land you a well-paying job. Some may argue that it would be better to find out what you want in life first. This was also my thought years ago. However, over the years, I realise that not many people know what they want, especially when students are aged 15-18. In addition, what you want now may not be what you want next year, not to mention when you are 21 or 25 years old. Hence, study hard for good grades first. This will open up more doors for you.

I know

If you know what you want to work as, read up more on it, work towards it. It may not be a bad thing to drop (if possible) or to score not so well for some "useless" subjects. Naturally, you will get good grades in the subjects that matter.

I had a student who wanted to be a lawyer. She had plans to go overseas for studies. Her only request was not to fail Math, as Math was not the main requirement to get a place in the university. I supported her decision to spend close to no time in Math. She used the "extra" time to read up on General Paper and articles that she deems are important. In the end, after spending 4 lessons with me just before A Levels, she passed her Math for the first time and got herself a place in the university of her choice, reading law.

Keep A Notebook

As you may have known by now, writing down my TODO list in a notebook has been part of my life since I was in school. Even when mobile phone calendar and applications were growing in popularity in 2007, I opted to use my notebook/organiser instead of switching to technology. This idea may seem outdated to many, but there are always good reasons to keep to the primitive method.

Easy access
Open the book and there you are, your TODO list staring at you. Of course one may argue that a phone is more accessible since we are staring at it 24/7. However, I find it faster to flip pages than to scroll through the different days to arrange my timing.

Easy edit
Change time? Cancel, write.
Change day? Circle, draw an arrow to another day.
Compare this to highlighting a bunch of text, cutting, placing the cursor at another place, pasting. All using a finger.

No distraction
Once the mobile phone is in our hands, most people have the tendency to delete emails, to read Facebook update and to reply messages. Few people can resist the temptation of all the notifications.

Write ideas immediately
There are many times when ideas just come to our mind, be it the answer to a Math question or a solution to a programming problem. Take out the notebook and scribble. It is not easy to record ideas and mathematical formulae using a mobile phone, and many times a computer too (at least for me).

Creativity juice
Somehow, I find that I feel smarter and more creative using pen and paper. I am able to write, cancel and draw all sorts of diagrams and flow charts immediately. I guess there is no need to further explain why this is faster than using an electronic device.

Record important notes
The notebook can be used to write down the important notes for a subject which we are taking. Whenever we feel bored, take out and review the notes. Before the exam, take out and go through it once.

A notebook which I used to write important formulae

I also solved some tutorial questions while in the train.

A one-for-all notebook can serve many purposes. However, as we are living in the electronics world, take a step back and embrace the old style. We might get more from it than we would ever imagine.