From the very outset, for the usual ethical and professional reasons, I must make clear that I am not recommending or endorsing any commercial products or for that matter myself. Teachers and members of Chartered Professions are forbidden from doing so when wearing their official hats. After all.. how could you trust us to give objective an impartial advice, if there were a conflict of interests involving selling articles and goods. The very least that you can expect from us is honesty and ethical behaviour.
Now that we have got that bit over with....... I am often amazed that students come to me with only the basic revision guides issued by their School/College. Often these are printed in black on white and lack colour which means that sometimes structures and concepts, perhaps intended to be portrayed in 3D are struggling to be perceived in 2D. Add to this, that it is doubtful if one specialist topic author is going to fully explain a concept adequately, it may be a prudent thought to consider using at least 3 revision guides. Of course, this is not to say that "black on white" revision guides are no good. Its just that economies forced on Schools/Colleges, oblige them to source the most cost effective option.
The Bohr hypothesis or Oxygen/C02 dissociation curve is in my view often very poorly explained in text books. To illustrate this point, I once spent, with a very gifted student, nearly 2 hours, using about 10 revision guides in order to piece together what we thought was an adequate explanation of the whole process. It's little niggly things such as mention of the chloride shift but without linking this to NaCl naturally present in plasma, which confounds students.
Yet another advantage is that quite often, Revision guides are written by a team of specialists and you get the benefit of the expertise of several specialist minds "fine tuning" the information on the 2 pages concerned. The fact that a topic is condensed to 2 pages, usually side by side, aids our cognitive functions. Generally there are suitable and appropriate topic questions (and answers!) as well. This enables you to test whether you have fully understood the concepts. Lets face it, Science is full of "hard to get your head round nerdy ideas". Such user friendly help must surely be of assistance in studying.
Revision guides can and arguably should be used, together with Work Books, as soon as you start your AS/A2 courses, not 3 weeks before the exam.
The point that I make, is that if you can afford the time and money to visit a well stocked book shop, it may well be worth spending that time, carefully checking topics within the different offered revision guides, so that when for example, your text book and issued revision guide does not make clear what NRM (Yes.. I know its Phys and Chem) is all about, other books may do so.
My personal belief, supported by most of my students, is that when you have been taught a topic such as Cellular/Tissue Respiration, its often very useful to revisit the topic using several revision guides. This is because, different authors explain concepts in slightly different ways.
Which revision guide "does it for you", is like most things a matter of personal choice. Make such choices wisely and think of a revision guide as an investment in the future. Its also a resource that you can keep even for use at University and after!
David Chitty
