You’ve heard it all before but trust me setting goals for the IB Psych exams leads to higher marks. This is because it helps you prioritise your revision helping you to focus on the right things. Every IB Psychology student is capable of achieving at least a 5, so all you need to do is decide if you’re aiming for …
Digital vs. Print Reading: Which one’s better?
Are you trying to study with your laptop and smartphone? You might even argue that you need your phone to study because that’s how you read your textbook. You might even be reading this digitally if your school has shifted to digital texts in favour of old-fashioned textbooks. In this post, we’ll see what the research says about reading digitally …
IB Psychology Exam Banks + Past Papers
The links below will take you to a list of the most probably exam questions you’ll be asked about each topic in IB Psychology. They also include questions from past papers. PAPER ONE SL/HL Paper 1: Biological approach (Link) Paper 1: Cognitive approach (Link) Paper 1: Sociocultural approach (Link) PAPER ONE HL Extensions Paper 1: HL Ext Bio Animal Studies …
#9 Best Study Tip for IB Psych: Work Backwards
When you’ve started studying seriously, it’s tempting to tell yourself, “I’ll just read the textbook then figure out what I need to know for the exams.” While this is the easiest way to think about studying, it’s not very effective. You’ll end up working way harder than you need to. Let’s look at a more systematic approach. In the previous …
#10 Best Study Tip for IB Psych: Get Started
Action precedes motivation. I learn this every time I need to work on something boring. Act first and the motivation to do it will come later. It sounds counterintuitive but trust me, it’s true. Studying for your IB Psychology exams probably doesn’t make you excited. You’ll start cleaning your room, making study playlists, writing a letter to your Grandma, or …
Note taking: Is typing or handwriting better?
IB students are the iGen, so you probably can’t imagine working without a laptop. This begs the question – is it better to take notes by hand on paper or typing on a laptop? Let’s review the research. Let’s first look at Mueller and Oppenheimer’s now famous study “the pen is mightier than the keypad:” In this quasi-experiment, 67 students …
Flashcards: Are online or hard copy better?
Flashcards are the best method for studying lots of content. But which is better – using digital (like Quizlet) or hard copy (like our IB Psych flashcards)? In this post we’ll review the research and see. Numerous studies have found benefits to using apps like Quizlet to improve memory, particularly for second language learners studying vocab. These studies do pre and post-tests …
Essay Introductions: How to write the perfect essay introduction for IB Psych exams.
This post will show you four easy steps you can apply to any exam question to write the perfect introduction. Scroll to the bottom for a simple practice tip. First impressions matter, especially in your IB exams. You’re writing essays in IB Psych to show what an excellent psychologist you are, but you have about 1,000 words and 60 minutes to …
The biggest mistake students make in IB Psychology exams
I still can’t figure it out. After teaching IB Psych for over a decade, marking thousands of essays and short answers, writing hundreds of blogs and recording heaps of video tutorials about this topic, there’s still one mistake that students continue to make in their IB Psych exams. Read on to find out what it is and how you can avoid …
Emotion-focused vs. Problem-focused Coping Strategies
Coping is “a person’s efforts to manage demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding their resources.”(1) In other words, coping is how we try to deal with stress. It is a widely studied topic in psychology and there are over 400 categorized styles of coping. (2) These styles are commonly grouped into two distinct types: problem focused vs. emotion-focused. In …