A-Level Biology textbook advice

hello deboussole!

i am a A level student and have given my AS examination. My board is GCE A-LEVEL.

regarding text books i would like to give you some advice. Furing my O level and AS level i figured this out on my own that No one text book will help you. and some will give you more information than required which might help you in future, but which is totally inapropriate (a waste of time) for the A level examination.

1)Do as directed by the syllabus. The syllabus is very comprehensive and self-explanatory

2)If you are not sure about the details of the topic that you have to teach then as a teacher or student you should consult the past papers. take a look at atleast 10 years of past papers starting from 2010 backwards. You will notice some topics appearing  pre 2003 that are not included in post 2003 syllabus....simply because the syllabus keeps  on changing! so you would also get to know what topics to teach and what to leave behind.

You should guide yourself by the syllabus and then the past-papers..............text book should be the third thing to be worried about!!

i would advice you a book called BIOLOGY it is edited by Soper and its publishers are Cambridge. its a Fat book and its extremely detailed. its for both AS and A2. its very good in building your concepts and amazing in its explanations too. however its last edition came in (i am not sure) 1998 and since then it has not been updated etc.

so you will need another book to keep you updated . i use Biology OCR edition. its simple in detail. i build my basic concepts from it and then read Soper to get thorough details.

i hope my advice helps you. if you need some more i will be ready to help you. if you have some advice for me please ive it to me too.

glad to help you!

Hi Hijazi

Thanks for the advice.  You're right about the syllabus if I was an ordinary student.  However, despite needing to learn about 'biology', it is obviously going to focus at least a little.  So what I have done is get some advice from a teacher friend, bought the AS & A2 biology books (A2 book = Essential A2 Biology for OCR Student Book, Glenn Toole, Sue Toole, publisher = Nelson Thornes; AS book is same publisher).

They'll get me the basics I need to be able to read and understand the biology journal articles I have to start reading for my post-doc.  I'm not actually teaching.  I'm a research scientist/engineer at a UK university trying to shift over to more biological applications of the micro-engineering I do.  I liked your suggestion of the BIOLOGY textbook by Soper.  However as you've stated, a lot has changed.  Rather than go too deep initially I wanted something more shallow (hence the AS/A2 books).  A friend suggested 'Molecular Biology of the Cell' (Alberts et al) after that if I want to go into more depth.

Thanks again for the advice & likewise.

Regards