Only 3% of IB Psychology students get 7s. There’s very little room for error if you’re aiming for top marks.
The biggest error I see some students making is using the wrong studies. For example, the question might ask about social identity theory and someone writes about Bandura’s bobo doll study, or about Loftus and Palmer’s car crash study on a question about emotion and memory. While you might not score a zero, you definitely won’t score top marks. That’s why it’s important you practise matching up what study goes with what topic.
An easy way to do this is to take the list of topics in the exam and write down what study you’re going to do for each. Have this checked by your teacher so you know you’ve got them correct. For example, you might be prepared to use Bransford and Johnson’s laundry study for schema theory and Passamonti’s for neurotransmission (Our Revision Textbook comes with a downloadable workbook with all this included).
Then you could make flashcards with just the topic heading on one side, and the study you’re going to use on the other. This wouldn’t take long to do. Then practice showing yourself the topic heading and saying out loud which study goes with it. You could use the Leitner System or the Three Pile System.
Good revision is about doing a little often. This easy process of matching topics with studies could be a good first step, before you begin revising the content in more detail.
Travis Dixon is an IB Psychology teacher, author, workshop leader, examiner and IA moderator.