31/01/2019

Understanding A level Psychology

What is Psychology and how can I describe it to you? When I was looking around Simon Balle Sixth Form, the subject that interested me the most was Psychology, which might be the same for you. But what exactly is it? In a nutshell, Psychology is the scientific study of the human mind and behaviour.

The reason I chose to study this subject was because I had a natural curiosity about how things work; the mind is such a complex part of our bodies, and so to have the chance to be able to understand it has allowed me to gain a more beneficial insight into life and other people. Over the next two years, you will study a range of topics, from psychopathology to biopsychology. It is such a broad, interesting subject and the understanding of it involves studying mental illnesses, finding out how we think and process information in our brain, why child development is such an important process in our lives and how our memory works.

Would I recommend studying A level psychology? Definitely! Currently, it is my favourite subject. Before you decide your options, everyone tells you to choose the subjects that you are passionate about, but with Psychology you have no prior experience at learning it. If you have a natural interest into understanding what makes humans behave the way they do, it will certainly suit you as a subject. I had many questions, about the topics as well as the skills needed. People tend to ask things like how much maths will there be? How heavy is the workload? Maths skills take up 10% of the marks, so even though Psychology is a completely new subject to you right now, it still incorporates some of the core subjects you have already learnt. I have not found the maths too difficult, so do not be too worried about it, but it is essential that you have a good understanding of it. For example, you need at least a grade 5 at GCSE, otherwise you will find you might struggle on certain parts, which ultimately means you will lose marks in your exams! I was also unsure of the workload, which steps up massively at A level. It is heavy, and you have to learn new structured ways of writing, but in the end, it’s completely worth it if you enjoy it! When it comes to writing, the question types range from 1 mark multiple choice questions, to 16 mark extended writing questions. You do need an ability to write well, but it is not too essay based. The structure of answering questions becomes a lot easier to apply in exams and tests as time goes on. At the start of Year 12, we learnt a structure called IDE - identify, describe and explain. This is an unfamiliar concept to you now, but it will eventually become part of the way you write.

At the moment we are studying memory, and we have already covered three topics; approaches in Psychology, research methods and social influence. Before I started studying it, I was intrigued by how it teaches and develops the understanding of the human mind. There are 11 topics in total that are learnt over the two year period, and they all vary in what they teach you, but I can confidently say that so far, I have learnt a lot of beneficial information. Did you know that as we grow up, we develop schemas (a mental framework that helps organise and interpret information that we develop through experience) for specific things? They are essentially shortcuts in our brain that make sure we do not get overwhelmed by information and they are stored in our memory. As well as this, learning about social influence has allowed me to gain new insight into social groups, not just in school, but also worldwide!

To conclude, it may seem daunting choosing a new subject, but it has been an amazing experience so far for me. I encourage you, if you are considering taking Psychology, to take that step - you won’t be disappointed!

Sarah

Year 12