By Saj Devshi

Self-teaching yourself A Level Psychology isn’t as hard as you think and you don’t even need a teacher either. I found this out when I wanted to try pick-up a subject at the age of 28 just to try improving my grades a little. The biggest problem you will find is not knowing where to start the journey and this is why I’m writing this now, having gone through the whole process achieving an A* grade for AQA A level Psychology.

A little about me:

My names Sajan Devshi and without having the luxury of evening classes or being able to give up my full-time 40 hours a week job I was forced to consider self-teaching. I was fortunate that a private exam centre had opened up near where I lived here in Leicester and I signed up for AQA A Psychology at the end of February 2011.

My first exams were Psya1 (25^th May) and Psya2 (7^th June), which were both approximately 3 months from that point. I would have to self-teach myself about a years work in 3 months. This sounds insane right? It was probably my pig-headed stubbornness and naivety that would ultimately see me through as I would get two A’s scoring 83ums for Paper 1 and 90 ums for paper 2. For papers 3 and 4 I would go on to get full marks for both. When you have no starting point it is overwhelming so below I explain how to start the journey for papers 1 and 2.

This is both for students or if you’re self-teaching so you can be more independent.

You can watch a video of me explaining this here or read below:

Where to start

The first place to start is going to the AQA website and having your printer ready to print. Once on the website you want to navigate to the Psychology Specification and print this. Here’s a link just to speed things up: http://filestore.aqa.org.uk/subjects/specifications/alevel/AQA-2180-W-SP-14.PDF

The specification is your map and one of the most important things to look at when starting your journey in self-teaching anything. This applies to other subjects too. The spec tells you what you need to learn for each paper exactly and all the possible questions that can be asked. Once you understand what’s required of you, you can then focus on learning those elements. Let me give you an example:

Looking at the pictures above it tells you what’s in Psya1 (paper 1). We can see its broken into 3 sections, which are Cognitive and Developmental psychology as well as Research methods. This is then further broken down into subcategories (models of memory, memory in everyday life, attachment etc.) and this then breaks down even further into the exact specific elements you need to know – look at the bullet pointed elements – there’s only 35 things you need to know to understand this paper inside out and some of those are simple points.

Your next step is to grab a psychology book that’s designed around this specification. Many publishers create textbooks with the spec in mind. The book I used is out of date now but there’s a newer one from the same people from amazon – but your free to make your own choice: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychology-Student-Unit-Guide-Developmental/dp/1444162098/ref=sr_1_40?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390750231&sr=1-40&keywords=aqa+psychology+as

Also ignore the 1 negative review for it – the person reviewing it has evidently clicked on the wrong product, as they appear to be talking about a t-shirt not a book!

Article continued in Part 2

If you want further help and A* Model notes that helped Saj Devshi get full marks in A2 visit his website below.

AQA Psychology A* Student – Loopa.co.uk