Have a friend guide you through your Psychology AS (Psychology AS - The Complete Companion for AQA 'A' - Mike Cardwell and Cara Flanagan)

Member Name: HonestBob

Product:	Psychology AS - The Complete Companion for AQA 'A' - Mike Cardwell and Cara Flanagan
Date:	01/10/08 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good use of colour. Excellent opportunities to self-assess

Disadvantages: Lots of tight text

This book is among a series of new textbooks published by Folens for the new AQA (A) Psychology specification which is being taught for the first time from September 2008. As well as student textbooks there is also a 'Teacher's Companion' text, a 'Digital Companion' produced on CD and an accompanying website blog.

The textbook is 218 pages long. It covers all of the areas of the new specification and each chapter is colour coded, making it much easier to get straight to the right area of the book. The colour coding is obvious as you look at the top and bottom of the closed book and my students have found this very helpful.

The book consists of quite tightly laid out text. This is made a little easier to access by using different coloured boxes for different information and breaking up the masses of text with photographs and amusing cartoons. There are regular 'Can you....? Sections which require the students to answer questions to check their knowledge. The are particularly useful as plenary activities or homework tasks.

At the end of each chapter is a review consisting of example exam questions with student answers and examiner's comments. These are very useful as readers can then use the comments to improve on the student answers. Sometimes I give my students the answers from this book, have them 'mark', grade and evaluate the answers and then I give them the Examiner's comments to compare with. My students are frequently harsher than the examiners!

The book also includes revision questions at the end of each chapter which include stimulus interpretation tasks and long and short answer questions and multiple choice questions. I find this book is particularly good for self-testing.

Overall a good textbook. Probably more accessible to A-C students due to the sheer volume of reading required in each chapter.

Summary: Great for A-C students, may be a bit tough going for D-E's