Practice examination papers

Stop!

Do not attempt any of these exam papers (or even look at them) until you have spent at least an hour revising the material for that exam. Use the check lists at the end of each chapter to guide your study.

Practise passing exams

Success in examinations takes more than knowing the work. You need to practise writing answers that will score full marks, and you need to be able to work quickly, so that you complete the paper in the time given.

Do each of these papers under exam conditions (no looking up your notes) and allow yourself no more than the time given on the paper. If you have run out of time, finish the paper in a different coloured pen. Similarly, if you find that there are questions you cannot do, answer the rest, then look up your notes and answer those questions in another colour.

Make sure that you answer the questions you are good at first, and if you do find yourself running out of time, write brief answers to many questions rather than trying to write Excellent answers to everything. We have put A, M, E grades on the questions for Papers 1 and 2 to guide you, but remember that the NZQA exams will not have these grades shown on the questions.

The papers

This CD contains 5 exam papers for each of the external achievement standards. Use one as a practice assessment before your class test for each section, one before your school examinations, and leave the last one for November. Questions for Papers 1 and 2 have been taken from recent Bursary papers and modified where necessary to fit the style of NCEA papers. We have also included a couple of practice papers for Chemistry 3.2 — the redox titration practical. They will give you practice at the kind of calculation you will need to do.

Standard	Paper 1	Paper 2	NCEA 2004 paper	NCEA 2005 paper	NCEA 2006 paper
Chemistry 3.3 AS90696 Oxidation and reduction	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper
Chemistry 3.3 AS90696 Oxidation and reduction	Answers	Answers	Answers	Answers	Answers
Chemistry 3.4 AS90780 Particles and thermochemistry	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper
Chemistry 3.4 AS90780 Particles and thermochemistry	Answers	Answers	Answers	Answers	Answers
Chemistry 3.5 AS90698 Organic chemistry	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper
Chemistry 3.5 AS90698 Organic chemistry	Answers	Answers	Answers	Answers	Answers
Chemistry 3.7 AS90700 Aqueous solutions	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper	Question paper
Chemistry 3.7 AS90700 Aqueous solutions	Answers	Answers	Answers	Answers	Answers
Chemistry 3.2 Oxidation-reduction titration	Question paper	Question paper	—
Chemistry 3.2 Oxidation-reduction titration	Answers	Answers	—

You can download the NCEA exam papers (for any subject) off the web after about April each year. Once you find the information for each Achievement Standard, click on the View all documents link. It will display Word and pdf files for both the question papers and assessment schecule (that's the answers) for the NCEA exams. Also use these pages to see the actual Achievement Standard for this year if you've lost the copy your teacher gave you.
Chemistry Achievement Standards page

Marking exams

Record the highest grade scored for each question, then total number of As, Ms and Es scored and compare them to the judgement statement provided. Notice that for Excellence you need to have gained most of the A and M grades available for the paper. It's not enough to be able to write a few clever answers to hard questions: you need to know the easy work too.

The phrase minor error appears frequently in marking schedules. In calculations a minor error may be a ‘calculator error’ – such as reversing the digits as you enter them or misreading a digit. It is an error that produces an answer that is still sensible. Forgetting to divide by 2, or leaving out the × 10^–3, are not minor errors. In equations, a minor error could be leaving out the state symbols (except in thermochemical equations, where state symbols are essential). Leaving out the charge on an ion is not a minor error because atoms and ions have entirely different properties. Similarly, you cannot score full marks if you make two errors which cancel out to produce the correct final answer.