How to do well in JC H2 Chemistry? (Secrets that the A students are gatekeeping)

If you’re already studying regularly instead of neglecting it, then doing well first becomes knowing what to STOP doing, before focusing on what you need to do. 

After all, your time is limited and studying smarter goes a long way than just studying hard.

Q: What are the 5 common pitfalls when it comes to studying for JC H2 Chemistry?

A: The most common pitfalls students face when studying H2 Chemistry are less about content, and more about how they study:

1. Delaying the action of doing practice questions until you “feel ready.”
   — Mastery doesn’t come before practice; it’s built through it.
   
   
   

2. Rushing through corrections because it feels tedious.
   — Skipping deep corrections means repeating the same mistakes.
   
   
   

3. Not redoing the questions you got wrong, and move on to new questions.
   — Active recall results in true learning, and not just doing more.
   
   
   

4. Spending hours on creating fancy notes and mind maps.
   — It feels productive but often replaces actual question practice.
   
   
   

5. Not seeking help early enough, and thinking that studying harder is the solution.
   — Many students wait until J2 or after promos, when misconceptions are already entrenched.

Common Mistake #1: Delaying Practice

When you decide to lock in, your first natural instinct is to start reading the notes, so you can “understand” the concepts first before doing practices. 

But that is the exact trap that keeps you in the cycle of “study already, but still cannot score”.

You see, true learning comes from doing the corrections seriously after you get a question wrong. And to do so, you first have to try out the actual practice questions. 

But the common worry that stops students from doing so is: If I don’t even understand the content well, how am I ready to do the practice? I’ll just get everything wrong or leave blank.

Well you see, you just need a rough idea of what’s going on before attempting the questions, and often just understanding 40 to 50% from the lectures or your self-reading is sufficient for you to get started on practice questions.

Notice how by the time you’re doing your tutorials in school, you actually don’t understand the lecture notes fully, but still have to attempt it as your tutor is going through the next day.

The wrong way is to feel overwhelmed and allow yourself to lag behind by finding an excuse not to do it, in the spirit of mastering your past topics first. 

The correct way is to embrace imperfection, and just try it first. Because you see, when you are doing the tutorial, you will end up flipping your notes to find the relevant parts to refer or copy from.

And that is the most effective way of learning.

It’s not supposed to be reading notes and feeling good about it because you now “think” you understand.

It’s through practice that you really learn to apply what you’ve seen in the notes into the question that you’re trying to solve.

But when you just focus on reading notes first, you will never be ready to actually learn from the mistakes you make when you do practice questions. 

Common Mistake #2: Rushing through corrections

If you’re not guilty of common mistake #1, you’d probably be guilty of this.

Most students do not realise that spamming practice alone does not help you to score well.

The real magic happens when you’re doing corrections for the questions you got wrong (or guessed). 

And by that, I don’t mean just copying down the answers from the slides when your tutor goes through in class. That’s just copying, not doing corrections.

Jay Jae’s definition of doing corrections: 

1. You first read through every single line of the solutions and explain to yourself why it is correct, and what is missing or wrong from your own answer. 

2. You then write down notes beside your wrong answer to remind yourself what is wrong and what you need to take note of in the future. 

3. Finally, if it’s an explanation or keywords question, you copy the exact phrasing from the solutions down with pen and paper, for at least 5 times, or till you can cover up and write out word for word. 

If you recall the way you are currently doing corrections, it surely does not fulfill all 3 points above, and that’s why you find yourself doing badly despite all the “hardwork” in doing practice questions. 

But you see, it’s probably not that you don’t know the proper way of doing corrections, but more of if you were to be so meticulous in doing your corrections, it would have taken up too much time!

Yes, it is going to take a lot more time. That’s why, the typical student in JC who scores straight As and Bs typically studies for 8 to 10 hours per day on the weekends.

If it’s easy and fast, everyone would be walking around with 70RP on their result slips. 

So at the end of the day, despite the huge amount of time required to actually do corrections properly, it’s something you just cannot escape if you want to score A. 

But at least that’s a much better way to spend your time than just reading notes or spamming questions, but neglecting the most important part that actually helps you learn — doing corrections meticulously. 

As an important general rule of thumb: For every question you do (and get wrong), you should be spending twice the amount of time on corrections. Not the other way round. 

Common Mistake #3: Not re-doing the past questions you got wrong

This is different from doing corrections.

Doing corrections takes place right after the 1st time you did the question and got it wrong. 

Re-doing refers to going back to the same question(s) you got wrong (and have already done corrections for) and doing them again, while covering it up, some time after (usually 5 days to 20 days period).

If you do not redo, how do you know that you’ve truly understood and can score full marks this time round?

In fact you do not redo because you know deep down that you’re still unable to score full marks for that same question that you just did corrections for 1 week ago.

And that’s painful to know. Because if you’re honest with yourself, you’ve not learnt, or truly learnt. 

Fundamentally, what is learning? You’ve learnt if you don’t make the same mistake again in the future. Be it a baby who stops touching the hot kettle after doing so or a criminal who doesn’t re-commit the same crime again after the punishments. 

But let’s pretend you’re a potential A student and now actually chooses to go back to redo the question you got wrong before.

Then only 1 out of 2 outcomes can occur. 

Outcome 1: You managed to solve the question and get full marks. (Notice the keyword here is on FULL MARKS, not partial marks)

When this happens, then you can only be sure that you’ve truly learnt from your corrections that you did. You gain confidence and this builds a positive feedback loop that rewards you to keep up what has been working for you.

Outcome 2: You still can’t do the question or cannot score full marks.

When this happens, any non-delusional and normal student will feel shameful and painful, given that you literally have done this question before, and yet you still cannot score full marks. Reality sinks in that you’ve still not learnt properly. 

And that’s actually a good thing.

Because only when there is pain, change happens.

You now pay a lot more attention when you are doing corrections again the 2nd time round, and because of the extra conscious effort to really ensure you learnt properly and completely this time round, you end up understanding and learning a lot deeper. 

And now the concepts and keywords just stay in your long term memory a lot better, which is exactly what happens to an A student when he/she studies the way we’ve discussed so far.

No matter the outcome, it always leads you closer towards scoring A.

Moral of the story: You can NEVER lose by redoing the questions you got wrong, and you stand to lose it all if you don’t. 

Common Mistake #4: Wasting time on doing your own fancy notes and summaries

This might be completely opposite of what you believe, but hear me out.

On the surface, this sounds helpful and logical to do so, because it seems like you are “consolidating” your learning.

But in reality, almost none of your friends who are scoring A consistently for H2 Chemistry (or any subjects) get there by doing so.

The real consolidation actually happens when you avoid the Common Mistakes #1 to #3 which we went over above, and do what’s been suggested instead. 

Your high achiever peer(s) who are scoring consistent As and Bs consolidate their learning by executing strictly on the following cycle, multiple times:

1. Practice Questions (while referring back to notes at first)

2. Do corrections

3. Re-do the questions gotten wrong before and do corrections again if still wrong

When you do that, your brain automatically does the consolidation without you even trying to, all while executing on the steps that actually help you score A. 

The reason why you insist on creating your own notes and summaries is because you’ve not prioritised the above cycle when you study. 

That’s why you even feel the need to “consolidate” by resorting to what feels rewarding — “creating” your own notes. 

And exactly because creating your own notes is time consuming, you end up having even less time to focus on what actually works — the 3 step cycle above. 

So remember, stop doing what “feels” rewarding and start doing what’s “painful” but works.

Common Mistake #5: Not seeking help early enough

Most students do not study hard from day 1 in JC. And because of that, work starts to pile up and you lag behind, unable to adapt to the new rigour of JC life. 

To combat that, you start to “lock in” for your WAs in term 2, only to realise that you did badly compared to your peers.

Then you convince yourself: Maybe I just didn’t study hard enough, and if I studied harder for my WA2, I’ll do better. 

Then WA2 comes and because usually WA2 is harder due to more unfamiliar topics, you end up not doing well again.

But you continue to convince yourself: Maybe I just needed “more time” to study for it, and I’ll start studying earlier for my promos examination in Sep/Oct. 

Maybe you do, maybe you don’t, but the outcome for most students who have struggled thus far in JC remains the same: You don’t do well for your promos either.

By now, most students who are not as delusional would have already found themselves a H2 Chemistry tutor (or whichever subject you struggle with).

But others who remain in their own bubble continue to convince themselves that they don’t need help and that they can handle it all by themselves. 

I don’t blame you, after all it might be what has worked for you, since you did well enough in O-levels to be able to enter JC.

But.

JC is different.

With the sheer volume of the content and the high complexity of the concepts in JC, most students struggle to handle it all by themselves. 

And the truth is: The longer you delay receiving help even when you’re consistently doing worse than your peers, the harder your life will be in J2.

This is no different from cancer treatment.

You pay a much higher price when you receive treatment for cancer only at stage 4, than if you started treatment when in stage 1. 

In JC, when you start getting help late, you need to shoulder double the stress of concurrently trying to follow along for the new topics taught in school, while trying to catch up with your older weaker topics.

This is even worse for H2 Chemistry.

Most of the J2 H2 Chemistry topics like Halogenoalkanes, Acid-Base Equilibria, Electrochemistry etc requires your J1 topics’ concepts to solve. 

So if you’re weak in J1 topics like Chemical Bonding, Reaction Kinetics, Chemical Equilibria, Energetics etc, you are literally digging your own grave when you go into J2. 

I may sound biased, since I teach H2 Chemistry tuition, but the fundamental point should not be diluted — that you need to get tuition early on, because starting tuition later only brings about more trouble for yourself. 

It does not have to be taking classes with me, it could be some other tutors as well. 

One simple way to tell if you need tuition early on is: If you tried studying for WA1 and didn’t do as well as your peers, it’s a sign you shouldn’t ignore.

Here’s the biggest irony I have come to realise after 10 years of teaching students:

It is often the students who DO NOT need tuition as much that goes for tuition earlier on in JC. On the other hand, students who NEED tuition the most, almost always delay going for tuition until they realise they are completely cooked for A-levels. 

The funny part is, these “higher calibre” students actually know how to maintain their edge by going for tuition early, so the gap between them and students who delay tuition only increases significantly as the year goes by. 

It’s the difference between people who go to the gym and eat well VS people who neglect their health. 

The former pays the price upfront, which serves them well in the long run while the latter pays the REAL BIG price only when they end up on the hospital bed, risking their lives.

Conclusion

I hope that it has become clearer in this guide that most of the time, you need to step out of your comfort zone and do the things that actually work.

If it’s so easy to do well, everyone will be doing well in JC, and that will not be fun anymore!

At this point in time, if you have realised that you need help for H2 chemistry and understand that now is the right time to start, click on the button below to schedule a free trial class with me and let me help you along in this treacherous JC journey.