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Your View: IB Course Companions & Study Guides


CodeRed15

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I bought the bio, chem, and econ course companions but IMO, you only need the study guides and a good text book (like, heinamm, IBID, etc.) for chem and bio. You should study from a textbook and then just review from the study guide.

The course companion does NOT have all the info that you need so dont rely on it so much if you do buy it

Although the econ course companion is really gd and i highly recomend it .

Yay, I started a thread because I was confused about whether to get a course companion, study guide or the heinemann book for Biology.

Our valedictorian studies off of the Heinemann book and we just this year had a biology teacher change to someone who is completely clueless about how IB works at this point.

I was wondering if you preferred the Heinemann to the study guide or vice versa.

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all hail thee ib study guides.

they are the ultimate life savers in my opinion,

but i would not recommend just using them to learn from.

what we are told is to learn everything in detail and depth from the gigantic textbooks that weigh a ton (all subjects), and refer to the study guides when revising. but i only have study guides for science (bio and chem) since most of the time the teachers refer to the course companions in class to help us.

although at the moment i am considering whether i should purchase a ib course companion for economics~

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all hail thee ib study guides.

they are the ultimate life savers in my opinion,

but i would not recommend just using them to learn from.

what we are told is to learn everything in detail and depth from the gigantic textbooks that weigh a ton (all subjects), and refer to the study guides when revising. but i only have study guides for science (bio and chem) since most of the time the teachers refer to the course companions in class to help us.

although at the moment i am considering whether i should purchase a ib course companion for economics~

Yep, they pretty much summarizes everything for you, but then again nothing is perfect so i wouldn't depend on them too much. Try to practice with more and more questions, but considering that you probably don't have enough time...maybe just try doing all your homework.

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IB course companions are much better than study guides, in my opinion. There's so many more problems that you can practice on and there's also sample experiments. I have a chemistry course companion and it has pretty good practice questions. If you're looking to clarify a specific topic or concept than I suggest that you purchase a study guide. Study guide usually works pretty well with courses like Biology and English.

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I think the Chem Course companion is great, but that maybe because my school didn't have a IB Chem textbook and gave us First year uni Chem text books. The Study Guide is the best thing ever when revising for exams, but none of the two can be used for learning the content they are good for extrac excersis and make the class work easier to understand

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Oxford Study Guides are really good, they'll tell you everything you need to know and are direct and straight to the point (I have the Bio and Chem ones), but theres a lack of questions in my Bio one. It has maybe 2-3 Exam questions at the end of chapters, Chem just has a page of multiple choice. Oxford Course Companions/Textbooks arent bad but sometimes they miss stuff or "waffle" on about stuff. ^_^

Edited by Blueskynin
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Any ideas how good and what kind of book is the Mathematics for the IB Diploma Standard Level (Maths for the IB Diploma) (Paperback)?

Should I get the course companion or study guide for bio?

Couldn't say about the Maths one, but get the study guide for Biology :D

The Course Companion does more in-depth explanations of various processes and in that sense is best if you need to understand processes fully to remember them (I do!), however at the end of the day, the Study Guide sticks to the syllabus like well-fastened glue :D IMO it is far preferable if you're revising rather than learning, and if you're still learning but can't have both, the better option (:

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