Hi UltimaOnline. I heard that there is a new syllabus for H2
Chemistry. How is it like? What are some of the changes?
Update on 15 Jan 2016 : Oh yeah, 1 more little change in the
new H2 Chem syllabus, Singapore A level students are now required
to follow the new IUPAC Group numbers notation for the Periodic
Table, instead of the A level simplified version of the CAS
notation or old IUPAC notation. Eg. Halogens are now Group 17, not
group VII. It's just a tiny insignificant change (nonetheless long
overdue if you ask me), no worries.
Hardly any real changes for H2 Chem as far as the student is
concerned (for MOE teachers, abandoning SPA is the real big
change). Mostly just empty bureaucratic re-packaging of topics into
"Core Ideas and Extension Topics", re-presentation of the
"CURRICULUM FRAMEWORK", ie. how the topics are linked together
thematically (something the H2 Bio syllabus already had all these
years), plus some extra pedagogical bells & whistles (ie. more
work for MOE teachers) called "Learning Experiences" and "Practices
of Science" to (ostensibly) enhance the student learning experience
and a deeper appreciation of the attitudes and ethical issues in
the scientific approach. All of which are nothing to worry about
(as far as the A level student is concerned).
Format wise, P1 now only has 30 MCQ instead of the existing 40 MCQ.
P3 now has a Section B in which you choose 1 out of 2 qns (all
Section A qns are compulsory), instead of the existing choose 4 out
of 5 qns format. Planning is still 5% of the overall score, but has
been shifted from P2 to P4 Practical Exam.
Which brings us to the biggest single change for the H2 Chem
syllabus : SPA is being replaced by a one-time Paper 4 Practical
Exam, due to ongoing problems with SPA since day 1 (which like so
many ideas, sound good on paper but suffer from problems in
practice), which I clearly foresaw when it was first implemented
over a decade ago.
The syllabus content itself for H2 Chem is almost exactly the same,
other than just adding and applying the thermodynamics Gibbs free
energy formulae delta G = - n F Ecell (where F = Farady's constant
96485 coulombs) and delta G = - R T ln Kc (where R = Ideal gas
constant 8.31446 m^3 Pa / K ), introducing the qualitative effect
of the Nernst equation in electrochemistry, adding the
Friedel-Crafts alkylation and acylation reaction conditions and
mechanisms, adding the ortho-para vs meta directing nature of
benzene ring substituents (ie. identifying
electron-donating/withdrawing by induction vs resonance, and how
these stabilize or destabilize the resonance hybrids of the
different positional isomers of the tetrahedral sp3 intermediate of
benzene during electrophilic aromatic substitution), plus a couple
more little additions in some other topics.
None of which I haven't *already* been teaching my BedokFunland JC
students all these years (and much more, so as to enable my
students to more correctly understand, not just memorize,
Chemistry, ie. giving my students the H3 Chem and Olympiad Chem
advantage over H2 Chem students).