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HELP!! I hate the subject I'm doing should I change?


molly1802

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I started IB in Sept 2019 and my exams are in May 2021. I chose HL: English, Psychology, Latin and SL: Mandarin, Biology, Maths.

The problem is... I'm really struggling in Mandarin, I did ok at IGCSE (I got a 7/A) but now I'm finding it really difficult to learn and remember the tons of vocab and the prospect of doing a speaking exam really freaks me out. Being in the lessons make me so anxious, and when I get home I know I need to do practise and learn the vocab but I can't seem to muster the motivation to do any of it.

However, recently I found out that SL Chemistry is at the same time. I think I didn't do too badly at IGCSE (I got a 6/high B) so I spoke to some people in the class and it seems like they haven't done much of the spec yet. I think I could catch up. But is it really worth it swapping now? I'm not even sure my school would let me.

Anyone reading this, do you have any advice? Should I stick with Mandarin, and put a bit more effort in? Or should I swap to Chemistry , where I'd have to catch up on half a year's notes? 

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I'm not sure if it's still possible to change subjects, but it may depend on your school. In ours, we can change subjects only in the first month of IBY1, but maybe it's different in yours.

What grades do you have in Mandarin? Have you talked to your teacher about some methods/ways to improve your knowledge of the subject? If you decide to change Mandarin to Chemistry, I think it won't be such a big problem to catch up (especially if the Chemistry group is doing the topics topic by topic from the 1 one, because the few at the beginning are quite easy, however, I don't know much about IGCSE and what you had at Chemistry there). And if you decide to stay at Mandarin, maybe you can have some extra classes/summer course to improve it?

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  • 3 weeks later...

IGCSE Chemistry and IB Chemistry have a large gap in terms of difficulty. Even if you did well in IGCSE, in IB, the level of difficulty goes up and I saw some students abandoning it, so I don't think that it is the best way to replace mandarin by chemistry. 

You should practice past paper questions in mandarin, in order to get which techniques IB requires for this subject : 

https://www.ibdocuments.com/IB PAST PAPERS - SUBJECT/

And you were descent in mandarin while you were in IGCSE so I would recommend to stick with it. 

 

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