do you guys think this is a wise thing to do?

[bumblebee.xo]

So I'm looking on Amazon.ca and I've come across a bunch of IB course companion books. Some of them sound pretty good... but I'm not sure if I should get them. Have any of you bought them? How much did they help?

Thanks

[Mahuta ♥]

Depends on the books.

Normally OXFORD books are pretty good.

For Biology: most people purchase the OXFORD STUDY GUIDE 2009, it summarizes everything neatly and explaining it very well at the same time. Text books are really used much, i believe.

For Chemistry: same goes here, the OXFORD STUDY GUIDE, however with Chemistry our school got us the textbooks, which we used quite frequently.

Maths: I don't know about Studies, but the SL and HL students in my school, we used the H&H text book, and the OXFORD textbook. Although at somethings H&H was much better.

[Tilia]

Sutdy guides for the sciences are pretty good, but they don't cover everything, so they are only complements. For instance, the physics one doesn not give very good definitions, if any at all.

I do't know much about the course companions, but my impression from talking to other people is that they are not really worth the price, but possibly there are other people here who are more familiar with them and can give more informed opinions.

[sharonlove]

In my opinion, I would only get the study guides if you are having trouble with the current supplied textbooks and/or you can't make really good study notes.

The oxford books are great particularly for Chemistry and Economics.. and other informational (that's not even a word) subjects

For english A1, I don't think any study guide will really help you :/

Goodluck:)

[__inthemaking]

The course companions are like a textbook so I wouldn't get them unless a) your teacher is terrible and/or b) your textbook is terrible.

I got the econ CC because I was in the pilot year for my school and the IB econ teachers didn't even know the syllabus! They didn't know we had to submit IAs until we told them. So everyone bought an econ CC (we ordered it in bulk, a classmate worked at Chapters so it was cheaper) and we all pretty much self-taught ourselves. It was a HUGE help, only reason I got a 7 in econ was because of the course companion. But our teachers literally taught us nothing.

For my other courses, the teachers were competent and had experience with their IB subject so it wasn't necessary since they prepared us adequately.

[FutureIB]

If you are looking for in-depth course companion books, Try the IBID Textbooks, this is an Australian Based Publishing Company. But IBID themselves are not sufficient enough, you need revision books for exams, which are terse and short in length (they save a great deal of time) for these our school uses teh oxford revision series.

Once I looked through a test copy of IB Physics Text book published By Cambridge, ordered by the school, and I thought they were better than the IBID which the school sold us.

This is the link to their site

http://www.cambridge.org/us/education/ib/index.html

Basically you have three choices

1. IBID

2. Oxford

3. Cambridge

Good Luck

[kingdomx]

Depends on the books that you want to buy. I know from personal experience that the IB BAM course companion by Oxford Press is really good. With the Oxford study guides, I think that some, such as the bam and chemistry ones are too brief, and don't have detailed enough explanations for new learners. I'm pretty sure that the pearson study guide for ib chemistry is good, as we have it at our school, and a lot of us have benefitted from that book. for biology, I would recommend the IBID textbook, and the same for chemistry, as these books contain both SL and HL information, and also extension material.

[Center Field]

Our school didn't supply textbooks so I bought mine on Amazon and I found that they helped tremendously! I think it is a great thing to do