STPM Chemistry, Physics and Biology Practicals
Malaysia Students
throughout form six. In general, STPM practical science is similar to
SPM PEKA Amali since both of them are school-based assessment of
practical work. The assessment of STPM practicals for session 2006/2007
has commenced in early July 2006 and will end before 30th August 2007,
the year of the examination.
Remember the days when your SPM science teachers asked you to correct
the practical work reports you did until they were perfect or almost
perfect and then submit them back to be assessed in order to get good
grades? However, this will no longer true for STPM practical science
since unlike SPM PEKA, STPM practical science contributes a total of
10% of the respective STPM science subjects. For your information, SPM
PEKA carries no weight at all in your real SPM examinations. What you
will get at the end of conducting all the SPM PEKA experiments are the
useless certificates and the priceless experience. They do prepare you
to carry out your STPM practical science independently and correctly.
Majlis Peperiksaan Malaysia (MPM) has determined some compulsory
experiments to be carried out by the students and only compulsory
experiments are assessed by the respective teachers. For instance, out
of 20 Physics experiments, only 15 of them are compulsory. They are to
be carried out by students individually, in pairs, in stations or in
groups as recommended in the Student's Manual.
As I have posted before, students may write their practical reports in
either English or Malay
[http://malaysian-students.blogspot.com/2006/07/stpm-science-and-mathematics-subjects.html].
The practical work report must be submitted to the teacher on the same
day the experiment is carried out unless otherwise stated (in the
Student's Manual) or it will be awarded '0' mark. In addition,
practical work report which can be completed at home (referring to
Student's Manual) is to be submitted to the teacher not later than 3
days from the date of experiment. A penalty of 2 marks is to be imposed
for the report submitted late to the teacher. Moreover, '0' mark is
awarded if the practical work report is submitted later than 7 days
from the date of experiment.
The assessment of practical work reports for Chemistry, Physics and
Biology is different from each other. For Chemistry practical, we need
to carry out an experiment in order to get the readings. Then, we need
to answer some questions and do some calculations and it is done. The
aspects to be assessed are Procedure (how the students carry out the
experiment), Observation and measurements (the accuracy and precision
of the readings) and Discussion (the answers to the questions). For
Physics practical, we have to write a complete report in which covers
Purpose, Procedure, Observation and measurements, Processing and
analysis of data, Results and discussion and Conclusion. Procedure (4
marks), Observations and measurements (5 marks), Processing and
analysis of data (6 marks), Results and discussion (3 marks) and
General (2 marks) are the aspects to be assessed for Physics Practical.
Currently I am not very sure on how the Biology practical is assessed
since I don't take Biology. Anyone taking Biology would like to do us
a favour?