Sasbadi, RM42.90, ISBN 978-983-77-3866-9
Education, 2024

Masterclass SPM: Biology is very thick and heavy. This is actually a good thing for a Biology reference book, as that subject is very facts heavy.

Author

Betsy Teh Lay Hong is said to be a textbook author. A quick search reveals that she has Biology reference books and workbooks to her name going back to 2008. So, experience!

Design

The 2024 Sasbadi Masterclass books have great, practical design and this one is no different.

Each page has a 6.5-cm bar at the margin that is great, because it’s just the right amount of space for one to add in notes, diagrams, and simple mind maps in that space.

The pages are colorful, but most importantly, most of the key diagrams and images are big enough to showcase important details. Sadly, the illustrations of plant xylem and phloem are still super basic and won’t cut it if one is unlucky enough to be asked to draw those things in the SPM Biology paper.

For most pages, the reference section is displayed in a single column of text, so there is ample white space to make the pages “breathe” and don’t appear too cluttered.

All in all, a pretty colorful and neat book that hits the right balance between content quantity and presentation quality.

Content

It’s pretty basic, nothing special, but it certainly covers more ground that Focus SPM: Biology, which used to set the gold standard for SPM Biology reference books but sadly no longer.

However, the more exhaustive content can be a double-edged sword, as there are some pretty awful factual inaccuracies here and there. For example, on page 73:

Fats and oils are placed in a category called triglycerides.

What? No, this is not a typo or any other kind of mistake, because the practice section later reasserts this “fact”.

Firstly, triglycerides are a type of lipid composed of a glycerol backbone and three fatty acid chains.

Fats and oils contain triglycerides, yes, but they also include other components like phospholipids, sterols, fat-soluble vitamins, et cetera. Therefore, it is not accurate to say that fats and lipids are triglycerides. They contain triglycerides, but they are not triglycerides—that’s like saying that cakes and donuts are classified as sugars!

I suppose these errors may not hurt the candidate much if they took these errors as facts, considering that the SPM Biology syllabus tends to keep things simple and not-so-complex, but still, it doesn’t look good when a reference book presents facts in a messy and inaccurate manner!

The KBAT Issue

Now, the SPM Biology paper, like all other SPM papers, have a Kemahiran Berfikir Aras Tinggi (KBAT; High Order Thinking Skills or HOTS in English) component. It’s a given that the last component of the essay question is always going to be a KBAT one that asks candidates to answer something that requires them to confront a question that requires them to take what they know and apply their knowledge to a certain situation.

However, most reference books were written before the KBAT questions were widely implemented, so over the years, publishers try to make the content of these books more relevant by shoving rather clumsily some KBAT questions into the practice exercise sections.

This creates a dissonance, and this dissonance is especially obvious in this book. The reference notes are old school, never touching on KBAT in any way, so candidates relying on this book alone will still have to make the extra effort to piece everything together in a way that can be applied to various KBAT questions that often touch on things not mentioned in those notes.

Even then, the answers provided in this book for those KBAT questions can be suspect. Here is one example, take this KBAT question from page 521:

An identity card has a thumbprint and a photograph of an individual. Explain why this type of identity card is more effective than one that has either only the thumbprint or the autograph.

Seems like a reasonable question. Let’s look at the answer provided by the author:

A thumbprint is a discontinuous variation and a photograph is a continuous variation. By having both the thumbprint and photograph on an identity card, an individual’s identity can be ascertained by checking both the photograph and the thumbprint.

First thing: a photograph is not a continuous variation; the author is clearly referring to facial appearance. Talk about imprecise use of English that can cost a candidate some marks unnecessarily!

Second thing: while it’s true that a thumbprint is a discontinuous variation and one’s facial appearance is a continuous one, what does that have to do with the question?

Won’t a more appropriate answer be something like the following?

• Facial appearance can change due to aging, make-up, disguises, cosmetic surgeries, and other factors, so the photograph is not a reliable indicator of one’s true identity.
• While thumbprint can change over time—due to aging, skin diseases, and skin injury—such changes are far rarer, hence the thumbprint method is a more reliable way to ascertain one’s identity.
• Therefore, an identity card with both the thumbprint and photograph is more effective in ascertaining that the person in possession of the identity card is indeed the rightful owner.

Conclusion

• Presentation and design – excellent.
• While the reference notes feel complete, there are some errors that stand out in not a good way. Hopefully, these errors won’t affect the candidate’s ability to answer their SPM Biology paper too much… but these errors shouldn’t be there in the first place.
• Poor integration of KBAT elements into the overall content, and some of the answers for the KBAT questions can be a real head-scratcher.
• The content and practice questions in this book feels like something that came out a decade or two ago; the Ministry of Education has long moved on, and candidates that rely on this book 100% are likely to be caught off-guard by how not-so-straightforward the questions in the actual SPM Biology paper can be.
• Given the high cover price and its issues, this is one book that is likely okay to be used, but I personally won’t recommend it. It’s serviceable, but it’s a dated reference book being sold as a present day one.