Pan Asia Publications, RM39.90, ISBN 978-967-466-734-4
Education, 2023

Pan Asia Publications is certainly turning out to be a dark horse when it comes to Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) reference books.

Spotlight A+1: Biology, however, is a pleasant surprise as it is actually very solid!

The Authors

There are two Guru Cemerlang authors among the rosters. One of them, Ong Wei Siang also writes the Biology matriculation textbooks for SAP Publication.

Three authors didn’t list their full names, so who knows who they really are! If “N Bala” is who I suspect she is, however, she’s been around, having co-written Science and Biology reference books for SPM and STPM for quite some time now.

Design

• Unlike the two language subject books in this line, Spotlight A+1: Biology is very colorful.
• Excellent illustrations. While they may not be big, they are detailed enough where it counts to make things matter. Some key illustrations are missing in certain parts of the book, however. For example, an illustration could help illustrate better what the authors are talking about when they discuss modifications on the digestive organs such as gastric bypass.
• Good use of tables to keep everything look organized. Tables are often placed prominently on a page, with wide columns and rows to make everything easy to read.
• However, there isn’t much white space in the pages. While things don’t look cluttered or messy, there is hardly any space to make annotations and additional notes here and there. This can be an issue as the content in this book is not entirely complete (I’ll talk more about this later).
• Depending on one’s point of view, this can be a plus or minus: there are no overload of QR codes to videos or audio peppered everywhere. There are a few that link to additional information, but not as many as some other SPM Biology books out there.

To put it simply, it’s nice to look at and very functional, but more space for candidates to jot things in would have been welcome.

Content

The structure of the content is awesome.

• Each chapter starts with an overview of the topics within, with the page number written next to each topic for quick reference.
• Lots of reinforcement questions after each topic, with more questions at the end of the chapter. This allows candidates to do some quick active learning after each topic, and it certainly feels like the authors are with the candidate, using these reinforcement questions to highlight key facts and concepts that the candidates should know.
• The authors also end the chapter with a few Kemahiran Berfikir Aras Tinggi (KBAT) or High Order Thinking Skill (HOTS) sample questions along with explanations on how to answer them.

As for the content itself, the language is precise for the most part. They keep things simple as per the syllabus, but at the same time, there is some care taken to avoid simplifying things to the point of misleading candidates or feeding them wrong information altogether.

However…

The content doesn’t seem complete.

• A notable example is how, on pages 26 and 27, the authors jump from ameoba to the differences between the amoeba and paramecium… hey, where’s the section on the paramecium? Did chunks of the text got overlooked during the production process, or did the authors forget about that?

Also, some parts could be worded a bit better for clarity.

• Every time osmosis is brought up, for example, the authors use “diffuse” to describe the movement of water through the semi-permeable membrane.
• This is not entirely wrong, as “diffusion” is by definition the general movement of any type of molecules from an area of high concentration to low concentration.
• However, considering that most candidates will be learning about osmosis for the first time, and there is a separate topic on diffusion in the same chapter, the use of “diffuse” in the context of osmosis can result in unnecessary confusion. Why not just use “move” instead?

 How About the KBAT part?

It’s okay. Many of the KBAT questions here are still a bit old-school in that they feel like the same old type of questions just tweaked to be just a little bit less straightforward.

Many questions here don’t truly make the candidate confront an entirely out of the box scenario and challenge their ability to apply what they know to that scenario, which is something the SPM Biology paper of recent years has to been known to occasionally sneak up on the candidate with.

To be fair, the very principle of KBAT means that the candidates should think out of the box instead of relying on rote memorization of facts. Still, more practice questions in the KBAT section of this book to encourage candidates to do this can’t hurt!

The fact that this book does highlight KBAT prominently, however, is a plus, as many other SPM Biology reference books treat it more of an afterthought.

Conclusion

• Some chapters missing parts or lacking details when it comes to content can be a dealbreaker.
• However, the content in this book feels far more up to date and in tune with the latest SPM needs with it also highlighting KBAT and having more content than other publishers’ SPM Biology reference books on treatments and innovations in certain chapters. This isn’t just another “let’s regurgitate what is in the textbook” reference book, that’s for sure.
• If you are okay with the content issues, and don’t mind supplementing this book with other reference books—or just writing stuff on sheets on paper and slotting them in the relevant sections of this book—this is easily one of the better SPM Biology “big books” to get. It’s definitely ahead of the ones by Pelangi Publishing and Sasbadi, which are supposed to be the big ones in the reference book market!