Pan Asia Publications, RM39.90, ISBN 978-967-466-731-3
Education, 2023

Imagine a Focus SPM: Chemistry that isn’t stingy with practice questions, has no qualms giving a bit more information than those found in the textbook, and goes the extra way in spotlighting KBAT and tips to answer questions on the actual exam.

That’s Spotlight A+1: Chemistry, and it’s head and shoulders above that other book, it’s only funny if you think of it as a joke at the expense of Pelangi Publishing!

Design

• It’s colorful, but it’s colorful in a way that is done right. Contrasting colors are used when we need to easily tell apart atoms and other things. While Focus SPM: Chemistry loves putting orange and red together, this book uses red and green, for example. As a result, it is easy to tell at a single glance what is happening in a certain illustration.
• While the illustrations aren’t big, the number and clarity of the illustrations are good enough to help complement the text and give candidates a better understanding of things.
• Excellent use of diagrams, tables, flowcharts, and illustrations to drive home key points without creating too much of a wall of text effect.
• While the layout of the book feels cluttered at times, the spread and design of the pages still allow for enough white space to keep things easy on the eyes.

Content

For the most part, the content covers the fundamentals. But where it stands out is how further it goes beyond the call of duty to help candidates improve their odds of doing well in the actual exam.

Like the other SPM Pure Sciences reference books in the Spotlight A+1 line, it has boxes spotlighting key concepts that one has to know at regular intervals throughout a chapter.

Each chapter ends with some sample Kemahiran Berfikir Aras Tinggi (KBAT; High Order Thinking Skills or HOTS in English) questions and how they should be answered.

This reference book is one of the only two in the market that I know of that also contains practice questions for Paper 3, the practical paper. Why is this great? Well, most of Chemistry is about this experiment or that experiment, so the Paper 3 practice questions are a great way to reinforce one’s knowledge of why this is done or why this is used in a certain experiment. Unlike the SPM Science paper, one doesn’t always get asked to describe an experiment to test a hypothesis but should such question pops up when the candidate sits for the exam, doing these questions will be a great help in answering that kind of question!

On top of that. there are many practice questions here—after certain sections within a chapter, the KBAT spotlight, and the generous number of practice questions at the end of the chapter. The value for money is definitely there.

Oh, and unlike Pelangi Publishing, Pan Asia Publications actually includes a mock SPM paper here for practice. No need to scan a QR code and then having to print the whole thing out!

Now, We Should Talk about the KBAT Stuff

Now, I’ve mentioned that for SPM Chemistry, KBAT is mostly the same old Chemistry questions—such as identifying substances and molecular structures of these substances based on clues, calculating this and that, et cetera—repackaged under a formalized name, so it’s business as usual as far as the more “costly” KBAT questions go in the essay section of Paper 2.

If one has a solid understanding of fundamentals, such questions shouldn’t be that bad. The scarier ones, such as comparing and contrasting different reactions or applying chemistry principles to real life situations, are fortunately “cheap” in that they are worth anything from two to five marks, not something to lose sleep over if one flunks one or two of these questions.

Still, the authors don’t want candidates to lose those marks, if possible, so this book has the most examples of real-life applications of chemistry principles of all the SPM Chemistry reference books I’ve come across.

For example, in the actual 2023 SPM Chemistry paper, there is a question revolving around how self-heated cans work. This is the only SPM Chemistry reference book that has a detailed description of such a can in the Thermochemistry chapter—none of the other competitor titles even mention it—and since this book was also published in 2023, one can’t say that that content was slipped in after the exam came out.

So yes, this book does go the extra mile to highlight extra real-life applications that are not touched by other SPM Chemistry reference books. If you want to know as much as you can to prepare yourself for anything the actual paper throws your way, this is the book to invest in!

Conclusion

• Very solid balanced approach to meet the present-day expectations of the SPM Chemistry paper, with probably more KBAT knowledge than necessary within the pages. Still, being kiasu never hurts when it comes to exams!
• Unlike many SPM Chemistry reference books, this book also puts the focus on Paper 3. This means that candidates will have the chance to reinforce their knowledge of the many, many experiments carried out in the lab. Since Chemistry revolves a lot about things happening in the lab and most of the actual SPM paper asks about these things, this approach taken by this book is a good thing!
• Actual smart use of colors, a welcome relief after the eyesore that is Focus SPM: Chemistry!