An acquaintance of mine phoned me the other day and said his son had just got an Unclassified in his mock GCSE Maths exam and he desperately needed a Grade C to get on the course he wanted to study at the Sixth Form College. Could I give him some lessons, please?
To be honest, it's something I'm trying to give up, but as I knew him reasonably well I agreed.
When I first met his son I gave him a past GCSE Foundation level paper to complete and asked him to post it to me so I could mark it and see what his problems were before we began the lessons.
I could see straight away why he had obtained no more than a Grade U. He had made every mistake in the book.
Stop and think for a moment about all the things your teachers tell you that you must do in the examination to get the best possible mark - show all your working, write so the examiners can read what you have written, show the units of your answer where necessary, read the questions properly, draw construction lines accurately with a sharp pencil and so on and so on.
He hardly did any of these. And when he had to write a sentence as an answer to a question, what he wrote wasn't even proper English. It made me wonder how he will get on in his English examination too.
What you must realise is that the examiners are HUMAN BEINGS. They are the people that will be marking your papers and many of them are teachers just like your own. They have arguments with their husbands/wives/partners. They wake up with headaches. They see that pile of examination papers they have to mark and think about their friends who have the time to be going out or having an early holiday while they have to sit and home at mark them to a deadline. (Typically, an examiner will have something like 400 papers to mark!)
Now I'm not suggesting that the examiners don't do a very good job of marking - they generally go to great pains to do so, but there must be times when a candidate is not awarded a mark he/she may deserve simply because it is buried in some rubbish he/she has written and the examiner can't find it. That may be the mark the candidate needs to push them up to the next grade. And that could be you!
Every year a great number of candidates are just a couple of marks off getting the grade they really want simply because they did not follow the advice of their teacher. I wish I had a pound for every student of mine that had said, 'I know I don't do it now, but I will in the exam, sir.' The truth is they never do because they are so nervous about the exam, everything they thought they would do, but haven't practised, just goes out of the window.
I wish I could show you a pile of typical examination papers. You would be surprised at just how bad some of them are. Many of these candidates could easily score many more marks than they do and a great number could push themselves up not just one grade, but often two. There are thousands of candidates who get a Grade D who could easily get a C or even a B with a bit of effort.
So please make sure this isn't you:
Revise, revise, revise.
Make sure you have all the right equipment for the examinations.
Write in proper sentences when you need to explain an answer.
Draw construction lines accurately with a sharp pencil.
Read the questions properly and make sure you answer the question on the paper - not one you have made up yourself.
Time your answers so you don't spend too long on any one question.
Show all your working.
Give those examiners an easy ride. Sometimes an examiner has to decide whether what you have written deserves a mark or not. If they are in a good mood because your paper shows that you really care about your work, they are much more likely to give you the mark - it's only human nature.
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