Many of you have mocks coming up and, as well as learning all of the content for each of your courses, it is really important to have a good grasp of exam technique, as this skill can really help you to gain as many marks as possible! It may seem like a whole extra topic to learn, but these tips and tricks are mostly common sense and can be applied across most, if not all, of your exams!
1) Do your homework!
Familiarising yourself with the mark schemes for each of your subjects and ensuring that you’re looking at the correct exam board (OCR, AQA or Edexcel) is vital; you will then start to see similarities in the way that questions are asked and marked, key words that examiners are looking for and there may even be some answers that can be used for a variety of questions. You will start to spot these as you delve into the mark schemes but, in science for example, any question that asks about experimental procedures will only have a few possible answers.
2) Timing
For your GCSEs, it is roughly a minute per mark so, if you are completing a 4 mark question in 1 minute, then you probably haven’t included enough detail to achieve all of the marks, or you may have misread the question - always go back over it afterwards.
In your exams, it is important to use all of the time that you have. If you finish early, go back to the beginning of the paper and check all of your working out and answers. One tip is to cover the answer that you have already written and think about what you would write if you were to answer the question again. You can then compare them and see if you missed anything out the first time or made any little mistakes. Remember to check if your answer is realistic too; can a secondhand car cost £6 million? Does the earth weigh 3kg? If the answer doesn’t seem right then go back through each stage to see if you can spot your mistake; it may just be a simple error that you can quickly rectify.
3) Attention to detail
Always re-read the question afterwards and make sure that you have answered all parts to it. Many students do lots of high-level work but make a small mistake by calculating the area instead of the perimeter, for example, or put their answer in the incorrect form of units. In science and maths, make sure you look for the number of decimal places, significant figures or units that the question wants you to use and, in English, check the sections of the text that they want you to focus on (for example, they may only want you to look at lines 2-15 but if you use the whole text, you won’t be able to achieve the full marks available).
4) Presentation
Clear and legible handwriting is imperative; your answers need to be easy for the examiners to interpret and follow. If your exams are marked manually by an examiner and your writing is messy or difficult to read, they won't spend extra time trying to figure out what it says. Many papers are scanned into a computer so they will be on a screen when they are being marked; in either case, it’s really important that your writing is clear, otherwise you may lose out on marks even if you have the correct answer!
Your working out should be organised and easy to follow too; this will help the examiner to find work worthy of marks. It can also help you when you are going back through your paper to check your answers - it will make this step much quicker! In science, you are always allowed a calculator and the time given for the exam doesn’t take into account students working everything out mentally, so use your calculator to save time! Always do the sum twice to check that you get the same answer too, so that you know that you didn't press any wrong buttons.
If you make any mistakes in your working out or in your final answers that you don’t want to be marked, make sure you cross them out so that the examiner doesn’t look at them; if there are two answers visible and one is right and one is wrong, you may not be awarded full marks.
5) Use the layout of the questions to your advantage
Most questions have a similar layout: a question is often divided into introductory information - part (a) and part (b) - and sometimes parts (c) and (d). Each of these parts could then be divided into sections (i) and (ii) and sometimes even more. If they are still part of the same question number, then they are more than likely linked in some way and you may need to use information from an earlier section to answer the final section, for example. However, be careful, as the context of the question can change from one section to another, so always take your time to read through what is required of you.
6) Don't give up!
If you find the first part of a question difficult, don’t stop there! It doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to answer the rest of the question; it might be that the question includes a new animal name that you’ve not heard of or the context isn’t something you’ve come across before. Read the rest of the question, as you may be able to work out the specific topic that the question is based on from something that is written further down.
If a question is worth only one mark and you are really struggling with it, don’t waste time trying to rack your brains for the answer - move on to the next one, as there will be questions that you are able to answer straight away. Having highlighters to hand can be useful in an exam as you can highlight/underline any key elements; read the question slowly and process the information step by step.
If you're really stuck, it’s always worth having a go! Re-read the question and see if you can write down something related to the topic that it’s asking you about; it’s better than leaving it blank! Remember in maths to always write your working out down. If a question is worth several marks, you will usually be required to show how you have got to the answer and a step that you may think is simple could be needed to achieve the first mark.
7) Have you written enough?
Always check how many marks a question is worth; this will help you with writing your answer and avoiding writing more or less than is necessary. In English, if you have a question worth multiple marks requiring some sort of explanation or evidence, use PEE paragraphs (or similar, there are many different ones that are taught) so that your answer is concise.
8) A picture speaks a thousand words!
If a diagram has been provided, there’s probably a reason why! Stop and think about what the information might mean: what are the units in the table or graph? How does the diagram link to the information that I have been given?
9) Do as you are instructed!
Some parts of a question may be highlighted in bold; this is important information that you need to pay attention to. For example: 'Give one other answer' means only give one; if you give more, you are likely to lose marks as you haven’t followed the instructions. Remember to highlight command words or key vocabulary in the question.
10) Use the relevant keywords!
There are a lot of keywords that you will need to know for your exams; when you look through the mark schemes for your subjects, you will notice that some words are underlined, this means that you have to include that word to achieve the mark. Spend some time going through the mark schemes or your lists of key terminology, so that you know what these words may be.
11) Last but not least…be prepared!
Check exactly what equipment you will need for each exam (such as calculators, protractors, rulers) and have spare pens and sharpened pencils with you. Although invigilators sometimes have spares, this isn’t always the case and, if they do, it will slow you down whilst they get it for you!
Exams aren’t as scary as you think; if you are prepared and have done lots of revision, practice questions and past papers, everything in this list will become second nature! The most important thing is to do your best… good luck!