No matter how good a student you are, you can’t get a top grade without having good exam technique. There are tons and tons of ways that students can lose marks, even if they know the content inside out. If you’ve studied for hours only to get a C, then check out these tips to improve your exam technique.
- Running out of time
- Unstructured essays
- Irrelevant answers
- Misreading the question
- Not checking your work
Running out of time
It’s essential to keep an eye on the clock during the exam. If you have some advance information, then try to plan out how much time you’ll spend on each question. Obviously, the best way to prevent this is to do timed practice papers so you can practice your time management skills. However, if you find yourself with 5 minutes to spare and 20 questions left to answer, then start with the easiest questions to pick up the easy marks. From there, move on to any short-answer questions you have left, and write your long-answer questions in bullet points.
Unstructured essays
Even if you’re the most brilliant student, an unstructured and messy essay will only get you a few marks. This is doubly important for subjects like economics, history, and English, where good structures and chains of reasoning are paramount to getting top marks. Before the exam, choose an essay structure such as PEAR, PEE, or PETAL, and write a few practice paragraphs to practice using it. During the exam, plan out your essays beforehand so they are coherent and flow well.
Irrelevant answers
Writing an irrelevant answer is usually because you misunderstood the question, or because you’re answering the question you want to answer rather than the one you were given. Either way, the solution to this is to study more, especially using techniques like active recall. As well as this, make sure you do past papers and check the mark scheme to understand exactly what the examiner wants from you.
Misreading the question
This is the most annoying one; you know exactly how to answer the question, but you’ve lost marks since you read it incorrectly. This one happened to me recently: I was 2 marks off of 100% since I misread the question as not having a – sign. Read the question at least twice, and highlight or underline the relevant information – this forces you to process it properly.
Not checking your work
By checking your work, you can avoid almost all of these errors. Don’t just glance over your work though – redo all your calculations, check that you read the question correctly, and look for any grammatical errors. As well as this, re-read all your long answer questions to make sure that you’ve answered them coherently.
