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Curse of the B !!!!

I think I'm cursed, for nearly all of my exams since year 10 I've had B's literally 80% of my exam results are B's and the rest A's+ but I'm sick and tired of getting this grade I work hard sometimes I procrastinate but we all do at a point. I don't know what it is I'm doing wrong. It's really disheartening getting the same grade over and over again no improvement or anything. I know I can do better but it's how !? Obviously every student is different but what do I do to go that extra mile. I'm doing GCSE's BTW and I really don't want to get loads of B's I really don't it will be really depressing and I just want to feel proud. Help anyone :frown:

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Reply 1
A B is better then a C
Reply 2
Maybe your revision techniques arn't working
Reply 3
Try looking at more past papers and the mark scheme...and revise.... thats all i got
Original post by Mrx123
A B is better then a C


and a C is better than a D.

What's your point?

:rolleyes:
I just want to ask, what is it about a B that's depressing? It's a good, solid grade.
Reply 6
Most of my GCSEs are B's (curse of the B, curse of the procrastination monster, etc). I was pissed off at first until I remembered that most people (at least, the people in my school), either get C's or fail or whatever.

I'd tell you to adopt that mindsight, but wow is that a crap mindset. If you feel that you can get A's, don't do what I did and watch foxes jump on trampolines on Youtube. My best method of revision is past papers. Have you done any? If not, do. Do them all, if need be. They're quite honestly a godsend.

(Foxes jumping on trampolines, for anyone who's interested.)

Reply 7
Original post by Stray_talk
I just want to ask, what is it about a B that's depressing? It's a good, solid grade.


Yeah, I know it's a good grade but it's like no matter how hard I work I ALWAYS get that same grade. It's a bit like you coming home everyday and having the same meal. You get sick of it eventually. You want something different. That's why I get so depressed I feel like I can never improve !
Reply 8
Here's some things I thought were important in getting the grades I got:

You should pay a lot of attention to mark schemes, because even if your answer is perfectly valid, if it's not in the mark scheme you're not going to get a tick! For a lot of people, myself included (although for me it's only become a problem at A level), it's the difference between betting a B and an A even if you know ALL the content. It's good to do past papers and then write yourself notes which consists of model answers for certain topic questions based on the mark schemes.

Another point is, as long as you don't contradict yourself, it's best to write as much as you can for every question so make sure you master the art of writing fast and neat, in my opinion this is best accomplished using a fountain pen if you're used to writing with one. The examiners can't mark you down for something that does get the mark as long as it's not going against what is in the mark scheme so the more you say, the bigger the likelihood that some of the things you say will be in the mark scheme.

With your essay subjects, like history and english, the best way is to do as many practice essays as you can. I remember when I was sitting my English Language papers, none of the exam questions suprised me because I was writting lots of essay in the few days leading up the exam and getting my teacher to mark them for me. It just so happened that the questions that came up in the exam were very similar to what I had already done so it was very easy to recall all the points I already thought of while doing my practice essays and structure it in a logical way rather than trying to write it from scratch.

You didn't mention what subjects you were taking but if you need any subject-specific advice then feel free to PM me.

edit / keep getting negs for mentioning my grades, awesome. Gotta love TSR for that.
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 9
Original post by kimprovising
and a C is better than a D.

What's your point?

:rolleyes:


An F is better than a U.

:colone:
Reply 10
Original post by Millyshyn
I got 10A*s and 2As in my GCSEs, so here's some things I thought were important in getting the grades I got:

You should pay a lot of attention to mark schemes, because even if your answer is perfectly valid, if it's not in the mark scheme you're not going to get a tick! For a lot of people, myself included (although for me it's only become a problem at A level), it's the difference between betting a B and an A even if you know ALL the content. It's good to do past papers and then write yourself notes which consists of model answers for certain topic questions based on the mark schemes.

Another point is, as long as you don't contradict yourself, it's best to write as much as you can for every question so make sure you master the art of writing fast and neat, in my opinion this is best accomplished using a fountain pen if you're used to writing with one. The examiners can't mark you down for something that does get the mark as long as it's not going against what is in the mark scheme so the more you say, the bigger the likelihood that some of the things you say will be in the mark scheme.

With your essay subjects, like history and english, the best way is to do as many practice essays as you can. I remember when I was sitting my English Language papers, none of the exam questions suprised me because I was writting lots of essay in the few days leading up the exam and getting my teacher to mark them for me. It just so happened that the questions that came up in the exam were very similar to what I had already done so it was very easy to recall all the points I already thought of while doing my practice essays and structure it in a logical way rather than trying to write it from scratch.

You didn't mention what subjects you were taking but if you need any subject-specific advice then feel free to PM me.


10 A* You are amazing. You're actually amazing. wow.

well, I'm in the last year of year 11 now so I have 12 exams left.

French 14th may
Food technology 16th may
French Reading 17th
Biology additional 21st may
English Literature ( Of mice and men and inspector calls) 22nd may
English lit Poetry 23rd may
English language 29th may
Business studies 30th may
Additional physics 30th may
Geography 14th/18th June
Reply 11
have you spoken to your teacher?
Reply 12
I had a similar problem with repeatedly getting Bs, however then my teacher taught us a ritual that broke the curse. You need to boil your pens, pencils and all of your copies of your GCSE text, then and only then will you get the As you deserve.
Reply 13
Original post by Millyshyn
I got 10A*s and 2As in my GCSEs, so here's some things I thought were important in getting the grades I got:

You should pay a lot of attention to mark schemes, because even if your answer is perfectly valid, if it's not in the mark scheme you're not going to get a tick! For a lot of people, myself included (although for me it's only become a problem at A level), it's the difference between betting a B and an A even if you know ALL the content. It's good to do past papers and then write yourself notes which consists of model answers for certain topic questions based on the mark schemes.

Another point is, as long as you don't contradict yourself, it's best to write as much as you can for every question so make sure you master the art of writing fast and neat, in my opinion this is best accomplished using a fountain pen if you're used to writing with one. The examiners can't mark you down for something that does get the mark as long as it's not going against what is in the mark scheme so the more you say, the bigger the likelihood that some of the things you say will be in the mark scheme.

With your essay subjects, like history and english, the best way is to do as many practice essays as you can. I remember when I was sitting my English Language papers, none of the exam questions suprised me because I was writting lots of essay in the few days leading up the exam and getting my teacher to mark them for me. It just so happened that the questions that came up in the exam were very similar to what I had already done so it was very easy to recall all the points I already thought of while doing my practice essays and structure it in a logical way rather than trying to write it from scratch.

You didn't mention what subjects you were taking but if you need any subject-specific advice then feel free to PM me.

edit / oh ok guess i shouldn't mention my grades next time because tsr is filled with jealous idiots who just neg away anyone who does better than them. I worked hard for my grades, if you have a problem with anything I said tell me rather than anonymously negging me especially if you aren't even going to contribute to the thread with your own advice.


Your teacher marked your practise essays? Voluntarily? Wow.

As for my revision: POSTERS. The colours and illustrations stick in my head. I remember that in my GCSE Maths Exams I could recall the colour schemes of all the posters relevant to the questions and that helped me remember the formulas.

It's whatever works for you, OP. Most people can generally recognise where they need to improve and how best to revise. But if you do get Bs I commend you. A lot of people on TSR think a B isn't an achievement - and girl I quoted: I'm not aiming this at you - but I can totes understand the frustration with getting Bs. I think what Millyshyn said is right though.

If you don't know what you're doing wrong, do practise exams until you do. Maybe you'll even be lucky enough to find a teacher willing to mark your practise essays too...
Reply 14
Original post by Millyshyn
I got 10A*s and 2As in my GCSEs, so here's some things I thought were important in getting the grades I got:

You should pay a lot of attention to mark schemes, because even if your answer is perfectly valid, if it's not in the mark scheme you're not going to get a tick! For a lot of people, myself included (although for me it's only become a problem at A level), it's the difference between betting a B and an A even if you know ALL the content. It's good to do past papers and then write yourself notes which consists of model answers for certain topic questions based on the mark schemes.

Another point is, as long as you don't contradict yourself, it's best to write as much as you can for every question so make sure you master the art of writing fast and neat, in my opinion this is best accomplished using a fountain pen if you're used to writing with one. The examiners can't mark you down for something that does get the mark as long as it's not going against what is in the mark scheme so the more you say, the bigger the likelihood that some of the things you say will be in the mark scheme.

With your essay subjects, like history and english, the best way is to do as many practice essays as you can. I remember when I was sitting my English Language papers, none of the exam questions suprised me because I was writting lots of essay in the few days leading up the exam and getting my teacher to mark them for me. It just so happened that the questions that came up in the exam were very similar to what I had already done so it was very easy to recall all the points I already thought of while doing my practice essays and structure it in a logical way rather than trying to write it from scratch.

You didn't mention what subjects you were taking but if you need any subject-specific advice then feel free to PM me.

edit / oh ok guess i shouldn't mention my grades next time because tsr is filled with jealous idiots who just neg away anyone who does better than them. I worked hard for my grades, if you have a problem with anything I said tell me rather than anonymously negging me especially if you aren't even going to contribute to the thread with your own advice.


How in the world??? I only started doing past papers for english like 4 days ago and my english exam is in 2 more days. I hope it helps if at all!
Original post by willbee
Your teacher marked your practise essays? Voluntarily? Wow.


Yours wouldn't have? :redface: I thought most teachers would want to help their pupils in any way possible seeing as the grades you get reflect on them as a teacher! He was really keen to mark anything we do and encouraged to do as many as possible, even making up our own questions that we thought would come up. He gave us a sheet of questions he had made up in the style of the exams for all the poem sections and book related ones as well to practice if we ran out of past papers.

I don't see how you could really do it yourself, the mark schemes for English are all 'teacher talk'. During study leave I was bringing him 1 or 2 every day a few days leading up to the exam(s) and he would read them, mark them and give me advice on what to improve and such.

Original post by @chante_Jos
French 14th may
Food technology 16th may
French Reading 17th
Biology additional 21st may
English Literature ( Of mice and men and inspector calls) 22nd may
English lit Poetry 23rd may
English language 29th may
Business studies 30th may
Additional physics 30th may
Geography 14th/18th June

I should be revising for my AS exams but this seems like a worthwhile cause to procrastinate for :biggrin:

I didn't quite a few of those but for the ones I did I'll tell you what I did to prepare.

French
The most important thing in French I thought was learning vocabulary. Again, thanks to a very helpful teacher, I had a booklet full of all the specification vocabulary - literally every word that could come up in the exam! Although I didn't make myself learn every single word, I frequently looked through it tried to test myself on a particular word I found in the booklet. If I didn't know I would learn from my mistake and most likely remember the word next time! They were grouped by topic as well which was really helpful. I'll try and find a file with some vocabulary for you.

If you're on AQA you could also get access to kerboodle for your listening paper. French people speak really fast so the only way to get used to it is to listen to them speak! Perhaps try to write down what you think they're saying and then look through the manuscript for any mistakes you made and listen to the tapes again.

Sciences
Like I mentioned before, for science subjects just doing past papers and going through the mark schemes and learning the answers the mark scheme wants for particular types of questions should do the trick :smile:

English Lit & Languge Poetry
Do practice essays, that's pretty much all I did, and if you haven't done much annotation then add to you poem notes. Get some revision guides if you don't think your notes are very useful. CGP are not great though, I just used them to add extra little bit if I thought they were sensible because a lot of the stuff they said was just ridiculous and cringey.

For mice&men/inspector calls, read through the book again and again, make annotations in your book, pick out quotes as you're reading it and make some notes on paper about what you're reading. Make sure if you want to mention a particular part of the book in your exam you know exctly where it is, so it's helpful to just write summaries of each chapter so you can navigate around the book easily.

English Lang comprehension
I honestly wasn't very good at this part for a very long time and when we did practice papers in class I usually ended up with Bs and low As. What I learnt from that was that you really need to pick at every single little thing, even if it's really obvious and you think, that honestly can't get me the marks! I got one of the CGP guides bout reading non-fiction and media texts and tht was actually very helpful for me :smile:
You need to be able to pick out stereotypes if presented with an ad poster, for example - the advertisement uses the colour pink because it is associated with girls and this suggest it's target audience could be females of this and this age. That sort of thing. You should also know all the literary techniques that can be used to persuade, argue etc, and all the ones that occur in poetry too so there's quite a big overlap in that department.

Didn't do any of the others, sorry. If you're doing Maths too, then the best thing for that is practice papers as well I'm afraid.
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 16
Original post by Millyshyn
Yours wouldn't have? :redface: I thought most teachers would want to help their pupils in any way possible seeing as the grades you get reflect on them as a teacher! He was really keen to mark anything we do and encouraged to do as many as possible, even making up our own questions that we thought would come up. He gave us a sheet of questions he had made up in the style of the exams for all the poem sections and book related ones as well to practice if we ran out of past papers.

I don't see how you could really do it yourself, the mark schemes for English are all 'teacher talk'. During study leave I was bringing him 1 or 2 every day a few days leading up to the exam(s) and he would read them, mark them and give me advice on what to improve and such.


I should be revising for my AS exams but this seems like a worthwhile cause to procrastinate for :biggrin:

I didn't quite a few of those but for the ones I did I'll tell you what I did to prepare.

French
The most important thing in French I thought was learning vocabulary. Again, thanks to a very helpful teacher, I had a booklet full of all the specification vocabulary - literally every word that could come up in the exam! Although I didn't make myself learn every single word, I frequently looked through it tried to test myself on a particular word I found in the booklet. If I didn't know I would learn from my mistake and most likely remember the word next time! They were grouped by topic as well which was really helpful. I'll try and find a file with some vocabulary for you.

If you're on AQA you could also get access to kerboodle for your listening paper. French people speak really fast so the only way to get used to it is to listen to them speak! Perhaps try to write down what you think they're saying and then look through the manuscript for any mistakes you made and listen to the tapes again.

Sciences
Like I mentioned before, for science subjects just doing past papers and going through the mark schemes and learning the answers the mark scheme wants for particular types of questions should do the trick :smile:

English Lit & Languge Poetry
Do practice essays, that's pretty much all I did, and if you haven't done much annotation then add to you poem notes. Get some revision guides if you don't think your notes are very useful. CGP are not great though, I just used them to add extra little bit if I thought they were sensible because a lot of the stuff they said was just ridiculous and cringey.

For mice&men/inspector calls, read through the book again and again, make annotations in your book, pick out quotes as you're reading it and make some notes on paper about what you're reading. Make sure if you want to mention a particular part of the book in your exam you know exctly where it is, so it's helpful to just write summaries of each chapter so you can navigate around the book easily.

English Lang comprehension
I honestly wasn't very good at this part for a very long time and when we did practice papers in class I usually ended up with Bs and low As. What I learnt from that was that you really need to pick at every single little thing, even if it's really obvious and you think, that honestly can't get me the marks! I got one of the CGP guides bout reading non-fiction and media texts and tht was actually very helpful for me :smile:
You need to be able to pick out stereotypes if presented with an ad poster, for example - the advertisement uses the colour pink because it is associated with girls and this suggest it's target audience could be females of this and this age. That sort of thing. You should also know all the literary techniques that can be used to persuade, argue etc, and all the ones that occur in poetry too so there's quite a big overlap in that department.

Didn't do any of the others, sorry. If you're doing Maths too, then the best thing for that is practice papers as well I'm afraid.


You are honestly amazing !

Thank you so much !

I've finished my GCSE maths I got an A whooop It didn't really break the curse though !

The one I'm going to struggle with most is english language as I just don't get it. I hate the questions and It just annoys me how simple it is !

Thanks again for everything !!
Original post by @chante_Jos
You are honestly amazing !

Thank you so much !

I've finished my GCSE maths I got an A whooop It didn't really break the curse though !

The one I'm going to struggle with most is english language as I just don't get it. I hate the questions and It just annoys me how simple it is !

Thanks again for everything !!


Another thing for English Lang, even though you've probably heard it before, is use 'PEE' (point, evidence, explain) as your answer structure. You should make one point per mark so look at the mark allocation in the quesitons. Make a point about the text, quote a fragment from it or point out a particular feature (colour scheme or font?) and then explain how the point you made is proven in the quote.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/GCSE-English-Understanding-Non-Fiction-Texts/dp/184146760X/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1336513558&sr=8-11
Get this for 1p used, it's worth it for that price even if you don't think it'll help you much :biggrin: I thought it was useful. Just not the poetry ones, they were way too cheesy.
Original post by Ra Ra

(Foxes jumping on trampolines, for anyone who's interested.)


Damn you! I was almost being productive then. Revenge :colone:

[video="youtube;g85wBkhFhjo"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g85wBkhFhjo[/video]

OP, I can't give you much advice on technique, as it's really down to the individual, but past papers really make a difference in pushing you up that extra 20%. Also, go in with the mindset that you won't make a single mistake rather than that you can afford a certain amount. It sounds odd (and of course you will make mistakes), but trust me it does make a difference.

Also, for subjects like sciences make tables of things to memorise, and learn them by heart just before the exam - it's as good as taking cheat-notes in. Good luck :smile:


Edit: The cat was fine...
(edited 11 years ago)
Reply 19
my teachers predicted me 7A 2B for my GCSEs, then I got stressed spoke to my form teacher and she said it doesnt matter if you get Bs. hardly fair when I was the hardest worker in the year. everytime I get down to study the only word in my head is 'ability'. wish I had it. even worse my parents always downgrade my 2A in A level to 2Bs saying I should have got 4B but I worked really hard for those grades. up early morning and up late nights obviously with breaks.

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