Maths exam technique?

I got my maths result today and it wasn't as good as me or my teacher had hoped. She told me that I have the knowledge, because she's seen me work in class very well, but that I need to work on my exam technique and I have no idea how to do that. So, how do i?

Reply 1

TheConfusedMedic

write down all of your working. that way, you can bag marks even if you're doing it wrong :smile:

Reply 2

Jaxalottl

Original post by surina16

write down all of your working. that way, you can bag marks even if you're doing it wrong :smile:

It's funny you should say that because as I was looking through my exam paper, I checked the last question which I had filled to the brim with working out, but still got no marks. I forgot to ask my teacher why I got no marks - maybe I could have gotten a higher grade :unimpressed:

well either way thanks for the advice.

Reply 3

username1450924

Original post by Jaxalottl

To work on your exam technique, you do past paper after past paper. I am currently studying for my maths a level and between lessons and home I have nearly done all the PPs for all 3 modules since Jan 05 or somet like that.

Reply 4

BTAnonymous

1. Read questions extremely carefully. For example, if a question says shape A a is similar to shape B, then you should apply that later on in the question if appropriate. The amount of times I used to skip the content the question gave me is unbelievable. Yes, I got a nice A but it wasn't an A*. Fortunately, I now read the whole question because it gives you important information.

2. Check, check and check. Again, before I never checked my questions because I was cocky and thought I had every question I answered correct. I was so ignorant back then. You will be surprised at the amount of mistakes you make. I did a maths paper over the holidays and we came back today to mark it and instead of putting 3y(2y+3x) I put 3y(y+3x) and that cost me getting full marks in the foundation part of my paper. So even I admit to not checking questions but I now know I really should

3. If you can't answer a question, retrieve the knowledge you have learnt about that topic and try and apply it to that question. A lot of maths questions are starting to get wordy. Remember last year when GCSE students doing Edexcel Maths took to Twitter about the Hannah and her sweets question?? It was a difficult question, only because it was wordy and students didn't know how to overcome it when really it was putting information into an equation and swapping a few things around. If you really can't answer a question, don't leave it blank. Put something down which makes sense to you and you might get some marks.

4. Skip the question if you still can't answer it. Sometimes we overthink things and it'll come back to us later while working on some other question. Trust me (unless you haven't revised that, then you're screwed)

5. Revision. Pretty stupid to go into any exam and not have revised anything unless you're confident

6. Show your workings. If you showed all your working in a maths paper but got all the answers wrong, you'll get way more marks than you would if you just got the correct answer.

7. Finally, maths is an extremely logical subject and you really do need to think about things in a logical way. For example, questions which fool a lot of students are proof questions involving algebra. Because it has letters and a bunch of symbols, it looks really complicated. However, if those variables were just numbers then they could easily do it.

Good luck!! :h:

Reply 5

doodle_333

do past papers...

assuming you're not making errors like running out of time then you probably just need to get used to the questions and what they are asking, it's easy to do the maths in class when you know that lesson you will be doing X topic and method but it is harder to recognise what you need to do in the exam from a question which doesn't specify method

Reply 6

Mwalters11

Take it slow and don't rush, I used to panic and go really fast through the paper and drop easy marks, when in reality I had 45 minutes after finishing which i could've used, seriously take your time and read the questions carefully. However make sure you don't end up running out of time.

Reply 7

glowanti

Original post by Jaxalottl

well either way thanks for the advice.

Maybe your working out was wrong then. You don't get marks for having a go if nothing is correct I'm afraid, just writing all your working out can help if you take the right stages but come out with the wrong answer. Especially useful for people like me who go to fast and then make stupid mistakes :colondollar: