Exam technique

I love the subjects I'm studying. Sometimes, instead of spending lunch with friends, I read about Chemistry in the school library. I ace every class with outside knowledge and I really understand concepts that would have seemed foreign to me at GCSE.

This is all great, but I'm often getting 9, 7 and even 5 out of 14 in homeworks that I could have done a lot better in. I'm told that my "exam technique" is awful and I could really improve my grade by learning how to gain the system.

But what exactly is exam technique? It seems like a phenomenon that changes with every subject, and is learnt through 'practise'. There are no official resources (believe me, I've tried copying everything the mark scheme says in Psychology only to get an unsatisfying 9/14.) And it seems like everyone else knows that ionisation energy is the energy required to remove the most outer electron within 1mole of a gaseous substance in the mass spectrometer.

So why is this? How can I learn exam technique and apply it to future homeworks?

Reply 1

Motorbiker

21

Exam technique is just knowing how the examiners want certain questions answered basically.

I only did chem out of the subjects you're doing but the definitions like that are the easy marks in the exam, you should be able to instantly give a definition for anything worth 3 marks instantly.

Hope that helps...

My old chemistry teacher used to start most of them with TECWOMO(The Energy Change When One Mole Of) so help you rmember it's a mole. With chemistry you just wanna be hitting past papers a lot. Then looking at the mark schemes and seeing exactly what key words the examiners are looking for...

Reply 2

Pleural

I completely agree with what MHorman says, the best thing to do is to look at mark schemes and compare answer to question to see exactly what criteria is needed. Something else you could do is to pick out keywords in the question and read it twice so that you're absolutely 100% sure of what the question is asking you to do - just to be on the safe side.

Good luck!

Reply 3

DopplerEffect

17

Placebo101

I love the subjects I'm studying. Sometimes, instead of spending lunch with friends, I read about Chemistry in the school library. I ace every class with outside knowledge and I really understand concepts that would have seemed foreign to me at GCSE.

This is all great, but I'm often getting 9, 7 and even 5 out of 14 in homeworks that I could have done a lot better in. I'm told that my "exam technique" is awful and I could really improve my grade by learning how to gain the system.

But what exactly is exam technique? It seems like a phenomenon that changes with every subject, and is learnt through 'practise'. There are no official resources (believe me, I've tried copying everything the mark scheme says in Psychology only to get an unsatisfying 9/14.) And it seems like everyone else knows that ionisation energy is the energy required to remove the most outer electron within 1mole of a gaseous substance in the mass spectrometer.

So why is this? How can I learn exam technique and apply it to future homeworks?

Check mark schemes of past papers and compare them with your answers.... you may have the knowledge but you are not writing the points that will score the mark...

Reply 4

jacketpotato

20

Its difficult to know what your problem is without you posting specific examples in the relevant subject forum

Its probably one of these things:

1) You don't add enough detail. You have GOT to have all the relevant details in there. It is a typical guy thing to just put the basic answer without the detail.
2) Writing irrelevant points
3) Sloppy English

Basically, with a subject like Chemistry, you want to make one CLEAR point each sentence and have one sentence for each mark on offer. If its a four mark question, you need 4 sentences each making 4 different points. If you just write what you think the answer is you WILL miss something out and it might not be immediately obvious to the examiner that you've made a relevant point - make it obvious that you've made 4 points, don't let the examiner have to go searching through your answer

Reply 5

Motorbiker

21

jacketpotato

Basically, with a subject like Chemistry, you want to make one CLEAR point each sentence and have one sentence for each mark on offer. If its a four mark question, you need 4 sentences each making 4 different points. If you just write what you think the answer is you WILL miss something out and it might not be immediately obvious to the examiner that you've made a relevant point - make it obvious that you've made 4 points, don't let the examiner have to go searching through your answer

This, make sure you have that. That's important.

Although they don't have to be sentences just valid points...

For example on a question on the structure of benzene for 4 marks it'd be

•

overlapping p orbitals

•

Delocolised electrons

•

etc(yes, i did forget the rest :p: )

In my practise exams i'd just write like that and that's all you need to get the marks so there's no point wasting time/effort by writing out
"in the structure of benzene it is the shape that it is becaause the p orbitals overlap...etc.....etc....e.tc......"

Exam technique

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