Tips to Get a 9 in GCSE AQA RS

Hi, I did my GCSEs last year and got an 8 in RE (mainly let down by the fact I really struggled at writing essays). I did Buddhism and Christianity. My top two tips would be to learn the key words and their definitions, as people often don’t do this and lose lots of marks in the exam just because they don’t know what the question means. Secondly (this is more for when you get into Y11), practice exam questions as this is the best way to test your knowledge and get better at exam technique. Good luck and hope this helps

Hi, I did my GCSEs last year and got an 8 in RE (mainly let down by the fact I really struggled at writing essays). I did Buddhism and Christianity. My top two tips would be to learn the key words and their definitions, as people often don’t do this and lose lots of marks in the exam just because they don’t know what the question means. Secondly (this is more for when you get into Y11), practice exam questions as this is the best way to test your knowledge and get better at exam technique. Good luck and hope this helps

I agree with this too! I did Christianity and Islam and I only got a 7 because I had to leave many questions blank since I had literally no idea what the questions were talking about. So make sure you know the key terminology. Also make sure you don’t keep a one sided viewpoint. The best answers are ones which look at both sides of an argument.

Also learn a few quotes from scriptures that you can use. You can paraphrase them so you don’t have to learn them too well but it will take your answers to the next level! But this is mainly for year 11

Perfect!

As others have said definitely make sure that you learn the key terms, i had to learn that the hard way. I got a grade 5 in my January y11 mock because i had to leave/guess what key terms meant on so many questions so i just did awfully. But i got a 9 in the real thing so yeah i definitely learnt from my mistakes there.

I did find islam somewhat difficult to begin with because there are so many key terms to learn since it’s a different language but if you stick with it then you get the hang of it eventually. I think you can easily get a good grade in RS if you just make sure to learn all of the content and know exactly what they’re looking for in each type of question. I can’t remember what it is exactly for each q, you’re school should tell you, but like for e.g i think on the 4 marker you need 2 points, 5 marker you need 2 points and a quote for full marks, 12 marker is something like 3 points on each side and then a new point in your conclusion. So you just need to make sure you know exactly what they’re looking for in each question.

I hope you enjoy it, i’m pretty sure you’ll be doing themes as well and they’re the best part and a lot of that is easy as well because you can use your own opinion. Eg you learn about abortion/capital punishment/divorce and loads of other stuff that you could probably already give some arguments for/against for. It’s one of my fave subjects because i love the debate side that comes with all of those topics.