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Misreading questions

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TELL YOUR TEACHER!!!! this happened to two girls in my year and my teacher immediately rang AQA and i think they will be okay because they told the pupils its happened before
Original post by Lxcent
I came out of the exam really satisfied with what I had written, despite running out of time on the third paragraph of unseen Q2. However, when I got out of the exam my friends were talking about how much they wrote and it's making me doubt myself- I seriously don't think I wrote enough for the 7 I was hoping to get. I know quality > quantity but the longest essay I wrote was 2 pages (for anthology section) whilst some people wrote 3/4 for each! :frown: I'm pretty sad about it now & wish I would have worked faster....


hun, 2 pages is really good. The more you write the more likely your going to go off on a tangent.
I did a practice paper for the poem comparision and when i did that (knowing it is not a whole exam) i got a level 9 and that was a page to a page and a half!!! so dw hun be proud and look at what you did include!!
Reply 22
Ok so someone on twitter said that their school emailed the exam board and they said that since a LOT of people made this mistake, if the writing is good enough they'll just mark it as Mr Birling and you can still get full marks. :K:

I'm praying that it's true.
Original post by handcrafted
I did the exact same thing today. My mate asked me which question I did and I was like 'the first on on Mr Birling' and they were like 'NAHHH IT SAID MRS BIRLING!' and ive been in total shock since then, almost 4 hours ago.
I don't see why the didn't make it more explicit. The significance in terms of character between Mr and Mrs Birling is massive, so by not using Arthur or Sybil, and not making 'Mrs' in bold at least is quite head-scratching - especially since hundreds of thousands of student are gonna be reading it, expecting a question on *Mr* Birling. I got a 9 on my mock, so with 30 marks down the drain I think I'll be lucky with a 6. ****ing bs


getting a 9 on the mocks but failing to read the question properly? lol
Reply 24
Original post by rickH123
getting a 9 on the mocks but failing to read the question properly? lol


Misreading a question is a silly mistake, but it doesn't mean that someone is incapable of writing a grade 9 essay. Exam panic happens :smile:
Reply 25
Original post by Lxcent
I came out of the exam really satisfied with what I had written, despite running out of time on the third paragraph of unseen Q2. However, when I got out of the exam my friends were talking about how much they wrote and it's making me doubt myself- I seriously don't think I wrote enough for the 7 I was hoping to get. I know quality > quantity but the longest essay I wrote was 2 pages (for anthology section) whilst some people wrote 3/4 for each! :frown: I'm pretty sad about it now & wish I would have worked faster....


"Pages" can vary a lot. Someone with big handwriting will fill a page a lot faster - and some people write larger during exams, due to writing fast. Some people will use more paragraphs, or will leave a line between paragraphs. Some people will write succinctly, whilst others cover the same content but in twice as many words. Some people will write more because they write things that aren't relevant to the question.
Well considering it i grade 9-1 this year, i wish everyone the best of luck who did the wrong character... dont know till results day guys :frown:
Original post by Lxcent
Saw on twitter than a few people had done this, I didn't do this book but since a significant amount of people made this mistake then I'm sure the exam board will take it into consideration and you'll get decent marks as long as you have written a good essay. Don't panic :smile:


How can the exam board give the OP a decent mark when he/she can't even read. I'm sorry but OP will likely only get SPAG and context marks. Don't worry though, it makes it better for us because the grade boundaries will be lower and it'll be easier for us to get better grades! Thanks OP.
I will be annoyed if people who made this mistake still get credited. If you have rehearsed an answer to the extent where you expect to be able to regurgitate it onto a piece of paper whenever the word Birling comes up, and not have to look at whether it said Mr or Mrs, you deserve whatever you get. You clearly don't have a sound understanding of the paper if you didn't believe you would have to learn about other characters. As someone who to be honest only expects a Grade 6 despite having a good knowledge of An Inspector Calls, I don't want to get a sub-par grade due to someone 'misreading' the question and getting a number of marks which they could never have attained if they spoke about Mrs Birling, especially as I could probably have got at least 25/30 marks if I wrote about Mr Birling, and yet had to choose to write about the Inspector instead.

Obnoxious rant over.
Reply 29
Original post by colesy69
I will be annoyed if people who made this mistake still get credited. If you have rehearsed an answer to the extent where you expect to be able to regurgitate it onto a piece of paper whenever the word Birling comes up, and not have to look at whether it said Mr or Mrs, you deserve whatever you get. You clearly don't have a sound understanding of the paper if you didn't believe you would have to learn about other characters. As someone who to be honest only expects a Grade 6 despite having a good knowledge of An Inspector Calls, I don't want to get a sub-par grade due to someone 'misreading' the question and getting a number of marks which they could never have attained if they spoke about Mrs Birling, especially as I could probably have got at least 25/30 marks if I wrote about Mr Birling, and yet had to choose to write about the Inspector instead.

Obnoxious rant over.


I agree👏🏻👏🏻


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Reply 30
I didn't do this exam, so can't comment on the wording of the paper or anything. I understand that sometimes stress leads us to mess things up and I do think the grade boundaries will reflect this. But, I think the lenience will end there. It isn't unreasonable to word the question as Mrs Birling as that is her name in the script. Also WJEC (and probably some other boards) uses the name Mrs Birling rather than Sybil. I wouldn't worry because this is a super common mistake people have made, but examiners aren't just going to say "oh this would be full marks if it was about Mr Birling, so I'll give them 90%" but they aren't going to penalises you too much, if that makes any sense at all?
100% agree!!!!!!
Reply 32
Original post by Tombre
I didn't do this exam, so can't comment on the wording of the paper or anything. I understand that sometimes stress leads us to mess things up and I do think the grade boundaries will reflect this. But, I think the lenience will end there. It isn't unreasonable to word the question as Mrs Birling as that is her name in the script. Also WJEC (and probably some other boards) uses the name Mrs Birling rather than Sybil. I wouldn't worry because this is a super common mistake people have made, but examiners aren't just going to say "oh this would be full marks if it was about Mr Birling, so I'll give them 90%" but they aren't going to penalises you too much, if that makes any sense at all?


I agree too :smile: but I think they shouldn't be rewarded high marks either too they should have a certain limit. they should have read the question, planned their answer out. First I thought it was abit Mr birling I reread it and calmed down and replanned my answer xx


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Exactly I agree because realistically the person who planned the answer before, for MR Birling may be getting a lower grade like normally in class or mocks, but because they read the question wrong other candidates grades may go down, because they might have done better doing Mr Birling themselves too but instead they read carefully and done MRS Birling... not fair and credit for those who done planning!! :smile:
Reply 34
THats exactly what happened to me, I was so devastated. Still apparently you only lose marks on either AO1 or AO2, should still be able to get others for context and essay writing skills. Maybe this last bit is just over optimism, but so many student and have made this mistake particularly ones targeted at grade 8s and 9s that its going to have a very significant impact on the grade boundaries of every level, therefore, AQA would be less likely to penalise heavily as they're under pressure this year to get grade boundaries on point. I'm doing lit a level next year and if it's impossible for me to get a 7 (after a year of getting 8s or9s) because of this I'm going to do an eva smith no joke
Reply 35
Original post by z_o_e
I agree too :smile: but I think they shouldn't be rewarded high marks either too they should have a certain limit. they should have read the question, planned their answer out. First I thought it was abit Mr birling I reread it and calmed down and replanned my answer xx


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Mate, did like 10 minutes of planning too and still didn't see I'd read the question wrong. I know it's my fault and understand there should be a limit on number of allowed marks, but I don't think it's fair that such an easy mistake to make could bring the student down by 2 or more grades. I think one thing we can all agree on though is they should have written 'Sybil' in bold.

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