Heyy! I am going into year 11 in september and was wondering how to get top marks on the NEA 1 task. My teacher gave the entire class 3s and 4s in the mock NEA1 task and so I am really worried.

Reply 5

Omnibluey

Original post by vars an

Heyy! I am going into year 11 in september and was wondering how to get top marks on the NEA 1 task. My teacher gave the entire class 3s and 4s in the mock NEA1 task and so I am really worried.

Hi I got a 27/30 on it so I hope I can help. Basically there are no marks for how well you cook so don't bother with appearance or even taste. (I literally served up milk with flour and chunks of butter in it). It helps to think of it as more like a science lesson rather than food tech. I.e. you need to be thinking control Variable, control Variable, control Variable. Don't feel stressed of you can't investigate all that you want in the time you have you can leave a lot on the cutting room floor so to speak.
For actually laying it out remember it's a word limit not a page limit I had my 2000 words spread over 12 pages. (And if you need to cut words check how lenient your teacher is and how they count it e.g. do graphs count for words etc.
Read the examiners report, find the example one (from memory it's on bread) done by AQA and don't be afraid to treat it as a tick box list.
I had a list of things and just went down it in order
E.g. what is gelatinisation
What can be used as starch
Write hypothesis
Write method down
Write results (it really doesn't matter)
Write conclusion (again what you say doesn't matter you could find out making white sauce with no flour is the best and you can waffle on how it surprised you)
See if your teacher has a list.

Reply 6

username5883514

Thank you so much! Do you mind showing me your work (i’m just going to compare it to mine) as i used the one on AQA website as a checklist, but still only got a grade 3. The problem with my teacher is that she just changed from OCR to AQA but hasn’t changed her way of marking. It’s so hard as she hasn’t got a clue herself and doesn’t guide us either.

Reply 7

Omnibluey

Original post by vars an

As your teacher is the marker. If they don't have a clue then the marking will likely be dodgy.
I'm not sure whether you are actually allowed to send your coursework to people on the internet even if yours is all marked and handed in.