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How do you get from 7's and 8's to 9's?

By using the 2023 grade boundaries and my mock results I would have got mostly 8's, 1 9 and 1 6 in French. Is it possible to go from these grades to all 9's. I'm really struggling with English Literature(AQA), biology (combined science AQA) and French (Edexcel). Any tips for these subjects would be helpful.

Reply 1

hotpud

How many more marks do you need. Quite probably it might only be between 5 to 10 on a paper. So go through your papers and identify which areas you are losing marks, then work on them.

Reply 2

Piggy12

Original post

by hotpud

How many more marks do you need. Quite probably it might only be between 5 to 10 on a paper. So go through your papers and identify which areas you are losing marks, then work on them.

Thanks for the response. At most I've been 5 marks away from a 9 so I guess it could just be small mistakes and tiny details I am missing to push me to a 9. Thanks again.

Reply 3

StudyGirlGrammar

Original post

by Piggy12

Thanks for the response. At most I've been 5 marks away from a 9 so I guess it could just be small mistakes and tiny details I am missing to push me to a 9. Thanks again.

Use the mark schemes to see where you have lost marks. And brush up on the weaker topics - no point revising the topics you are OK with :smile:

Reply 4

azure000

I got 9s in most subjects (except english but i was like 3 marks off allow it 😭)

English:
Work on your overall presentation of essays, like work on how your essays are structured and try to sound as professional and link your ideas together using themes and wider ideas. Diverge away from paragraphs like the PEEL ones, while still including all those components in an order that is logical. This is advice assuming you're working at an 8, if not, try to cover everything in as much depth as possible and read critical/analytical writing about your set texts, that can give you an idea of what content/points to include for each theme and character (spark notes, scholars commons and course hero are useful for these, be sure to not copy those though, plagarism is BAD). Also look at what exactly each individual question needs in an answer and go into past papers and exams with a strategy of how you're going to approach the exam (ie what order you are going to answer qs, how long per q etc, mr bruff and everything english is good for this)

Biology:
memorise straight from the markschemes if possible, for most units they have common questions that keep cropping up, learn them, also write out steps for the practicals (refer to the markschemes to see what they need for 6 marks) onto flashcards and memorise them, lots of marks are usually lost there. know your content well and make sure you understand everything, go to clinics at school or watch explanation videos on youtube.

french:
didn't do it, but spanish is the same, from what i gathered from friends who took it.
i made sure i didn't waste too much time on vocab, but focused on memorising structures i could basically vomit out onto the writing and speaking exam papers, for listening there's no replacement to practice, languages are where it is really important to focus in lessons do as much practice there as possible, and ask your teacher if you can meet with them for extra practice during a lunch or something, do little bits often. practice tenses and time frames, find what the markscheme looks for in grade 9 students and make sure you have several structures/sentences that tick off each box. confidence also goes a LONG way in all your exams.

if you'd like any help for other subjects feel free to pm me :cool:

gl with your revision

Reply 5

Piggy12

Original post

by StudyGirlGrammar

Use the mark schemes to see where you have lost marks. And brush up on the weaker topics - no point revising the topics you are OK with :smile:

Thanks for the help. I haven't started to do any past papers yet so I can't really look at the mark schemes yet and at my school they kept the mock papers as evidence, but I'll look at the mark schemes when I start doing the papers. Thanks again.

Reply 6

Piggy12

Original post

by azure000

I got 9s in most subjects (except english but i was like 3 marks off allow it 😭)
English:
Work on your overall presentation of essays, like work on how your essays are structured and try to sound as professional and link your ideas together using themes and wider ideas. Diverge away from paragraphs like the PEEL ones, while still including all those components in an order that is logical. This is advice assuming you're working at an 8, if not, try to cover everything in as much depth as possible and read critical/analytical writing about your set texts, that can give you an idea of what content/points to include for each theme and character (spark notes, scholars commons and course hero are useful for these, be sure to not copy those though, plagarism is BAD). Also look at what exactly each individual question needs in an answer and go into past papers and exams with a strategy of how you're going to approach the exam (ie what order you are going to answer qs, how long per q etc, mr bruff and everything english is good for this)
Biology:
memorise straight from the markschemes if possible, for most units they have common questions that keep cropping up, learn them, also write out steps for the practicals (refer to the markschemes to see what they need for 6 marks) onto flashcards and memorise them, lots of marks are usually lost there. know your content well and make sure you understand everything, go to clinics at school or watch explanation videos on youtube.
french:
didn't do it, but spanish is the same, from what i gathered from friends who took it.
i made sure i didn't waste too much time on vocab, but focused on memorising structures i could basically vomit out onto the writing and speaking exam papers, for listening there's no replacement to practice, languages are where it is really important to focus in lessons do as much practice there as possible, and ask your teacher if you can meet with them for extra practice during a lunch or something, do little bits often. practice tenses and time frames, find what the markscheme looks for in grade 9 students and make sure you have several structures/sentences that tick off each box. confidence also goes a LONG way in all your exams.
if you'd like any help for other subjects feel free to pm me :cool:

gl with your revision

Thanks for all the advice you gave me, it's been pretty useful. SparkNotes is pretty good at helping cover some content on English. I have a question about memorising the mark schemes for Biology: Would memorising the mark schemes for science + understanding the content be enough to get me a 9/9 in science?

Reply 7

hbgcfxcgvhbk

Original post

by Piggy12

helloo!! i got my french grade up super easily (like i swear french seems so hard and massive to work out but there are literally 3 things you need to do and i swear they will help you so much)
1. make really good speaking questions with lots of vocab, tenses, and complex structures (because this will help you in speaking (obvs), writing (because it is so likely you will have the chance to basically just write out a question youve already memorised), and helps you learn vocab for reading/writing)
2. use the writing mark schemes and examiners reports/exam board resources to see what they want you to write in the exam and make a long lisit of them (basically different types of 'complex structures' - then I wrote a phrase for each thing - e.g si clause, subjunctive, depuis phrase, conditional verbs.) and then learn them - it will only end up being like 20-30 flashcards which will get you sounding so much more fluent and high-level
3. (its kindof similar to number 2) remember the things you need to include - like 2 reasons + opinions, all the tenses (and make sure all your tenses are correct)!!

it probably sounds like a lot or super intimidating but you really just need complex structure flashcards and tense flashcards and it will honestly help you so much - and will probably be less time consuming than other subjects (hopefully)!!!

you honestly sound like youre doing so well though, this is just my advice because it wont take you ages and you deffo dont need to get worried about it - these french tips are small things you can get from quizlet/youtube videos already made!!

GOOD LUCK youve got this<333

Reply 8

Piggy12

Original post

by hbgcfxcgvhbk

helloo!! i got my french grade up super easily (like i swear french seems so hard and massive to work out but there are literally 3 things you need to do and i swear they will help you so much)
1. make really good speaking questions with lots of vocab, tenses, and complex structures (because this will help you in speaking (obvs), writing (because it is so likely you will have the chance to basically just write out a question youve already memorised), and helps you learn vocab for reading/writing)
2. use the writing mark schemes and examiners reports/exam board resources to see what they want you to write in the exam and make a long lisit of them (basically different types of 'complex structures' - then I wrote a phrase for each thing - e.g si clause, subjunctive, depuis phrase, conditional verbs.) and then learn them - it will only end up being like 20-30 flashcards which will get you sounding so much more fluent and high-level
3. (its kindof similar to number 2) remember the things you need to include - like 2 reasons + opinions, all the tenses (and make sure all your tenses are correct)!!
it probably sounds like a lot or super intimidating but you really just need complex structure flashcards and tense flashcards and it will honestly help you so much - and will probably be less time consuming than other subjects (hopefully)!!!
you honestly sound like youre doing so well though, this is just my advice because it wont take you ages and you deffo dont need to get worried about it - these french tips are small things you can get from quizlet/youtube videos already made!!
GOOD LUCK youve got this<333

Thanks so much for the help. I'll definitely check out the examiners reports and all that and update my answers to the speaking questions. One more thing, how did you learn to correctly form tenses?

Reply 9

hbgcfxcgvhbk

Original post

by Piggy12

Thanks so much for the help. I'll definitely check out the examiners reports and all that and update my answers to the speaking questions. One more thing, how did you learn to correctly form tenses?

hii!! what i did was:

make a table with the -er endings for each tense first (perfect, imperfect, present, future, conditonal) in each pronoun (je, tu, il/elle, nous, vous, ils/elles)

then once youve done that, make flashcards that go through each pronoun with each tense (basically each conjugation/ending) using a different verb to pracitce for each one so youve got an example to help you remember it with i guess - thats just what worked for me, but you could also do ones that say (e.g present ending for je) ( i cant rlly explain it but i did it like this)

i played - j'ai joué
you played - tu as joué
and so on
and then keep going for the rest of the tenses with different verbs!!

you might also want to make a set for the irregular verbs - e.g pouvoir, devoir, vouloir, faire, aller, avoir, etre, boire, prendre, ect - with these ones i just learnt it for je mostly

then you go through the flashcards again and again until you can get them all right

once you know them:

•

you might want to learn the same thing for -ir verbs and -re verbs - but idk how necessary that is - i havent done it and got a 9 in mocks so im sure its not necessary for gcse

another thing i find helpful for tenses is making a table on google docs with a list of all the tenses along the top and the pronouns down the side and then i print a few out and choose a verb (irregular or regular) and fill it in so that i learn each verb with each tense. like this:

i hope this makes sense but if not just ask and ill be happy to explain it more!!! when its written out in a list like this it probably seems so difficult and intimidating but i promise it isnt - ive just broken it down into steps that will take no more than 30 mins each (apart from learning the flashcards lol)

good luck and feel free to ask me anything else or if you need clarification !!! <33

Reply 10

azure000

Original post

by Piggy12

yes it should be alright, you might need to memorise extra little things but as you keep doing topic questions you will see the gaps in your knowledge and be able to patch them as you go along.

also just working on time management as well can get you an extra few marks, because combined papers have less time than a higher/separate one.
there's this concept called triaging where you look through the whole paper at the start, find the easy questions and see where you can speed up and where you need to stick to the mark per minute rule, that was my life saver during exams, i set up little checkpoints of how many questions i should have done by when and was able to finish quick and have extra time to check, especially useful on the chemistry and physics maths-skills questions.