Exam Hints

There are only 3 months left and some of you are not achieving what I think you are capable of. It may be because you are not preparing adequately for the exam and still don’t know what is required in the final. Here are some hints on exam preparation and exam-taking technique.

General Hints:

1. Studying all night is probably almost as bad as not studying at all! After five or six hours of study your brain doesn’t take anything else in, even though you may think so. Also, you are dead-tired during the exam and can’t focus on the questions, and the information is probably swimming round in your head like an alphabet soup. Start revising early – at least a month before the finals.

2. Plan your time during the exam. Literature usually takes time. Vocabulary should be done first as it is simply memorising work. I would suggest doing grammar and reading next as they are fairly straight-forward and can be done relatively quickly. This will leave you time to spend on the Literature section.

3. Don’t waste lots of time worrying about an answer you can’t remember, leave it and come back to it later.

4. Make sure that you do the class and homework exercises by yourself. Treat them seriously, as practice for the exams. Never be satisfied with a second-rate answer. Copying someone else’s answers might push up your class and homework marks, but it means that you don’t understand the lesson and probably won’t understand the exam question. Stupid, right?

5. Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand the lesson, the probability is that there are at least two others who don’t. Ask me to revise the lesson, I will. I might look like and smell like a dragon, but I’m not.

 

The Literature Component

1. There is quite a lot of literature to cover before the exam, start early. Don’t leave it for the night or two before the exam. If you do, you won’t understand it fully and chances are you will get confused about it all. Ideally, you should only have to revise during the exam week!

2. Re-read the Literature selections: understand every line of the poetry and the main ideas of the prose selections (stories). Don’t worry about minor details in the stories. With Drama, revise the plot and re-read the sections we focussed on in class. Also, re-read your class notes and try to remember the discussions that went along with the notes.

3. Make sure you understand the literary terms (metaphor, simile, etc) and how they are applied.

4. You must be very familiar with the work so that you can spend your time during the exam focussing on what is asked in the question. No amount of learning will help if you can’t answer a question.

5. Analyse the questions and answer them fully. You won’t receive a full mark for a question if you don’t answer it fully.

6. Don’t fall into the trap of writing pages of unnecessary information – it simply annoys markers who are under pressure to finish marking.

7. Avoid grammar, spelling and punctuation errors in your answers since marks will be deducted for them and they (horror of horrors) influence a markers opinion about your ability.

The Vocabulary Component

1. This requires lots of preparation and is simply a learning matter – if you can memorise well, you can score very high marks here.

2. Try to use the words we study in your everyday speech and in class.

3. Prepare your sentence examples ahead of time and have a teacher or someone else check them.

4. Marks are deducted if you use the word as the wrong form of speech in your sentence or if you miss-spell it!

5. Marks are also deducted here for other serious spelling and grammar errors.

The Grammar Component

1. Understand and memorise the grammar rules. Know your terms (phrase, clause, appositive, etc)

2. Re-read your class examples, and if possible do them again. Check them against your answers in class.

3. Try to get hold of and do other exercises.

4. Hint: Try explaining the rule to someone else, to see if they understand you – this will tell you if you understand.

5. Remember that some of the questions in the exam will be in a slightly different format from your exercises.

The Reading Component

1. Revise each reading skill and make sure you understand how to apply it.

2. Some of the information will need to be memorised – like Greek and Latin Roots, start early.

3. Revise, but don’t memorise the class exercises as the exam exercises will be different but based on the same skill.

4. Remember, as with all other sections, don’t underestimate the question: read and answer it carefully.

The Writing Exam

1. Many people do strange things in the writing exam.

2. Analyse what type of essay is required: discursive, persuasive, comparison-contrast, narrative, descriptive, etc.

3. Analyse the question carefully and make sure that you answer it completely.

4. Plan/brainstorm/mind-map your essay, but you can change your plan if you want to when writing the essay.

5. Spelling and punctuation are not as important as the ideas presented, the level of expression, the depth of discussion, and clarity of your structure.

6. Stick to the word limit (+ or – 10%).

The Oral Exam

Always prepare!