Exams traps sneakily lie in wait ready to catch you out. In fact, every year some students hit a familiar obstacle which trips them up without fail. Don’t let it be you!
Instead of discovering unexpected stumbling blocks in your year end or final exam, why not be clued-up ahead of any exam so you don’t get stuck?
Knowing the Problem is Half the Battle
Exam Trap no 1:
- Not answering the set question. This is a biggie which we see ALL the time. It’s easy to get side-tracked when you read a question, where you write too much irrelevant information or don’t stick to the question.
- Our Top Tutor Tip: circle the key focus in the question and re-visit the question after every sentence or two. It might be a simple case of including key words in the question in your answer!
Exam Trap no 2:
- Not reading instructions carefully. Ooh, this old chestnut! Exams aren’t always straightforward. Sometimes exam papers are divided into sections with choices of question. Instead of answering ONLY a section studied, sometimes students answer a question from every section.
- Top Tutor Tip: read the front of the exam paper carefully and note what you have to do. Then, flick through the exam paper to put a star by the sections you KNOW you must do – especially relevant if you are sitting History, or English Literature papers. Sometimes, students answer a question for a text they’ve not studied, for instance. One of the classic exam traps!
Exam Trap no 3:
- Running out of time. This happens so often that if we charged a £1 for every time it happened, we’d be cruising round the south of France in a swanky yacht by now! Some questions can ambush you if they are difficult or unexpected.
- Plus, if you spend too long in the first half of an exam, you can run out of time in the second. Since many question with more marks can be at the end of sections, it means you never have enough time to capitalise on them.
- Top Tutor Tip: divide your exam time into sections to correspond with how many questions you have to cover. Often exams fall into this equation: a mark a minute. Allocate properly and you’ll avoid this lethal trap.
- Equally, rushing through an exam and leaving a spare half an hour at the end isn’t good practice. As part of your revision, practise exam papers to help you streamline your time per section/question.
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In the meantime, why not check out one of our other popular blogs about how to expect the unexpected!