Exams are getting nearer!

No-one likes exams (well if they do, I haven’t met them yet!). I used to get really uptight and always had difficulty sleeping the night before an important exam. But I think that good preparation does help a lot to get us relaxed about the big day. So here are my ideas about what you should be doing this week.

1. Get your notes in order. There are few things that boost confidence more than a folder with sections clearly labelled and maybe the syllabus chopped up and stuck into the front of each section. I would get hold of a highlighter pen and go through the syllabus again (and again) until I throughly understood what is required of me.

2. Tactical thinking. Do you need to know every part of the syllabus? What do you do if you just don’t get one bit (like meta-ethics?). To be honest, I think you can afford to leave one section out – but no more, and with the proviso that you make sure that the other parts are known thoroughly. This is simply a matter of the mathematics. The exam board really shouldn’t ask two questions on one section of the syllabus and you only have to do two questions. But a word of warning. It is dangerous to abandon the applied stuff. This is because the “issues surrounding” abortion (for example) at AS or sexual ethics at A2 could be linked in to your favourite part of the syllabus (conscience for example) which would blow apart a selective strategy. (Click on read more below)

3. Spend a lot of time studying past questions and practising essay plans. Now is the time to decide that you don’t understand a particular question they’ve asked int he past. And then – get hold of my “How to Get an A Grade “ book and write down all the suggested future questions I have made up in chapter 4. This gives you some idea of what they might ask in the summer. Then you’ve covered both angles. The more practice essays you do, the better you tend to do on the big day. if you don’t have time, why not just do some practice opening paragraphs?

4. “We haven’t covered whole chunks of the syllabus properly”. I know, it can happen! But rather than blame the teacher (!), I would suggest you take responsibility for closing the gaps now. You still have a few weeks to go. Maybe get a few friends together and split the work up. Each person takes a different topic and researches it as thoroughly as they can. Then come together on a Sunday afternoon (or sometime) and share your findings. Do a bit of mind-mapping together, extract some key quotes, prepare a summary sheet.

5. Question-spotting. Be careful as this is an art best left to teachers who have thought carefully about it! Students I have known have made the most daft suggestions about what they are expecting to come up this time. We would all love to have perfect knowledge – but in practice, the best we can do is analyse past questions, then examine the syllabus and be prepared for a new twist to a familiar theme or a question they have never asked before.

Having said that, I am about to sit down and meditate long and hard on this question: if I was the examiner, what questions would I set this year?!

Image © Rebecca Dyer