Communication for exams

[Logarithm n Blues]

I'm having problems with the later exams (CP1, SP2, SP5) and I think this has a lot to do with my ability to communicate these concepts rather than my understanding.

I do a lot of past exam papers and when I mark them I often find a similar thing:

• I understand and recognise just about all of the points on the mark scheme (I tend to use both ASET and IFOA answers where available)
• I have often written a set of bullet points that I understand to be related to the things that are on the mark scheme.
• Sometimes I can see clearly that - while I knew clearly what I was talking about - I haven't given a clear enough signal to show the examiner that I'm talking about the specific thing on the mark scheme. (I guess this is just what a wrong answer looks like in the later exams)
• Sometimes I have given too much detail about an unimportant part.
• Very often I understand why my answer should attract marks, but I'm not sure if it would be well understood by the marker.

From the marks I've received recently and trying to reconstruct my answers against the mark schemes, it seems to me like markers are really struggling to understand the way I'm phrasing my answers.

This has driven me to try some new techniques. For example I've been trying to learn stock phrases from the study materials instead of relying on understanding the content, and I've been prioritising my revision towards these areas where my answers vary in presentation. (For some time now I have marked my own answers as wrong unless they are phrased very similarly to an example answer.)

I am sure that I am not alone and I wondered if other forum users have had similar experiences?
Does anyone have any specific advice?
Perhaps if anyone has done any marking and can identify good ways to be concise and clear if this doesn't come naturally?

I'm sure there are a lot of people who have taken exams in English despite English not being their first language - They have worked against something much more difficult than my problem but if anyone can help from this perspective then I would be really interested to hear it.

 

[Lindsay Smitherman]

I'm having problems with the later exams (CP1, SP2, SP5) and I think this has a lot to do with my ability to communicate these concepts rather than my understanding.

Hi - there are a lot of really interesting points and concerns that you have flagged up here. It's difficult to provide direct advice without seeing exactly how you are expressing your answers but I will throw in a few suggestions which might be worth thinking about.

You say that you think that markers might be struggling to understand your points from how you are phrasing them. Based on your (very well written) post, this doesn't seem to be a language issue.

Are your points too vague, for example are you writing something like 'Consider X' rather than indicating which particular aspect of X should be considered in the given situation? Or something like 'X is likely to change' rather than how X is likely to change within the given context? If that is the case, then you would need to focus on tailoring your points more closely to the specific scenario in the question: try to do that whenever you can, as this is a key skill that the examiners are looking for in these later exams. Use the information in the question carefully: read back through it several times when answering, to check that you are reflecting all the specifics of the given scenario.

Or are your points a bit too waffly, so that the key ideas are lost within lengthy sentences? Are you trying to cover too many distinct ideas within one sentence / bullet point, so that they may be becoming confusing to read? Are you missing out on the basic points and going straight into detail? Don't be afraid to 'state the obvious' (provided it adds value!) and break your answer points down into say one bullet point for each distinct idea that you are presenting. Aim to express those ideas concisely, without 'padding', but with enough information in your point to convince the marker that you get it.

Is there someone who you could go through your answers with (a study mentor at work?) who could give you more direct feedback about how your answer points could be rephrased in order to score?

This has driven me to try some new techniques. For example I've been trying to learn stock phrases from the study materials instead of relying on understanding the content, and I've been prioritising my revision towards these areas where my answers vary in presentation. (For some time now I have marked my own answers as wrong unless they are phrased very similarly to an example answer.)

It is possible that you are being a bit too hard on yourself. Phrasing doesn't have to be that similar to what is in the examiners' report to score - you just have to write something along those lines which would convince the marker that you understand the basic idea covered by that point.

I'm not sure that learning phrases from study materials is the best strategy: having good understanding is a key component of being able to express ideas effectively. However, reading through the examiners' report & ASET solutions might help you to get a better feel for effective ways of expressing points - particularly where there are standard answer points that seem to come up quite often. Having said that, bear in mind that the answer points in these reports / documents are often much lengthier than what you would actually need to write in the exam to gain the (half) mark. They are written to help you understand the answer point - and also of course to be readable (ie mostly aiming for full and complete sentences). When you are looking through these solutions, look for the key 'added value' part of each answer point: that is what your own version of that answer point needs to cover in some way. The solutions in the Revision Notes are more summarised, and so might be more useful in terms of helping you understand how to express ideas more concisely?

I also wouldn't worry too much about differing 'presentation' of answers as such. Focus more on content. It doesn't matter if you have structured your answer differently from that in the examiners' report - as long as you are still covering enough of the same key areas. [If the difference is that your answers are unstructured whereas those in the examiners' reports are, then it might be useful to work on developing structuring and planning skills. This can be very useful in helping you to ensure that you are covering a good wide range of different areas in your answer, rather than drilling down too far into a narrower range, and also to help you avoid unnecessary repetition.]

• Sometimes I have given too much detail about an unimportant part.

It can be difficult to know what might be deemed to be an 'unimportant' area when you are answering a question (and don't have the benefit of seeing what the marking schedule includes...). Past paper practice (loads and loads of it) will help with this to some extent, in terms of getting the hang of the sorts of areas that solutions to similar questions focus on. However, a good tactic in the exam itself could be simply to aim to cover as many different areas as you can. Aim for breadth of answers in the first instance, rather than drilling down into a small number of ideas. Work on developing a range of different idea generation techniques in order to help with this.

Are you able to attend tutorials for these subjects? We talk there about these sorts of things, do lots of practice on idea generation and think about strategies for answering questions, often including marking exercises where we think about writing style.

As I mentioned, it is a bit hard to give direct advice without being able to see what your answers actually look like - but hopefully there is something here that helps or gives you something to think about?

 

[Logarithm n Blues]

I keep meaning to post a longer response to this but haven't found time.

Just posting quickly to mention that I really appreciate this and have applied some of the points to my exam practice

 

[Dar_Shan0209]

Thank you @Lindsay Smitherman . Your post really helps. Helps when you are at the eve of CP1 and careful consideration needs to be given to the structure of your answer.