• We are pleased to announce that the winner of our Feedback Prize Draw for the Winter 2024-25 session and winning £150 of gift vouchers is Zhao Liang Tay. Congratulations to Zhao Liang. If you fancy winning £150 worth of gift vouchers (from a major UK store) for the Summer 2025 exam sitting for just a few minutes of your time throughout the session, please see our website at https://www.acted.co.uk/further-info.html?pat=feedback#feedback-prize for more information on how you can make sure your name is included in the draw at the end of the session.
  • Please be advised that the SP1, SP5 and SP7 X1 deadline is the 14th July and not the 17th June as first stated. Please accept out apologies for any confusion caused.

Exam Technique

L

lk1988

Keen member
Hi everyone,

I passed the earlier exams relatively quickly but I've struggled a little with the later exams (passed the CTs in two years but then not passed anything for the last 2 years).

I've had some exam counselling and the comments indicated that the reason I failed was due to exam technique and generating ideas.

Personally, I find this the hardest area to improve. If I had failed due to lack of understanding/knowledge then I could do more work, put more effort in etc.

I've had a few mocks marked (both by acted and by people in the office) and the feedback never points in the same direction. Sometimes answers are too short, sometimes they are too long etc. I don't really know what's 'right' any more!!

Aside from getting more stuff marked, I'm really at a loss of how to progress. So I was wondering, how did you work on your exam technique? Anyone got any tips and tricks?
 
hey,
Could you please elaborate your study plan for Ct series.
and how the technique used now is different from this now
 
Practise and feedback are important but something as simple as attitude on the day helps. Resits come with a fear like here we go again. If you are uptight, the brain is restricted. So, deep breath, here we go and I can think and triumph is better. So back to other technique. You say feedback varies. But does is? Is there a correlation in some way eg by number of marks available, or instruction word. By this I mean is it describe, state, show etc. this may sound silly but how do you read the question? Slowly, only once etc. take your time over this bit and notice key words. These are the instruction word and details of the scenario. Use the details they are given for a reason. If you have mnemonics by topic as revision, go through it mentally and pick out relevant bits and structure your answer. If you jump around ideas this may mean you miss any expansion points needed. You are doing the right thing. Practise and feedback. After feedback, read solutions and think why didn't I put that, why was it important in the question? And conversely why didn't this score? That too can help you home in on what you need to do. Victory will come and will be sweet.
 
I teach CA1 and sometimes the same question is asked in different years for different number of marks - so this may be the issue on not getting the right number of points. Typically, it's about 1/2 mark per point so you could work from that.

Also for CA1 a lot of the points generated are from the question's key words rather than core reading - so that's the technique I teach in my tutorials as I knew the Core Reading but failed first time as I wasn't able to apply it to a question.
 
I've found the pees pakura acronym quite useful to think of different areas to expand on (see below).

I'm struggling with stating the obvious type points, where I constantly miss out on. Sometimes I fear wasting time if it's not on the schedule, other times I just can't see it (although I'm implicitly saying it!) any ideas on drawing out obvious points would be appreciated!

Practical issues
Examples
Extremes
Specifics to U.K.

Pros/cons
Alternatives
Knock on effects
Uses
Reasons
ACC
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top