Examiners' Reports
Probably not the most exciting things you will read this year but if you put in the effort, they can give you some really useful information.
The examiners’ reports, as the title suggests, are reports on exams written for examiners. They have not been written with students in mind and are written, to an extent, in exam-speak. But don’t let this put you off. Furthermore the exam boards are trying to make the reports more user-friendly.
The best way to use examiners’ reports is do a paper, to try and mark it using the appropriate mark scheme, then sit down with your marked paper and read through the examiners’ report whilst referring constantly back to your paper. Assuming you have lost some marks the examiners’ report should help you work out why, and tell you if you were making a typical mistake. Moreover the examiners’ report will often help you work out what the perfect answer would have been.
The easiest way to help you decode these reports is to give you some examples, and tell you want they mean in terms of your preparation for the exams.
This first example is from a physics examiners’ report; this is from a section of general comments about the whole set of exams comprising the A level:
The first couple of sentences don’t really tell us anything particularly useful.
However, the third sentence makes a very important point: "Candidates continue to take advantage of the 'error carried forward rule' when tackling analytical questions." The 'error carried forward rule is really important' ; essentially it works as follows. Suppose you have a question with a part (a) and a part (b) and you need the answer from part (a) to do part (b). Now if you make a mistake in part (a) you can still get full marks on part (b) even though the answer will be numerically incorrect. You only lose the mark once in part (a). So even if you can’t do part (a) you may as well just make up an answer (try to make up a sensible answer!) and use it in part (b) – you may well still get full marks for part (b).
"A significant number of candidates could have improved their overall performance by carefully scrutinising questions before putting pen to paper." Read the question! Every year, in nearly every examiners report, for every syllabus and subject, the same point is made. Make sure you read the question very carefully and go to every effort to make sure you understand exactly what the examiners want.
"In extended writing questions, candidates are reminded that they can use bullet points to communicate their physics." This is an explicit statement that in this subject they are happy for you to use bullet points. In which case, use bullet points whenever appropriate – it will save you time and keep the examiners happy.
"All candidates… need to learn their definitions." So if it says "define" in the syllabus, then you need to learn that definition.
"A definition can either be textual, or in the form of an equation with all terms clearly defined.". In other words, a definition can be given in words or in the form of an equation provided the all terms of the equation are defined. However, if a question states "in words" then it does have to be in words. Also be careful to ensure that the definition can be expressed in an equation, for example Newton’s Second Law is NOT F = ma. You might just get away with "F = ma for a constant mass" but more likely you won’t and you would have to define all the terms. F = ma is derived from the second law and is not a statement of it. Also check your syllabus to see what definition is specified.
Now let’s take a look from a module specific section of the same report:
Again the first paragraph is not particularly useful, except it is worth noting that most candidates finished the paper.
"The standard of descriptive responses lacked reasoning and structure. Most candidates would have benefited from writing their answers as bullet points." So lack of reasoning and structure are an issue and one which the examiners would be happy for you to have solved using bullet points. Note: this is the second time they have mentioned this, so clearly the use of bullet points is something that they are keen on.
"...two marks were reserved… for correctly using and spelling two technical words; almost all candidates secured both marks." So there are two marks for using and spelling technical words correctly – however, there were fairly easy to get as most candidates got them.
The following is the last example from physics:
We see that this question was by and large answered incorrectly (modal mark = 0 means most common mark = 0). If this was your syllabus then you can deduce that this is an area which you should really think hard about, as it seems that most students just don’t get it.
Incidentally if you are think "damn, this is dull" I wouldn’t disagree – nevertheless it is worth the effort and tedium involved as you may well be able to get more marks without having to learn any more of your subject content.
Turning to another subject, let's have a look at some comment from an Edexcel history examiner’s report:
And guess what, the above is just a variation on 'read the question and answer the question': "However, it was noticeable that even well prepared candidates underachieved due to an increase in formulaic answers which did not directly address the specific question asked or show explicit understanding of the key issues." Pre-prepared answers will not get you the best mark, unless it happens to exactly answer the question – which is very unlikely. So you need to avoid the temptation to just trot out standard answers or worse still a learnt essay.
The report goes on to expand on this:
Granted this is a long extract, but it’s worth having a very careful look, since it highlights a common mistake of putting too much emphasis on relative importance; and it suggests how to avoid that emphasis. They are explicit about which questions you should be asking: "The mark scheme requires an essay to 'present historical explanations and reach a judgement' and this is achieved through a variety of different question stems such as 'to what extent?', 'how accurate?', 'how far?', 'how significant?' and 'why?'." In short it is telling you how to ask the right questions.
The following two section are taken from OCR GCSE English Literature and spell out what you need to do if you want to be a good candidate and what you shouldn’t be doing. These sections (obviously) refer to plays.
The first bullet point above can be taken as a big hint that actually seeing the play on stage would be a huge help. Plays are primarily written to be seen on stage; however, if you are studying a play then you obviously need to read it as well. If seeing a play is not an option you could consider watching a film version on DVD, but - and it is a very big but - check with your teacher that the film is a good representation of the play. The second bullet point adds further weight to the notion of seeing the play on stage.
Guess what, the third bullet point is saying "read the question"… Yes, you have heard this before and you will hear it again.
There are two further hints in this, the words "succinct" and "brief" suggest that candidates may tend to waffle and/or use quotes that are far too long. "Brevity is the soul of wit" and it is also the heart of a good exam essay. Most pre-degree exam essays are 20 to 60 minutes – you just don’t have time to ramble on making irrelevant points about "why day is day, night night, and time is time" or to include long winded quotes just because you have memorised them.
Another point that is repeated is that model answers and formulaic approaches are not what they are looking for.
The “less successful candidate” section is also useful. Essentially if you just view the play as text rather than something that is a performance, then your marks will fall. And yet again it is reminding us that reading, understanding and answering the question is absolutely vital, and also that pre-prepared answers are very unlikely to do the job.