How do you get exam timing right?

MANY students are now approaching their summer exams, and as an English tutor and teacher I have developed a whole range of strategies to help young people succeed in their exams.

The first tip is to really understand the mark allocation and timings required for different questions.

For example, in English Language GCSE, some questions are worth only 1 or 2 marks, but some can be worth 12 or 16 marks.  And to make it worse, the higher mark questions come later in the paper so that poor timing early on can have disastrous results.

If you calculate the available number of marks and divide it by the number of minutes then you can work out how long you can spend on each question.  Usually 1 or 2 mark questions should only take 1 or 2 minutes, but higher mark questions worth 12 or 16 marks should take something like 15 or 20 minutes.

Low mark questions should be done quickly. The worst that can happen in a 1 mark question is that you lose just 1 mark.

But even if you score 75% on a 16 mark question, you will lose 4 marks!

So in English as in all exams, knowing and sticking to the right timing is absolutely crucial to every student's success.

Find out more about the tutoring I offer here.

Find out more about the free introductory session here.

Find out more about my ebooks to encourage better writing here.