Disastrous mock- confidence for the real exam

[dinomirror]

My dd had her psychology mock today and it went horribly due to timing. Shes missed an entire 28 marks due to missing a 16,8 and 4 marker. She is an A student, but this exam had more essay questions than what she was used to. Better now than in the exam i think and im fairly confident that she can get an A or an A in the actual exam, however i am worried that this may knock her confidence alot. How can i reassure her and how to improve timing?

I don’t know about her school but our local High always gives low marks fkr A’Level mocks. Did she do many past papers before the exam?

Not full past papers no, i think thats the next step

Surely they give the actual marks the child received? Or are you saying that they make up the marks and give them artificially low ones?

I think plenty of past papers and also allocating time for each section. If the exam starts at 9 and she knows that she needs to be on the big mark question at 9.45, she should just dump the rest of the questions and start it. I'm surprised by Y13 mocks they haven't practised this or done any whole papers (Summer of Y12?)! But hopefully they will really drum it into them now.

Understanding the importance of timing is key to success, not just being bright and good at the subject. It’s a vital life lesson. Similar happened to my DC in mocks…. Good they learnt then and not in the real thing.

she has done two sets of mocks with whole past papers but had no issues with timing on then, and the same goes for the 24 marks unit assessments that they do in class. I think this time was a bit of a step up tho, because the mock had more essays than she was used to. 3x 8 markers and 2x 16 markers. Still, could be like that for the actual exam. Shes a straight A⭐️ student normally, so mainly im worried that a poor mock result would affect her mindst

TBH OP I am confused. If she has already done full past papers, why was she surprised by the format of this one? I don’t know the psych spec but if you do the reading and listening past paper for A level German, it will follow the same pattern – not essays, but there will be a listening summary, a reading summary, etc. For the writing paper you will need to write two essays of xx words in a specified amount of time (obvs varies by exam board). Are you (or is she) able to check if the spec has changed? Or were the papers previously done not actually a full past paper?

Either way it’s a good thing she has found out now – there’s plenty of time to get her head round the correct timings and what she needs to do in the exam. The key as I am sure she knows is to work out the timings based on marks allocated and when she has used up her 25 mins on one question, move on to the next. It pays to be rigid about this as you will get a lot more marks from a fresh question than you will polishing up one you have more or less done. If there’s time at the end you can always go back.

You say "it could be like this for the actual exam" – that info is absolutely out there, the format does not change uness the spec changes so get her to check it out.

The format hasnt changed, for a level psychology its unknown how many long answer questions (8 or 16 markers) will be in the actual exam. This time her college decided to add in more long answer questions than previously so i think she was caught of guard a bit leading to her timing not being the best. Eg in her last mock there was only one 16 and one 8 marker compared to two 16 and three eight markers this time.

I think they tend to just use past papers for the mocks, so it won’t necessarily have been them ‘choosing’ to add in longer questions, that will just have been the format of that past exam.

her college does make up their own exam papers but there could be a similar format in the real exam which is why her timing needs to improve

That's the point of mocks - so that any mistakes, gaps or errors in timing are made when it doesn't matter. They're rehearsals for the main performance.

Did she flick through first / read the questions and instructions? Psychology's fairly straightforward timing wise but you do have to look at how many questions or what type at the start to know how to spend it

If it is really just timing, as opposed to misunderstanding or gaps in knowledge, that is fairly easy to fix.

Marks tend to be evenly distributed, so she needs to spend 5 minutes scribbling down a timetable with another 10 minutes at the end to tidy things up/find some extra marks.

Until DD did A levels last summer I hadn’t appreciated that they have to rely on a clock; no watches allowed. Write the start time for each question on the paper and stick to it (use time at the end to return to a question)

FWIW “AAA” had “BDD” in her mocks and that was a sufficient “kick” to get her revising and doing lots and lots of past papers to get the “AAA” she needed.

DD watched a lot of Youtube for topics she was weak on.

Ah I see. But presumably the total number of marks per section doesn't vary? so 24 marks for a section may include one 16 marker, one four marker and two two marker? Or two eight markers and two four markers? The questions seem to link on one topic. Is each section at least always worth the same number of marks?

So looking at AQA Paper 2, there are 96 marks and two hours to do it. Take off 10 mins for checking, that leaves about 4.5 mins for a four-mark qu, 9 mins for an eight-mark qu, 18 mins for a 16-mark qu. I imagine those figures are not going to vary – so she needs to look at each question and assess how long she has to answer it. a one or two mark qu is probably pretty quick so may allow for some catching up.

I mean this is just me looking at AQA; it will vary by board and maybe by paper – but I would be surprised if the ratio of marks : time varied from one year to the next?

Yes this is it i see what you mean now. She does tend to write more than needed for smaller mark questions then panic about the time that is left but until now she had also been able to finished the bigger ones as well. This time i guess that didnt work so maybe she should work on writing only what is needed

I’d be steering this as a “yes that was horrible, but far better be warned that this sort of thing can occur and much better to be prepared and plan how to deal with it next time”.

That is pretty much how we dealt with it.

She needs to be strict on her timings if this is the case and I would suggest doing the longer questions first if she overwrites for shorter ones, because that overwriting isn’t getting her any marks whereas on the longer questions it might.

That can work but from looking at a few past papers, it feels as though the longer questions to some extent follow from the shorter ones, so that may not be possible.

I also think there is a danger in dotting about within a paper – easy to miss something out especially if timing it is not your strong point.

@dinomirror I suggest she works out the timings per mark, and practises a few longer and shorter questions. It looks to me as tho there are always a certain number of longer ones – sometimes more, sometimes fewer (and more shorter ones) so she needs to practise doing a 16-mark question in 18 mins (or whatever) and then moving on. It's just exam discipline. You need it for GCSE as well but I think for some A level subjects it is even more important.

When I did professional exams (but this was still decades ago), I was taught to underline the key parts of a question so I focussed on answering those parts.

If the answer was factual/wordy and I was running out of time, I would resort to bullet points.

Get her to look at a couple of papers that way and compare them to the marking scheme (this sort of exercise might be better tackled with a buddy).

There is a knack to learning to write about what you have been asked to write about versus what you would like to tell the examiner you know about.

Hi, OP -

Good advice above.

It sounds like DD does need to be prepared for some variation in format. The tips suggested for helping her cope with that are good.

I just wonder whether, as her College make up their own mocks, someone got a bit carried away? DD could look at old Pyschology papers from her exam board to get an idea of the range of likely structures.

Though this would backfire if she would focus too rigidly on it! I just wonder - and it is an honest question - whether familiarity would help her relax. Usually it does, but sometimes it backfires or (at university, which is what I know) students get thrown by any deviations from overly rigid expectations.

Chances seem high that helping her to understand that this is a fixable problem with exam technique that she can solve through practise is the best thing you can do.

As usual I am over-invested here :) Can you say which board and which paper @dinomirror ?

Were the previous mocks not the full paper (quite possible as the whole course would not have been covered, say by the end of year 12) so were marked out of less? But then less time would be allocated?

If she missed 28 marks out of 96 (going on AQA) that's more than a quarter of the marks. Timing your exam work is so so key. I mean even in AQA Eng lit GCSE paper 1, which is literally two essays (so not that complex for timing), you need to be aware you have approx 50 mins per essay plus 5 mins checking time. If you spend 75 mins on the first essay you are in trouble.

As far as I can see from a fairly cursory look, AQA (just looked at that board at random) has two papers, both marked out of 96, one with four 24-mark sections (broken down into varying questions from 1 to 16 marks) and one with 2 x 24-mark sections and one x 48 mark. Both are two-hour papers, so 30 mins for each 24-mark section (or an hour for the 48-mark one) - then broken down further.

It's a bit surprising that her teachers have not gone through the structure of the paper with the class; but as others say, it's better that this has happened now than in the actual exam. Another bonus is that this mock is too late to count towards her PGs if she is planning on going to uni. So I think all good, a good lesson to learn and some timed practice questions to be done.

Aqa paper 1
in psychology its not known the exact mark questions that will come up unlike a subject like history for example, where in aqa students know that 30 marker and two 25 markers will come up. Psychology is more like sciences in that reguard. The other papers were full papers with 96 marks, they just had more short answers and less long answers questions

OK so I was in the right place. I see what you are saying about the variation in mark allocation, which is fairly unusual IME, but clearly the case for psych. So one year it might be 16 + 4+ 2+ 2 = 24 and another year it might be 8 + 8 + 4 + 4 = 24; but overall the number of minutes per mark (1.25) stays the same, so that’s what she can focus on.

Maybe even write down on each question how long she should spend?

• 1 mark = 1.25 mins
• 2 marks = 2.5 mins
• 4 marks = 5 mins
• 8 marks = 10 mins
• 16 marks = 20 mins

That leaves no checking time tbf but if she learns that and sticks to it, she should be able to finish. The key is to move on once the time is up. I know it’s tough if you have more to say.

But the exam cannot expect you to write everything there is to say on the subject.

DD had to write about violence in R&J for her GCSE Eng lit. There’s a fair bit to say (!) and she couldn't come close to saying it all – but she just needed to hit 30 marks in 45 mins.