GSCE exam questions weirdly worded ?

[Countrystroll]

Does anyone else feel that exam questions are often worded so strangely that some able students miss marks. My dd possibly has adhd and takes things very literally. It’s become very obvious since I’m helping her with revision that she often misses marks because the questions are very strangely worded. For example looking over past papers for food and nutrition this week there was a question “ what does an organic farmer need to sell produce”. She was going along the line of shops etc totally missing the point of what organic farming means. She knows everything to do with organic produce ie no antibiotics, no pesticides etc but totally missed the point. If the question said explain what is organic farming she would have written a full mark answer. Maybe it’s just my daughter but I’ve seen some teachers online making fun of AQA weird wording of science questions so am I the only one?

I think students are expected to be able to make reasonable inferences based on context. A science exam is not going to have questions about needing to have a shop or a website in order to sell products. Sounds like she gave a business studies answer to a science question.

Assuming your daughter hasn't sat her exams already, this is something you can work on at home. It's also worth raising with her teachers so they can give her some reminders about considering context before she writes her answers.

A few years ago I had to get a qualification so I could act as a Language Modifier in order to support students by making the questions in exams more accessible to them. Now the exam boards say that the language of the exams is fully modified. However it is difficult to anticipate how an individual. student will interpret a question. The subject teacher should prepare the student as much as possible to let them know what type of answer is expected to different questions.