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How To Improve Your Examination Performance

Students are well aware that they require a certain amount of luck to get through their examinations. Sometimes they are inclined to put their performance down entirely to luck. "I was lucky," the successful candidate will modestly boast, "I got asked the questions that I know something about". Whilst the unsuccessful candidate will plead,"I was unlucky: I never expected a question of that topic".

Luck does play a part in examinations, but there are other factors which affect a student's performance. Some factors he can do something about, whereas others are beyond his control. In this article we shall concentrate on one factor that the student can control: examination technique.

Factors affecting performance

There are four main factors which affect examination performance. They are as follows:

(1) innate ability;

(2) hard work;

(3) luck; and

(4) examination technique.

It is impossible to do much about one's innate ability although extremely hard work can compensate for not being exceptionally clever. The amount of work put in by a student is entirely within his control, and no one else can be blamed if examination failure arises through a lack of hard work.

By contrast, there is no doubt that luck does play a part in passing examinations. No matter how clever you are and no matter how hard you work, there are some factors which are quite outside your control. The problems that you may have at home or at work, your state of mind, your physical health, the weather, your journey to the examination centre and the examination arrangements themselves can all add to your difficultues. You may not be able to do much about counteracting these particular factors, but it is possible to improve you chance in the examination by improving your examination technique.

Better examination technique

By the time of the examinations you may well have attempted a good many practice questions in simulated examination conditions. If you are particularly fortunate, you may also have obtained a careful and critical analysis of your solutions. Few students, however, will ever have had their marked examination scripts returned to them along with an explanation of where they lost marks in the actual paper. Even in an internally assessed course, it is not the normal practice to return scripts for examination candidates. This seems a pity, for no matter how many mock examinations a student has attempted, inherent weaknesses may only be apparent in the real examination.

By returning examination scripts to students, there would undoubtedly be some argument about the marks awarded, but then there is much room for argument. It is not generally realised that marking examination scripts is a highly subjective exercise, (especially when dealing with written questions). Some examiners may, for example, take a lenient view over presentation. One extra mark per question may not seen a lot, but if you have five questions to attempt, one extra mark gained for each question may make all the difference between passing the paper or failing it.

You may be fortunate in gaining those five marks at the Level 1 stage, but suppose you are still making some basic errors at the next stage? No one will ever have pointed them out to you, and the next time you might not be so lucky.

It might be helpful, therefore, if we have a look at an exercise which will help you to see how a marking scheme is constructed which will help you to see how easy it is to gain a few extra marks merely by improving your examination technique. You might also spot a few basic mistakes of your own which you can correct before you take your next examination.