Using past papers effectively
Saturday’s somewhat-long-blogpost: Using past papers effectively and a brief introduction to designing assessments
It’s a Sunday afternoon and you have nothing better to do than printing past IB exams ready for a long grinding session. Or you’re trying to calm down your own full-blown panik stations after doing my trivial mock exams. Whichever camp you’re in, a question you may ask yourself is how to get the most out of these papers. Don’t worry, I’ve got your back.
When to use past papers?
Perhaps a couple months before the exam, ideally when you’ve
finished most of the content. No sooner than that.
If you’re used to doing past paper questions, you tend to
focus on the particular types of questions that crop up rather than the concept(s)
behind them. Just a tiny little tweak and you may find yourself panicking
because you haven’t been “prepared” for that question. No, exams are not
supposed to be predictable and no, you’re only panicking because you don’t
truly understand the content. The former is true because the exam should
measure what you know, not what you memorise. The latter is also true
because you aren’t exposed, by your teacher or during your practice, to a wide
range of questions on the same topic.
Important note: If you’re only looking for a 3 or 4
on the exam (maybe 5 at SL), you can totally use the trick I’ve told you,
especially at SL. Some questions do show up times and times again over the
years. Luckily, the grade 5+ questions are less predictable and you have to
know your shit, which is what’s expected from a grade 5+ student anyway.
Why using past papers?
For me, there are two main purposes of doing past papers.
- Have a sense of the difficulty of the exam as a whole,
and
- Practise in the same environment you’d write your exams.
Have a sense of the difficulty of the exam
If you’ve done a couple past papers, you can’t help but
notice that
- The first question or two in section A (AA) or Paper 1 (AI)
are very predictable. Some of them are no-brainers. They’re there to calm
you down and boost your confidence; to get you warmed up for the spicier
questions.
- The next block of questions isn’t challenging but isn’t
trivial either. Sure, you might have seen them popped up during your
very-comprehensive-review-of-exam-paper (if you’re a nerd like me, you’d look
all the way back to 2008 and before!) but even if you haven’t, you still know
what to do if you really know your stuff.
- Towards the 3rd third of section A, the difficulty
starts to ramp up significantly. They tend to test the hardest stuff on the syllabus
(example: combined chain rule at SL or restricted domain when finding the inverse
function at HL). They may also put a twist on the normally-perceived-to-be-easier
topics.
And everything starts going back to normal at the beginning
of section B (AA) or Paper 2 (AI).
- Usually 3-4 questions for AA per paper and 7-8 questions
for AI.
- The first question or two should be relatively straightforward,
with the exception of the last part. If you’re shooting for a 4/5, this is
where you must get the majority of your section B/Paper 2 marks, because
you can’t really pick up anything down the line.
- Theoretically you should be able to pick up a mark or two
on other questions even if you don’t have a flipping clue, but consider the
fact that you’re knackered after the first hour-ish, it sounds a bit improbable.
Practise in the same environment you’d write your exams
This is one of the most important things you can do.
When you study in a different environment than what you’re used to, you create some connections between the content you’re studying to the place you’re at. Think about the times when you listen to a particular song you recall going to other places when you’re listening to the same song in the past. After reading every single word in this article, pack your shit and study somewhere else, let it be the library or the park near you.
This is up for debate, but I would normally take practice
exams when listening to music (or even Camellia when I’m in the mood). The exam
room isn’t gonna be silent. You’ll have kids sharpening their pencils, quickly
writing hieroglyphics during the last five minutes, bursting in tears halfway
through the exam because they couldn’t do question 2, someone’s phone going off
despite the number of times the invigilator told them to turn the bloody phone
off. You name it. If you’re used to focusing in a distracted environment, you’re
golden. Nothing people do can affect you.
Give yourself about 75% of the time allowed to do the
paper. This leaves you with sufficient buffer in case your brane is fried
in the middle of the exam as well as 20-ish to 30 minutes to tackle the hardest
questions.
Alright, I’ve done the papers, what next?
Great job. You’ve done two papers, time to go do another 50.
Off you go. /s
For real, great job. I know you’re impatient to know how you
did, so feel free to dive right into the markscheme to see how many marks you
get for each question. Add them all up, use the grade boundaries to find where
you’re at, determine what you need to do to get gud.
Well, that’s rather useless Andrew, any particular advice?
In an ideal world, you’d learn from your mistakes, see what
you did wrong, understand the method the markscheme uses, try similar questions
and move on. But you see, I’m a lazy person, so I’d simply classify the errors
I’ve made into two categories.
- Careless errors, let’s say, dropping a ‘-’ when copying down
the line above or 23 = 6 = 32, the world’s well-known
identity.
Solution: the more questions you do, the more
automated your process is, the fewer errors you’d make. You aren’t experiencing
cognitive overload because you clearly know what you’re doing, so you actually have
the energy to do the questions carefully. I wouldn’t sweat too much about this;
it’s just a matter of practice.
- Conceptual errors, i.e., forgetting to reject an
extraneous solution to a logarithmic equation.
Solution: go back to your notes. Let’s take
logarithmic equations as an example. The first thing I’d do is clearly writing
down the restrictions. It’ll force you to reflect on the results you’ve
obtained and decide if you need to reject one or more solutions.
If the question is too hard and you don’t know how to start,
maybe you’re not at that level yet. That’s perfectly fine; it’s pretty fucking
hard to get 100% on IB. The one thing it tells you is that you aren’t completely
solid with the basics, so go back and do a shit ton of questions. Eventually
they won’t be as intimidating.
The good news is you don’t need 100% for a 7; it’s usually
around 80%, so you can safely miss 20% of the marks and still end up with a 7!
There’ll be another blogpost in a couple weeks where I’ll share
how I’d tackle the paper.
The Wolf has spoken, aroooo.
Credit: AdventurousAndrew#7499
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