Common Student Mistakes
Almost none of these are mistakes of knowledge. They are mistakes of habit, which means they can be fixed in a fortnight.
The marks lost most often on this qualification are not lost because a student did not understand the text. They are lost by answering a different question from the one asked, by running out of time, or by stopping a paragraph one move too early.
Mistakes that cost whole questions
Answering from the wrong lines
Paper 1 Questions 1 and 2 and Paper 2 Question 1 all name specific lines. Material from elsewhere in the source earns nothing, however good it is. Fix: underline the line numbers before reading the question again.
Analysing the wrong source
Paper 2 Question 3 names one source. Students who have just spent Question 2 working across both sometimes carry on. Fix: circle the source letter in the question.
Writing the wrong form
A speech submitted where a letter was asked for loses part of AO5, which covers adapting to form, purpose and audience. Fix: write the form and the audience at the top of your planning space before you plan anything else.
Running out of time for Section B
Section B is 40 marks, exactly as many as the whole reading section. A student who gives it twenty minutes has capped their grade before writing a word. Fix: treat 45 minutes for Section A as a hard stop, even mid-sentence.
Reading questions
Do this
- Q1: four short phrases, then stop.
- Q2 and P2 Q3: three or four quotations, each developed to a second reading.
- P1 Q3: write about order, focus and shift - the shape of the whole extract.
- P1 Q4: state a position in sentence one and qualify it once.
- P2 Q4: both writers in every paragraph, weighed at the end.
Instead of this
- Do not write full sentences for Question 1, or give five answers.
- Do not list techniques - there is a simile, there is alliteration - without effect.
- Do not answer P1 Q3 with language analysis. It is the commonest single error on Paper 1.
- Do not sit on the fence for twenty marks. To some extent with nothing after it is not evaluation.
- Do not write about Source A, then Source B, with however in between.
Writing questions
Do this
- Plan for five minutes and check for five.
- Vary sentence length deliberately, including one very short sentence at a turning point.
- Use punctuation you can use accurately.
- Write about something you can picture or have an opinion about.
- Keep one line of argument, or one shape, from start to finish.
Instead of this
- Do not open a story with an alarm clock, and do not end one with waking up.
- Do not reach for long words you cannot spell - accuracy is 16 of the 40 marks.
- Do not invent statistics in a viewpoint piece; specific real detail persuades further.
- Do not string rhetorical devices together as a checklist.
- Do not add a twist to what the paper called the opening part of a story.
The most expensive habit of all
Stopping a paragraph after the explanation. A student who writes this creates a bleak atmosphere for the reader and moves on has done everything the middle band asks and nothing the top band asks.
The fix takes one sentence: say why that word rather than the plainer one the writer could have used. See the before-and-after example on planning and structuring answers.
A two-minute check before you hand the paper in
- Did I answer Question 1 from the right lines, with exactly four things?
- Did I write about structure in Paper 1 Question 3, not language?
- Did I take a clear position in Paper 1 Question 4?
- Does every paragraph of Paper 2 Question 4 contain both writers?
- Is my Section B piece in the form and for the audience the task named?
- Did I spend the last five minutes checking spelling, punctuation and sentence boundaries?
Next
Revision strategies
How to practise, with no set texts to learn.
RCF practice questions
Original tasks with model answers.
Planning and structuring answers
The paragraph shapes for each question.