Getting the most out of Past Papers

Getting the most out of Past Papers:

 

Taking on questions similar to the ones you’ll be facing in the Leaving Cert is a great way of preparing for your D Day. That’s why it occupies its own place on the pyramid of Leaving Cert success. Now I would broaden that category to Mock Papers and some of the more exam like questions in your textbooks too. Just for convenience and since it’s the chief part, I have labelled it solely Exam Papers. There are a number of reasons why it’s useful to attempt past papers and analyse marking schemes and I’ll outline them first before I describe exactly how to attempt them.

 

            The key reason for practising Exam Papers specifically is that there is a high likelihood that the questions on your own Leaving Cert will be asked in a similar way and require a similar response. Your brain loves to make shortcuts to make your decision making process. The quickest way to allow this process to prosper is to expose your brain to the material. For example if you’re doing a suspense account in accounting, the more times you do past papers, the quicker you’ll be able to spot the relevant information in the exam. Your brain makes habit loops that help eliminate the irrelevant data quicker. Think about going to somewhere like your local takeaway. You pretty much consider 4/5 options at most ( I’ve only get 2 different things in Seanies’s) and barely look at the rest of the options. This is because your brain learns from experience and understands that the whole menu isn’t fully relevant to you and essentially doesn’t show you it. This speeds up your evaluating process which allows you to be more effective in answering the question.

 

            I touched on it briefly in the previous section but quite often the same or very similar questions appear from year to year. By having had the chance to both see and attempt this question, you are increasing the chances of you scoring highly on this question in your own exam. You will understand better what the question is asking of you and have had the prior chance to think about how you will answer this. This becomes a big advantage as opposed to seeing the question for the first time in the middle of June.

 

            Another key part of studying the exam papers is analysing the marking schemes. Think of the Leaving Cert as a game and the marking schemes are the rules. The better you know the rules, the better you can play the game. If you’re exceptionally gifted at the game, then you wouldn’t need to  know the rules as precisely. However you can compete with that by understanding exactly how to play the game. Think of it as the person who puts in an hour of study extra a night. He’s likely to be a strong player of the game ( if he’s lucky and studying properly) . However if we’re the ones who have the best understanding of what exactly that correctors want to see and only study and regurgitate that in the exam, then we understand the rules better and can compete. This allows us to spend less time to get the same results. That’s why the marking schemes are so important.

 

 

Now the following are the ways you should tackle the exam papers to get the most out of them.

 

Attempt the question:

            This might seem obvious but it’s something that I actually didn’t do enough of. Regularly I would look at the question, then look at the marking scheme and tell myself that I would have gotten it out. For at least the first or second time until you get out the level of marks that you are aiming for, you should do the actual question. This is the way where you will spot gaps in your knowledge as they will be fully exposed to you through attempting to solve the question. Again, we have to be brutally honest with ourselves. If we don’t understand something, we need to know so we can either fix or compensate for it. It’s actually embarrassing how many times it took me getting the definition of Capacitance in Physics wrong just because when I was revising I would look at the marking scheme and tell myself I knew it. One exception for this rule is with regards to long essay questions like the Single Text question in English. You will need to practise writing out one or two essay but there’s another key action to carry out. You should make out plans for each question that comes up. It’s too hard to remember an entire essay off. However if you’ve the skeleton of the essay made into a plan like a spider diagram ( see my Single Text part in the English Breakdown), you can briefly look over them and get the gist relatively straightforwardly. You could even get a few mates together and each of youse take 2/3 years individually and compile the plans. That would save time and help see the questions from other people’s perspectives.

 

Analyse the marking scheme:

            This is the real benefit out of attempting past paper questions. You can see exactly what the correctors would have wanted from your answer. This is the part where we are learning the rules of the game. We also have our mistakes exposed to us. The holes in our knowledge are shown to us. Now it’s important to categorise these correctly. Was this a little slip up or Was this an indicator that I don’t understand the concept well enough. The best way of testing this is to do another similar question. Depending on the result of that, you’ll know what conclusion to draw from your original attempt. It’s important to take on board what exactly the correctors were looking for. Our job is to make it as easy as possible to give us the marks we need. They will have a few hundred scripts to correct and are probably doing it at their living room table in the middle of summer when they want to be enjoying their holidays from school. We want to give them an easy time correcting our paper. If there’s a certain way of structuring your answer that makes it straightforward for them it can only help our chances of getting our desired grade.

 

Keep a record of what questions you’ve done:

            Again another seemingly obvious point but it’s mad how much time this can save you. This way you can have a clear picture of what exactly you have done. It would also be very useful to put a rating of 1-5 with 5 being you got the question out fully correctly. You will then when you are looking back revising in a few months be able to quickly spot your old (hopefully!) tricky spots and be able to test if you still don’t remember how to do them.

 

Combine both making study notes and doing Past Papers:

            Our time we want to spend studying is probably minimal. Therefore when we can kill two birds with one stone, we grab that rock and fling it ! Combining both making study notes and doing past papers is a terrific use of time and it will result in a high level of applicable notes that tackle the key issues you will have. Most people do these activities in isolation but the most effective way is in tandem. Now just to preface, this won’t work in most subjects if it’s literally Day 1 of learning about a topic for the first time. In that case it’s more beneficial to do the same process but with the questions in the textbook instead. Aside from that, making the notes in tandem is ideal from both and understanding and memorisation viewpoint.

A method of doing this could be as follows:  

            Title the notes the topic you are doing ( eg Differentiation)

            Label the particular Past Paper question ( eg PP 2019 paper 1 Q3)

            Attempt the past paper question and analyse the marking scheme.

            If you got it out right briefly say what the tricky part was in bullet point form.

            If you struggled with it, research what you didn’t know and then document it.

            Move to the next differentiation question and repeat.

 

It’s as straightforward as that. Just document what you had to do or found tricky for each question so when you are looking over your notes in a few month’s time,  they are highly applicable and you have worked examples of what you did. This will save you time as you won’t need to spend additional time making notes for a certain topic. Just do the past papers and document what you found.

            That’s an overall view of how to get the most out of Past Papers. I’ve gone into detail for the specific things to look out for in the different subjects. The Maths breakdown contains probably the most of this type of study notes and exam papers if you’re looking for some worked examples. The main takeaways are that Past Papers and the analysis of marking schemes are the key to achieving high marks in a time effective manner. It teaches you what to hone in on and gives you a great base from which to build highly useful and applicable notes.