Episode 13 - Key Exam Skill: What Most Students Don't Know...

Hello, this is James Davey, The Exam Coach and Welcome to Episode 3 of Davey Discusses a new podcast series I'm putting together in time for the 2016 Exam Season. This short podcast series is designed to tackle everything to do with exams from preparation to performance whether you're at school, college at Uni there is certainly something of value to be taken away. By now I'm guessing your accustomed to the format of this podcast and are ready to fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run - let's get stuck into this one then.      In this episode I'm going to talk about the key exam skill most students don't know.   The key skill is this: application of knowledge.    When you understand that application of knowledge is key to exam success rather than knowledge itself you begin to think differently about what an exam actually is and how you're going to ace it.   One of the main reasons why people think they cannot do well in an exam is because they do not believe themselves to be knowledgeable or intelligent. Because they were not reading books from an early age or solving maths puzzles they relegate themselves into the stupid bracket and think there is no road to improvement / A Town for that matter, if you don't know what A Town is add me on snapchat username: the exam coach - I talk about it the whole time on there.   So, from a personal perspective I didn't read books at an early age and maths was never my strong suit, however, I could smash out A*s in English and Maths exams because I understood an exam is about application of knowledge and not knowledge itself.   If an exam was about knowledge and intelligence in their own right then you may well struggle to get good grades, in all honesty, so would I. But luckily for you and I they aren't. An exam has been created by a group of people, and that group of people have to specify or define what they believe knowledge and intelligence to be within the context of the exam. Put simply the examiners create a mark scheme, they choose what is going to be marked as right and what is wrong and they set out a general set of guidelines for markers to follow. It is up to you to follow the guidelines the examiners have laid out, following these guidelines results in the effective application of knowledge.     You could know everything about a subject, you could be a walking encyclopaedia. But when it comes down to an exam if you don't know how to give the examiners what they want to see then you're not going to be hitting A town any time soon.   It's one of the great flaws and opportunities that exist within the education system at present. A professor could write a fantastic answer to an exam question, it could be groundbreaking in terms of the argument and evidence supplied but if that answer is not well enough supported by what the mark scheme says should be marked as correct then that professor will not be hitting A town. This is true so far as national exams marked on a mass scale go.    Whereas a student who has written a far less sophisticated and technically intelligent answer but hits the check points on the mark scheme will be given As galore. They'll be hitting A town each and every time. It's an opportunity that the people who a willing to understand what an exam is and why applied knowledge is so important should be taking advantage of.    This is the current state of the education system. For you at the moment it doesn't really matter if you agree with it or not. What matters is that you play to the conditions set. If you want to change the conditions for future generations so be it, that can be a project for you to campaign for after exams, but at the moment I believe you should be focussing on how to win in the current educational climate.    You need to understand how to answer the questions in the way the examiners want. You need to understand the key terminology and phrases that should be used in particular exams. Objectively these may terms and definitions may not be correct, and you may disagree with how the exam board has defined a certain word or structured the mark scheme. But it doesnt matter what you think, the examiners have decided to do it that way and its up to you to play in that ball park.   Now, because there is a clearly defined mark scheme this makes our task a lot easier. We can just become really, really, really good at answering that exam how the examiners want it to be answered. The process has a start point and a finish line, it is a set amount of work that you need to do. For this we don't need to be naturally intelligent, vastly knowledgeable or anything else we just need to train ourselves to apply knowledge within the context of that exam in a way that it will be marked as correct.   Remember I'm The Exam Coach, I'm coaching you how to do well in exams. Don't confuse doing well in exams with outright intelligence,  there are many different forms of intelligence. It's just that intelligence shown in exams is the one used by society most frequently to quantify anyone's perceived level of general intelligence. Again whether this is right or wrong isn't relevant to the work I do, my job is to help you navigate the current educational climate to put you in the best position to succeed in later life. I'd also argue that exam intelligence is the easiest to train your self for and very often has the biggest return on time and effort invested.    In summary don't lose sight of the fact that you are sitting an exam and you need to understand how to put the information down in a way that the examiner is going to mark as correct. Simply knowing stuff is not going to deliver great results, understanding how to apply the material in an exam situation will. Develop this skill by doing lots of practice papers and then looking becoming an expert on how the mark schemes for those papers are structured and what they are looking for. Keep an eye out for the exact terminology used, develop your understanding of what examiners are looking for in questions that are worded a particular way, hone and refine your way of answering each paper. It's called Exam technique and its how those people who aren't necessarily the most naturally gifted people with their minds get the grades they need to open the doors they want to walk through later down the line.