Most people think that the common mistakes in the Secondary School English paper revolve around using unsuitable words in essays and not having done enough preparation.
Actually the “real” mistakes which students make are far from those.
Mistake #1: Misreading the Secondary School English essay question
All students get excited when doing their exams and tend to misread or do not understand the question properly before doing it.
Secondary School English essay questions can be about Reflective, Argumentative, Narrative or Descriptive and Personal Recount topics as a hybrid essay.
Argumentative topics can be demanding and expect the student to know about various political, environmental and social topics. For example,
“Do families spend much time with each other?”
This is a topic which could be easily misread as whether families are spending time or not. IF a student writes that families DO spend time as there are a variety of examples to support it, then he is headed straight for a borderline pass at best in Secondary School English.
The question is not asking about whether they spend time or not but whether they spend MUCH time. So, the answer should be that families spend time but not THAT MUCH or families spend a lot of time together. This will be the correct interpretation of the question.
Reading the question slowly and understanding the main aim is of great importance.
Mistake #2: Not allocating time for checking at the end of the paper
Students literally stop when the examiner says ‘pens down’. That is not the way to do it.
The best way is to do time management exercises before the paper and to allocate about 10 minutes to read through. Countless mistakes can be avoided this way and marks can be gained in Secondary School English.
One of the worst careless mistakes students make is to misspell words. They may even misspell words which are already in the passage and all it took was to simply copy the word letter for letter. This is truly a waste of marks as marks can be lost for such carelessness in Secondary School English.
The use of “i” instead of “I” is one of the common mistakes. Another one is to forget to use commas and full stops. Simple mistakes like these will amount to grammatical errors and a loss of marks from 2 to 5 can be incurred.
Not checking one’s work at all could mean that you may have forgotten to even do a question which you may have meant to do later!
Mistake #3: Not paraphrasing for the summary question
I cannot emphasize enough about how important it is to paraphrase when you are editing the summary answer. Students are expected to write about 8 – 10 points for each summary answer and they have to paraphrase so that it does not look like a copy-and-paste job.
Unfortunately, most students will reduce the words to the 80-word count and re-use the same words/phrases from the passage. 5 marks are allocated for editing and these can be lost if this is done. Paraphrasing in your own words will mean that you can actually get a full score for summary.
In order to excel in the Secondary School English summary portion, students need to have a basic proficiency of vocabulary. A good base knowledge of vocabulary words is needed to paraphrase effectively. That’s the only way to change the words from the text to your own words without losing the main intention of the content.
Mistake #4: Choosing an essay question and discarding it midway to work on another
Many students get intensely nervous when doing the Secondary School English paper and are unable to decide properly on the correct question. They do not do mind maps for the question and delve straight into writing it. It is only halfway through the essay that they will realise that they have run out of points and decide to switch topics.
This results in precious time being lost! Students will never be able to recover time no matter how quickly they write. This is one of the worst things to do. The best and only thing to do is to do a mind map or short outline of the answer for the question.
This will mean that you will be able to sketch out the number of points needed to write out your answer. If you are writing a narrative or reflective/ personal recount, you will have to sketch out the background, build-up, climax and the resolution. If you realise that you cannot complete this, you would have only lost 5 minutes or so and will be able to restart in time.
Mistake #5: Not allocating time proportionately for each section of the paper
For example, the editing section can be done in 15 minutes. Too much time on that will mean there won’t be enough time on the other sections. The situation writing paper has less mark weightage compared to the continuous writing portion which has greater mark weightage in Secondary School English.
Most students feel that tuning in to the smaller portions will mean they will have more time later for the bigger portions but this can also mean that they may make the mistake of spending far too much time on it. Allocating the correct portion of time for each part of the Secondary School English paper is crucial.
By avoiding these common mistakes, all students will have a good shot at getting the best possible score as these are some of the most common ways that students lose their marks.