GCSE Geography Week 5 Exam Preparation Tips

Conquering long answer questions!

Hey guys! So we have finally reached the last blog in this year’s series. Meaning that your exams must be right around the corner. However, I am hoping that all the advice I have been giving you guys in the past few blogs will have made you super set and ready for them! However, there is one last piece of advice I am here to give you this week.

So in my last blog, we were looking at short answer questions and how to structure them. The main focus for today is on longer answer questions that are phrased more like essays.

Many students will struggle with these for a range of reasons: some may not know how to correctly structure their essays, not answer what the question is actually asking, or struggle to write a good answer in a short amount of time.

These three struggles are the most common and what we are going to address in the blog.

So without further ado:

Struggle 1) Structure

The structure of your longer answer questions is so important. Your examiner is going to be marking thousands of exam papers. This means they want to be able to clearly see where the marks are in your paper. So do exactly that. Make it obvious where they can give you a tick and you will be more likely to get it than if they have to spend time looking for it. A simple structure that will help to ace your essay is this:

Introduction

Here you want to start by writing a few definitions if there are any keywords in the question. For example, if the question is about erosion. State that this is the wearing away of the rock through physical processes such as abrasion, attrition, hydraulic action, and corrosion. If there isn’t then go straight into laying out what your essay is going to talk about. Put it in a list nice and clearly. This is basically a little, one-line summary of each paragraph.

Paragraphs

· In your paragraphs start by making your point. Make it one sentence and nice and obvious as to what this paragraph is discussing.

· You then want to develop this with two pieces of explanation as to what this point is and what it includes. It is so helpful to you to use keywords and technological phrasing because it will draw the examiner’s eye to these words and they will automatically think you know what you are talking about and make them more likely to grant you a mark.

· Follow this with a case study detail. This is so important because almost every single long answer question will require you to include examples that you have learnt about. Not including this could lead to examiners marking you down as it does tend to be a requirement in the question. Integrate it using phrases such as: ‘this can be seen at…’ or ‘an example of this is…’ to make it flow nicely. Make sure it is relevant to the question as well!

· Then finish with one line about how this paragraph answers the question just tie it all together.

· You then want to repeat this about three times with different points that answer your question.

Conclusion

Finish off your essay with a short, few line conclusion with a sentence that directly answers the overall question.

It is so important you follow a structure as you won’t have a lot of time to write it as if it were a homework piece or classwork. Having a set-out structure will help reduce the time you spend trying to work out how to make your essay flow.

Struggle 2) Answering the question correctly

The questions in longer answer sections of a paper will start with a specific question word and that is what it is asking you to do properly, understanding what these words mean and what they are asking for can make a huge difference in how correctly you answer a question.

If the question starts with ‘explain’ or ‘describe how’, the order you structure your paragraphs isn’t too important, as long as you have correct content. However other words do impact how you write your paragraph.

If the question starts with ‘assess’ or ‘to what extent is’ you must make sure your paragraphs present an argument for and against the statement in the question. It is specifically asking you for an opinion from both sides. In the end, your conclusion needs to create an overall judgment for yes or no.

Struggle 3) Time management

The key to fixing how long you have in your essay doesn’t lie within the long question but in the rest of the paper. I can’t tell you whether to start with the longer questions or to end with them because different people have different techniques that work specifically for them. However, I can tell you how to structure your time allocation.

You want to spend 2/3 or 66% of the time on the shorter questions. This is because when added up your shorter question marks they will make up approximately 66% of the paper. At the end of this allocated time, STOP. Stop the short questions and move on to the longer questions this is because they do still count for a big chunk of marks so you can’t afford to lose a lot of these. Good longer question answers have a decent amount written to include all the things the mark scheme will expect and therefore you HAVE to leave enough time for it.

Anyway….

That’s all I have to offer you today. I hope all of your exams go smashingly and that you absolutely ace them!! I wish you the best of luck and hope I have helped to make your Geography preparations a lot easier to deal with.

Have any questions about how to prepare for your GCSE exams? Having problems with any hard to understand content or tricky past exam questions? Then ask Dharaa. Dharaa will be hosting a series of Q&A webinars in the 2 weeks before final exams. Post your questions here, and Dharaa will answer them in these sessions.