It’s a fact of life: examiners for
your precious and important work are expected to mark about 350 papers over the
course of about a month. The exam boards estimate that this will take about 87
hours (4 papers per hour); however, examiners are paid by the paper, so it’s in
their best interest to mark faster.
Five-Minute
Treatment
Think about it: the exam that you
sweated over, stressed about, and prepared for is passing through an examiner’s
hands in 15 minutes. For the reading paper, that’s 3
questions’ worth of work, giving the examiner a total of 5 minutes’
concentrated effort per answer.
But
wait: that’s not all!
Starting
this year, the English language papers are going to be marked in on-line form,
rather than in paper form. Personally, I dread to think of this, because studies
have shown that people are able to read much less carefully when something is
on-line than when it’s in paper form (see the book called The
Shallows by Nicholas Carr about this).
How
you can do your best
I think these two factors mean that
students need to be very careful this year to write neatly, set things out
clearly, and be precise. I also think that, should your expectations be totally
dashed on results day, you might consider it prudent to ask for a re-mark.
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