Trial Exam Reflection

The preparation for my trial exams was done in class through the essays that we wrote. I find it hard to study for English as it has a lot to do with writing essays and presenting thoughts which have to be backed up with facts from pieces of writing. Writing essays in class gave us time to practice for the mocks and since it was marked and commented on we learnt ways of improving our writing. Though the essay writing helped me to prepare for the Literature paper I feel that the Literature Circle Groups did too, because in them we got to share our opinions and thoughts on the stories, which is basically what the Literature paper requires us to do. Last year in English class our final exam was on a English Language past paper so I already knew what to expect from that. I can't really say that that helped me to prepare for the language paper though since that was a whole year ago, it just let know what the format of the exam would be like. I think that looking at literary elements in class was helpful for the English Language exam because in it we were asked to identify effective descriptions and effective uses of language which learning about the literary elements helped us to do. I always get nervous when I enter an exam room and throughout all the exams I felt pressed for time. I was less nervous for the Literature paper because we had more practice with it, but even so I was constantly worrying about time. I think that I tend to put a lot of pressure on myself which isn't good for my writing but I can't help it. I think that I did alright in both exams and I'm hoping for an A, or just not lower than a B!

When I first saw my grades for English I was disappointed; I was happy with the "A*" but I was hoping for better than a "B" in the Literature paper. I never really expect a result, I just hope for the best. I know that B is not an outrageously bad mark but my dad's standards are really high and throughout the years they've rubbed off on me. Grades really bug me and I guess that this just added to the stress because I didn't do well on a lot of my mocks but I know that I just need to try harder and put in more effort. For the literature paper I thought that I could write about what I thought of the poem and I didn't know that I would have to notice specific points. I thought that so long as I wrote about what stood out most to me that it would be fine but I guess I didn't explain my ideas clearly enough. After getting the "B" in literature I didn't really want to take it for IGCSE because I have 7 other subjects to worry about, some of which I'm still not confident in, but it was listed as one of the subjects that I'm going to be taking so I guess that I'll just have to work harder and hopefully that will help me to do better in the real thing.

When I sit for the real paper I am going to make sure that the first thing I do is to look at how long I have to finish the exam. For the second literature paper I planned my work for 20 minutes, which is what the paper said to do, but I was planning on taking less time than that and I just got carried away. I completely freaked out because I thought that I had fifteen minutes less than I actually did to finish the exam. Then in a state of panic I speed wrote my  essay. When I was finished I quickly edited my work in what I thought was my last few minutes and I remembered the other ideas that I had been planning to include but that I "didn't have time for". I then sat there for a while wondering why the exam wasn't ending and realized that I had had 15 more minutes than I thought I did. I then went back over my essay one more time trying to make more adjustments. I wish I had just taken my time right from the beginning though. I think I'm stressing myself out and I need to seriously find a way to relax and calm myself down.