MYTHS

Examiners & Exam Myths

22) Examiners- 1

Examiners are, by and large, sadistic so-and-sos. Their sole aim in life is to trap you and catch you out.

23) Examiners- 2

In multiple choice exercises, examiners have been known to use the same letter for the correct answer several times in succession (a, a, a, a, a, etc). This is unsettling and can make students worry that their answers must be wrong; it does not. I once gave a Cambridge Proficiency group an entire Reading Comprehension exercise (25 questions) with the same answer for all. The students started changing their answers and choosing wrong ones because they couldn't believe that this was possible. While I have never seen it, there is nothing to stop them doing it. They are there to test your understanding and will play psychological games to make you doubt yourself, and this is one little trick they use. It also has the advantage of reducing the possibly of inaccurate scores achieved by guessing, as few would guess in a regular pattern, but would try to vary their answers across the range of possibilities. From their perspective, grouping a few consecutive answers with the same letter makes sense.

24) Examiners- 3

Many students and teachers try to analyse exams and work out patterns. In one Cambridge First Certificate exercise, there were usually between four and six correct sentences. Then one year there were only two. Patterns may help, but beware of relying on them; examiners will change them without warning.

25) Exam Myth 1

Apparently, a philosophy student got a first class grade for a paper which had "Is this a question?" as an essay title. Instead of going into the nature of questions, etc, he or she simply wrote "Yes, if this is an answer." Perhaps you should read Exam Myth 2 before feeling encouraged to do likewise.

26) Exam Myth 2

When asked "What is courage?", another philosphy student wrote "This." He or she failed; even though it was, indeed, courageous to stake their degree on such an answer, it was not held to have answered the question. The answer was an example and not an explanation.

27) Exam Myth 3

An Oxford undergraduate, or so the story goes, discovered an ancient regulation that allowed a gentleman to send the invigilator to buy a quart (Two pints or 1.14 litres) of ale (beer) during the exam for the student's refreshment. He duly ordered it and produced his evidence and was bought the beer. The following day, the invigilator approached him with a hat, gown and sword, which another old regulation stipulated had to be worn at all times. So, the student had to to sit through the exam in a stuffy hall on a hot day in a heavy hat, etc.

28) Exam Myth 4

A student used amphetamines (a chemical stimulant) to stay awake to study all night in the days leading up to an exam, hoping to make up for lost time. Feeling shattered on the morning of the exam, they took a huge dose to make sure they were bright and alert and didn't fall asleep halfway through. Throughout the exam, they scribbled away frantically; writing page after page. Unfortunately, they'd taken so much of the stimulant that they failed to notice that they had written everything on the same side of paper, which meant that instead of handing in a dozen sheets of paper, they had one so covered in writing that it had turned black. meenakshi