Mark Scheme

[melbarts91.4]

Does anyone have an idea about how to structure the big 6 to 10 mark questions, especially the strengths and weaknesses ones for the exam? All year I have been doing a strength or weakness at one mark for a sentence of identification and another sentence for explanation. So, a ten mark question would be 5 strengths and 5 weaknesses identified and explained, with a conclusion a the end. However, now my teacher is telling us a couple weeks before the exam that she has heard that I is 3 strengths and three weaknesses for any S+W question above 6 marks, and that the marks depends on the detail you go into depending on how much the question is worth. Does anyone have any idea as to validate either method as superior to another?

[meganrobyn]

Firstly, it really depends on the wording of the question. So the opinions I'm going to give you have that big, fat caveat in front of them!

For example, if the question asks you to evaluate two strengths for 6 marks (for instance), then you need to structure it:

- Strength
- One or more corresponding weaknesses
- Opinion on the strength

- Repeat


But if the question is an overall evaluation, a better structure might be:

- Overall opinion

- Introduce a feature
- Strengths of that feature
- Weaknesses of that feature

- Introduce a second feature
- Repeat...

- Keep doing this until you've written a good length response for the time and line allocation appropriate to it...

- Finish with an overall conclusion


In terms of line allocation, roughly 1.7 mins per mark and roughly 3-5 lines per mark is a good ballpark. In terms of number of points for the number of marks, I don't think it's wise to do one argument per mark for those big 'overall' global questions. You have to balance number of points with detail, but MOST good 8-markers and 10-markers will make more than just 8-10 individual little points.

[melbarts91.4]

Alright. Thanks a lot for all of that :-) Shall be quite useful!