The closing few minutes
During the last quarter of an hour or so, even if you’ve still not finished some of the questions, it’s worth stopping writing and moving into the following mode:
Quickly read through all that you’ve done.
You probably won’t feel like reading it all, but it’s well worth forcing yourself. As you read you’ll find:
- Mistakes. Quickly amend then as you go. Often you will find that what you have written down was not exactly what you meant to say. A few words here and there added in now can rectify that.
- Bits you missed out, things that have come back into your mind since you wrote your answers: quickly slip them in.
- Ways of “tidying up” your script: underlining answers, main points, headings, ruling off between sections of questions.
If you use these closing minutes like this, it is possible that you could gain more marks in this quarter of an hour than in the preceding half hour! It’s amazing how many candidates write down things that they would immediately have realised were wrong if they’d ever looked at the answers again. The examiner may even be able to tell that what was meant was different from what was written, but he can’t give marks for what he can guess, he can only give marks for what’s there.