Students and teachers alike are well-versed in the mantra of using past papers as a resource for exam preparation, but we don’t hear about using chief examiners’ reports very often, even though they are an extremely useful tool for exam preparation.

Chief examiners’ reports provide a collective review of candidates’ performance in both Junior and Leaving Cert exams and a detailed analysis of the standard of scripts in any given year. Irish Country Living looked at the most recently available reports online – 2013 –to see what tips and conclusions could be drawn from them. Table 1 shows the areas of different papers where candidates performed worst in 2013. Table 2 shows the areas in several subjects where candidates performed best in 2013. Bear in mind that these are the highs and lows based on what came up in the exam in 2013 only. We have picked out just some of the subjects from the 2013 paper.

English

Exhibiting an ability to structure your writing, organise paragraphs, spell accurately and correctly employ punctuation was hugely beneficial to the candidates that did so in 2013, according to the examiners. It may sound obvious in a subject such as English, but this just underlines the importance of working on the basics.

Not using apt and accurate quotations undermined answers in section 1 (the single text) on the higher level paper two.

Grammatical and syntactical conventions – demonstrating an appropriate awareness of such made for better answers in the 2013 exam. Weaker responses tended to be characterised by an inability to organise answers in a logical and coherent fashion, and a lack of clear expression.

Language that showed its users were creative and thoughtful was rewarded. In preparation for the exam, adopting a process approach to writing, whereby students learn to research, plan, draft, redraft and edit their writing (as laid out in the Leaving Certificate syllabus, English, para 3.4.1) would be of significant benefit to all students.

In the studied poets section, candidates were most successful when they avoided a formulaic approach and demonstrated the ability to link and cross-reference the work of their chosen poet in the course of an answer. Highlighting the aspects that the reviewer particularly enjoyed, and noting anything that detracted from the experience of the reviewer, were elements found in the better answers to the review question on the ordinary paper. Examiners observed that in some cases, candidates did not appear to appreciate that writing a review requires more than providing a summary of the relevant text.

Chemistry

Clear, large, labelled diagrams should be included where required. Pencil is recommended for drawing diagrams and graphs. A diagram alone is rarely sufficient for full marks when the question requires a description or an explanation. Historically, questions on first ionisation energies are not well answered. Many candidates used the terms shell, sub-level and orbital incorrectly.

Emphasis should be placed on definitions. This is particularly in relation to the ordinary level paper. Many candidates whose work was of a reasonable standard in some respects, displayed a lack of knowledge in this basic chemical information.

Since learning such information is straightforward, in comparison with some of the other skills they displayed, this suggests that students placed insufficient emphasis on it.

Mechanisms (organic reaction mechanisms) continued to be poorly answered on the 2013 higher level paper, according to examiners. Incorrect terminology, such as the use of “clear” instead of “colourless” and “lower meniscus” instead of “bottom of the meniscus”, will cause the loss of marks.

Standard grammatical abbreviations or, in calculations only, the standard abbreviations used in the Formulae and Tables booklet are the only ones that should be used – avoid them otherwise. Trends in electro-negativity is something nearly all candidates struggled to explain in the 2013 paper.

Round off decimals in a calculation and learn how to do it correctly.

You should ensure, especially if you’re doing the higher level paper, that you exercise precision of language when answering. It has been found that many candidates, whose overall work was of a reasonable standard, in some respects displayed a lack of appreciation of the precision of language expected in answering.

Furthermore, candidates continue to perform poorly whenever descriptive writing is required in terms of answers lacking clear expression or being to brief or inaccurate.

Art

Annotation, substantial research and experimentation were the components of highly successful preparatory sheets, while weaker submissions consisted of a small number of basic sketches loosely based on the theme.

Replication was one problem examiners noticed in submissions for the 2013 art exam. They noted that in craft work a lot of identical and similar imagery was submitted on preparatory sheets in the majority of centres nationwide.

This was thought to result from the practice of candidates entering the subject titles in internet search engines and using or downloading the first few concepts and ideas that emerge. In some of these instances, there was little or no evidence of additional research on the part of the candidate. Examiners also reported that in some cases, candidates presented large quantities of irrelevant printed imagery possibly found on the internet and in magazines. It appeared that at times these images were merely used to fill up space on the preparatory sheet.

It is suggested that candidates be encouraged to include other methods of interpreting the stimulus, such as the use of mind maps, along with using drawings and personalised studies to clarify ideas. Themes and topics were explored in depth in the best preparatory work which was exciting, colourful, ambitious and imaginative.

Biology

Both levels – ordinary and higher – see plant topics remain firmly and disproportionately among the least often attempted and most poorly answered questions at both levels.

Identify and learn the difference between the names of disorders and the symptoms of the disorder; students should also appreciate and learn the difference between anatomical adaptations and adaptive techniques of organisms.

Observe acutely the different meanings of similarly sounding or similarly spelled terms, and work on an accurate explanation of these terms.

Label diagrams very clearly, it is also recommended that students practice large, tidy, accurate diagrams. The objective should be to answer the question asked. Very noticeable among candidates in the 2013 paper was a tendency to give responses to questions that, while sometimes tangentially related to the topic, had not actually been asked at all.

The examiners say there is ample time to complete the required number of questions and it is better to use that time to answer the prescribed number of questions as fully and comprehensively as possible, rather than to attempt to complete every question on the paper. Particularly at higher level, candidates are expected to recognise and use proper biological terms where appropriate, rather than relying on colloquialisms encountered in everyday speech.

You should be extra cautious with graph axes as they were frequently mislabelled or unlabeled in the 2013 paper.