Why your marks drop on long-answer questions

Here is a pattern worth noticing. A student scores well on multiple choice, well on short answers, and then loses a third of the marks on the long questions in the same paper. The knowledge clearly exists, because it showed up twenty minutes earlier on the same topic.

Marks are awarded for steps, not for conclusions

A long answer is marked against a list. Each item on that list is a step the examiner is looking for. Writing the correct final answer with three of the six steps missing scores three marks, not six, and it does not matter that you did those steps in your head.

The three things that cost the most

• Skipping the setup: naming what you are given and what you are solving for is usually worth a mark on its own
• Jumping between steps because the middle one felt obvious to you
• Stopping at the number, without the sentence that says what the number means

How to fix it in a week

Take one long answer you have already written and mark it yourself against the scheme, line by line. Do not mark whether you were right. Mark whether each required step is visibly on the page. Most students find two or three marks per question sitting there, uncollected.

Do that for four questions and the habit changes on its own. You stop writing answers and start writing the steps that earn marks, which turns out to be the same work presented differently.