Doing Pass Papers

caroline1111

Hey, everyone seems to say that pass papers are the most important thing. Thing is, my school doesn't really generally do them and probably won't until after the mocks. Is everyone else doing them now? Should I just do them myself and then check them on the internet? Is this not really annoying for any long answers though?
My problem at the moment is that all my classes are moving really slow and in many of them we still have half the course to do. So then when I want to study I don't usually have much fresh material to do and we don't really get set tests! Everyone else seems to be loaded with work....Eek.

implausible

I presume you mean past papers rather than Ordinary Level papers

They are not the most important thing, the most important thing is knowing the course!

Every subject is different so your question is far too broad. For some subjects the papers are more important than others e.g. in HL English I don't order them as large sections of Paper 2 are completely irrelevant to the students. I'd imagine that lots of teachers wait until the course is nearly covered before ordering papers.

There's nothing wrong with looking them up online and getting familiar with the exam structure though.

Lawliet

For subjects where the answers have to dead on eg maths, chemistry, biology, past papers and being familiar with the marking schemes is very important.
With other subjects with more essay type question, past papers are more useful just to give you an idea of the type of questions that can come up. It's good to practise these, but it's really more important to know all the material and just be aware of how marks are allocated; like for geography you'd want to know how many SRPs are needed and which question you'll get marks for cohesion on.

spurious

When you have had a question or paper corrected, make sure you know where and why you lost marks.

The most common reason candidates lose marks is because they fail to answer the asked question. This is where learned off essays cause huge problems. Make sure you answer the question asked.

(This is not a real or I presume even a likely question - it's just to make a point).
Made up q** - Discuss the influence of northern Italy's topography on the location of manufacturing industries.
If you whop down a fantastic answer on manufacturing industry in northern Italy and do not constantly refer to the topography, you could quite easily get less than 25% for that answer, despite having written pages.
By the same token you could write a fairly short answer and score really well.