Junior Cert. results : Expectations?

Chalk It Down!

Is it true that the junior cert is designed so that you do better than expected? Anyone with past experience, were you were pleasantly suprised with your results? or any teaches or correctors, if you have information....Thanks

spurious

Yes it is true.

Let me give an example from correcting History.

The following is not a real question, but the marking is based on papers I have corrected in the past.

Say there is a question which says name the leaders of Germany and Russia during World War Two and it is worth 3 marks.
If you say Hitler and Stalin, obviously you will get your three marks.
If you say Hitler and Lenin, you will get two marks.
Even though you have the question half wrong, you will only lose 33% of the available marks.

That's a kind of a simple example, but in all JC exams, examiners are encouraged to try and maximise the marks for the candidate. We are told specifically in the case of pass/fail marks to try and see is there anywhere a candidate could get an extra couple of marks to bring them to a pass.

The most common reason people do badly in the JC is because they leave out questions, or do a wrong combination of questions. It's really annoying from a corrector's point of view to turn the page looking for the high mark last questions in an answer book and find blank pages.

im invisible

Over 10 years since i did mine, and did a grade better than i was expecting in three subjects, but went down a grade in one, (cant remember which subjects now, think i went up in science, down in history) so whatever you can take from that...

Chalk It Down!

spurious: Would the exmainers also try to raise your grade, so let's say i got 83 in geography would they try to find marks to raise it to an A?

invisible: The last thing i want is to go down a grade! :L

buyer95

spurious wrote: »

Yes it is true.

Let me give an example from correcting History.

The following is not a real question, but the marking is based on papers I have corrected in the past.

Say there is a question which says name the leaders of Germany and Russia during World War Two and it is worth 3 marks.
If you say Hitler and Stalin, obviously you will get your three marks.
If you say Hitler and Lenin, you will get two marks.
Even though you have the question half wrong, you will only lose 33% of the available marks.

That's a kind of a simple example, but in all JC exams, examiners are encouraged to try and maximise the marks for the candidate. We are told specifically in the case of pass/fail marks to try and see is there anywhere a candidate could get an extra couple of marks to bring them to a pass.

The most common reason people do badly in the JC is because they leave out questions, or do a wrong combination of questions. It's really annoying from a corrector's point of view to turn the page looking for the high mark last questions in an answer book and find blank pages.

Well this has made me feel a great deal better. I hope my correctors abide by the " find the extra few marks if you can to bring to pass" Im going to need all this for science and tech graph... After that should be ok...

spurious

Chalk It Down! wrote: »

spurious: Would the exmainers also try to raise your grade, so let's say i got 83 in geography would they try to find marks to raise it to an A?

invisible: The last thing i want is to go down a grade! :L

It depends how the marks nationally are going.

Each year they try to arrange it that roughly the same percentages of people get A, B or whatever as in previous years. If the numbers of As were looking low, then yes, correctors could be told to go back and look for a few marks for candidates on (say) 82-84. It can happen the other way too, though, if too many As.
The pass/fail one is always the case.

Indiego

spurious wrote: »

Yes it is true.

Let me give an example from correcting History.

The following is not a real question, but the marking is based on papers I have corrected in the past.

Say there is a question which says name the leaders of Germany and Russia during World War Two and it is worth 3 marks.
If you say Hitler and Stalin, obviously you will get your three marks.
If you say Hitler and Lenin, you will get two marks.
Even though you have the question half wrong, you will only lose 33% of the available marks.

That's a kind of a simple example, but in all JC exams, examiners are encouraged to try and maximise the marks for the candidate. We are told specifically in the case of pass/fail marks to try and see is there anywhere a candidate could get an extra couple of marks to bring them to a pass.

The most common reason people do badly in the JC is because they leave out questions, or do a wrong combination of questions. It's really annoying from a corrector's point of view to turn the page looking for the high mark last questions in an answer book and find blank pages.

Oh my... this had made me feel so much better...

Though I do have a question, In the History exam, one of the questions was about Celts (basically the one part of the course I forgot to revise ) and there were 3 sections, (Cant remember them exactly, but it was something like Art and Culture, Food and Lifestyle, etc.) and I freaked out because it was 6A, and i know how important those questions are if you want an A, (which I got in the mocks) and I basically freaked out and wrote everything I knew about the Celts, stuff that fell under all the headings, and probably a good few things about bronze age people
So what would happen in that situation? Would they look for all the points i made under the headings and pick the two I answered the most on? Or would they do something else? Ive been worrying about it all summer

spurious

Indiego wrote: »

Oh my... this had made me feel so much better...

Though I do have a question, In the History exam, one of the questions was about Celts (basically the one part of the course I forgot to revise ) and there were 3 sections, (Cant remember them exactly, but it was something like Art and Culture, Food and Lifestyle, etc.) and I freaked out because it was 6A, and i know how important those questions are if you want an A, (which I got in the mocks) and I basically freaked out and wrote everything I knew about the Celts, stuff that fell under all the headings, and probably a good few things about bronze age people
So what would happen in that situation? Would they look for all the points i made under the headings and pick the two I answered the most on? Or would they do something else? Ive been worrying about it all summer

Ok, that's this question:
(iv) Write an account of two of the following aspects of life in Celtic Ireland:
(a) Housing.
(b) Food and clothing
(c) Work, arts and crafts. (10 x 2)

It would probably be marked like this example from a previous year:
Mark on SRS principle. [Max Cumulative Mark (CM) = 8M Max Overall Mark (OM) = 2M]
OM: 2M = very good / good; 1M = fair / poor ; 0 mark = very poor

So, for each topic they would be looking for 4 significant relevant statements (basically important relevant facts) for 2 marks each (CM) and then there would be an overall mark or 1 or 2 (OM).

If you wrote on all three topics and they were all mixed up, they would find your relevant statements , see which ones you had four for and maybe drop you 1 on the OM, because of the confused answer and answering on Bronze Age - but maybe not. It is possible to get full marks for an answer such as you describe.

I'd be surprised if you lost very many marks.

Indiego

spurious wrote: »

Indiego wrote: »

Oh my... this had made me feel so much better...

Though I do have a question, In the History exam, one of the questions was about Celts (basically the one part of the course I forgot to revise ) and there were 3 sections, (Cant remember them exactly, but it was something like Art and Culture, Food and Lifestyle, etc.) and I freaked out because it was 6A, and i know how important those questions are if you want an A, (which I got in the mocks) and I basically freaked out and wrote everything I knew about the Celts, stuff that fell under all the headings, and probably a good few things about bronze age people
So what would happen in that situation? Would they look for all the points i made under the headings and pick the two I answered the most on? Or would they do something else? Ive been worrying about it all summer

Ok, that's this question:
(iv) Write an account of two of the following aspects of life in Celtic Ireland:
(a) Housing.
(b) Food and clothing
(c) Work, arts and crafts. (10 x 2)

It would probably be marked like this example from a previous year:
Mark on SRS principle. [Max Cumulative Mark (CM) = 8M Max Overall Mark (OM) = 2M]
OM: 2M = very good / good; 1M = fair / poor ; 0 mark = very poor

So, for each topic they would be looking for 4 significant relevant statements (basically important relevant facts) for 2 marks each (CM) and then there would be an overall mark or 1 or 2 (OM).

If you wrote on all three topics and they were all mixed up, they would find your relevant statements , see which ones you had four for and maybe drop you 1 on the OM, because of the confused answer and answering on Bronze Age - but maybe not. It is possible to get full marks for an answer such as you describe.

I'd be surprised if you lost very many marks.

Oh wow, thanks, that makes me feel a lot better about It, I've spent the entire summer thinking that i might have ruined my chances of an A
Thanks for clearing that up

Lollipop95

In English,not expecting much tbh I had dreams twice that I failed it and now I'm convinced I did terrible! It's actually my favourite subject so shame but I doubt I'll get a good mark tbh Ah well,not the end of the world I suppose!

AllisonB

9As and 1 b soo happy

Lollipop95

In Reply To my other post I got a B IN ENGLISH! :eek: I'm still so excited and over the moon!