Were the mocks marked very hard???

chilipop

Hiys people finished all my mocks last friday, and was wondering if they got marked very hard this year?
People always say they get marked wat too hard is this tru for this year??

cullenswood

The mocks are marked by different teachers all around the country so there is not going to be a uniform "lets mark them harder to give the student a kick up the .....", it just depends on the particular teacher and what form they are in. Basically it comes down to whether you know your stuff or not.

randomfella

My business was marked really hard, have a ****e teacher but still doesn't mean 10 should fail. almost scraped a C with 54%

On 390 with history left.

Caoimhe

Our English was marked in a way that unless the corrector thought you're answer was groundbreakingly amazing, you only did ok, or disappointing. I don't understand that mentality, my English result just depressed me and I've actually given up working at English all together to focus on other subjects.

newgrange

Don't the teachers who mark the mocks have a conference like they do for marking the 'real' papers?
You cannot possibly have a mock exam marked properly without an agreed marking scheme.

angeldelight

The exam boards send out a marking scheme, not sure if they have a conference. I know a lot of my teachers esp English and Irish weren't happy with the marking schemes last year, they weren't emphasising same things as real LC would have been.
Teachers in my school marked our papers rather than sending them out and it was good cause we were able to get feed back. Also, a lot of college students correct mocks, not necessarily teachers... my english teacher said she did it every year she was in college and didn't particularly care how accurate she was being, she also didn't know most of the texts on the course. That could be a reason for not being marked as well as you had been in class.
In general I don't think the mocks are marked harder though, I think students like to think that so they aren't as disappointed with their results... the mocks are meant to be practice thats all and most people improve on the grades they get in the mocks so you should just see them as an oppurtunity to practice your timing etc and don't be too disheartened by the grades... they should help focus you

jo_u_know

I think the mocks r marked hard for a reason...so to make students tink they hv to study harder...but this can put students off! In my skol theres 3 pass maths classes and the mock were corrected by 3different teachers. One class' tests were marked hard, the other class were marked too easy and my class were marked fairly!!!
People say the mocks r really tough but really i tink they r marked2hard! Can be gud way but also can put students off...i mean if a student gets an A1 in a subject they might tink they know everytin+not learn nemore but then wen it cums to d real thing they dont do well!?

angeldelight

jo_u_know wrote:

if a student gets an A1 in a subject they might tink they know everytin+not learn nemore but then wen it cums to d real thing they dont do well!?

Maybe but a person generally isn't going to get an A1 without working very hard. If they're mature and sensible enough to do that they're also mature and sensible enough not to stop studying.

Firewalkwithme

From my own experience I found that the mocks aren't a good indicator towards your potential results for a few reasons. First of all, chances are that you may not have completed the full course for each subject when the mocks are held. Secondly, after the mocks are over, teachers tend to focus on preparing their students for the real thing by doing constant sample questions and revision. By the time the exams come around you will be much better prepared than at mocks stage. To sum up - don't worry just yet, there's still plenty of time to go.

the smiley one

About the whole being marked hard think so, but then again all my exams are marked my my teachers (the people who mark the sent away ones are generally underpaid students) so they mark it the way they usually mark stuff, which is generally fair - stick to the marking scheme etc. Also I think lots of people have this idea that they are marked hard because generally you are not going to do as well as you are going to do in the real thing, whic is because - duh - you haven't studied as much, same thing happened at JC.

rosa

Anyone find that some of their mocks were marked too easy? Got an A1 in Biology and I'm about a B3 student at best. No way I'll get anything near an A in the real thing.

angeldelight

rosa wrote:

Anyone find that some of their mocks were marked too easy? Got an A1 in Biology and I'm about a B3 student at best. No way I'll get anything near an A in the real thing.

You should ask to get a photocopy of the marking scheme. I got ridiculously high mark in my chem mock and presumed it was just my crappy teacher not knowing how to correct it but when i looked at the marking scheme I realised I'd done better than I thought, what I'd thought were waffly answers she was able to pick out the words that got the marks etc. Look at it for your own peace of mind

newgrange

The marking scheme is always worth checking. Past ones for real papers are available on the SEC site.
Never EVER tippex out a wrong answer. Always just put a line through it. If your answer is in fact wrong, no problem, but if your 'wrong' answer is right, then the examiner can still see it, and may well give marks for it.

Drag00n79

newgrange wrote:

Never EVER tippex out a wrong answer. Always just put a line through it. If your answer is in fact wrong, no problem, but if your 'wrong' answer is right, then the examiner can still see it, and may well give marks for it.

This is only the case if another contradictory answer is not written in above it. If there is that has to be accepted. However the non-use of tipp-ex is good advice because a lot of students don't wait for it to dry and they keep writing. They intend to come back to the tipp-ex patch but don't. Thus leaving a blank space, which of course is awarded nothing.

Scarinae

To be quite honest, I don't think you can say whether or not mocks are marked harder or easier than the Leaving Cert. That depends on the subject, who's correcting it and how much work you put in. A subject like Chemistry or Physics has a very exact marking scheme and so there isn't much room for it to be marked harder or easer, however the paper itself might have been harder than a State exam. Something like English is harder to know. If your teacher was marking it, they might have marked it harder because they think you should be doing better and they are trying to scare you, or maybe they marked it easier because they're inexperienced when it comes to papers. Also, remember that you have twelve and a half weeks until the leaving cert starts, that's amost a quarter of a year and if you work hard you can do so much better than in your mocks. Basically what I'm trying to say is don't over-analyse your results, because you can't predict your leaving cert scores from them