Good grades signal an ability to learn and analyze.

These valuable higher order thinking skills are some of the many crucial qualities that schools, junior colleges, polytechnics, universities and employers are looking for.

In the real world – and even in your exam questions (now that you are still in school) – information is not clear.

It comes from all different locations and various combinations. This results in exam questions that students find difficult to answer.

And businesses face different problems every day.

When you start working, you will find that an employee who is able to grasp the significance of the issues/problems, and is resourceful enough to find profitable solutions will be quickly promoted over (or given more decision-making authority than) those who lack the ability to use their resourceful thinking skills and market acumen.

Success in the workplace requires the ability to communicate complex ideas to a diverse team of people, relentlessly pursue solutions, and explore possibilities beyond current knowledge.

The answers to real world problems are more divergent than what we are usually accustomed to in primary school, secondary school, and the tertiary institutions.

We must therefore start to develop a good level of cognitive intelligence and ability to learn – especially now that we are young and in school.

Clearly, good grades signal this ability.

It is therefore important that you do well in as many of your exams as possible, from the time you are in primary school.

There are a number of possible reasons that students get poor grades.

Some are external factors, such as the subject matter being too difficult, the teacher is hard to understand, and problems at home.

Other reasons have to do with student attitudes, such as not doing homework and was playing too much in class.

Here are some other common causes that could potentially be causing your lack of focus:

1. Your study environment does not support learning. You may have too many distractions like noisy neighbours, background noise, and an uncomfortable study space
2. You’re feeling tired because you’re not getting enough sleep
3. Test anxiety
4. Problems understanding the questions and content when doing homework and revision
5. The pace is too fast for you to keep up with 
6. You did not learn the required material in previous classes (because you were not interested?)
7. Teacher is not very good. Some may have an accent that makes it difficult to understand. Others can’t explain things in a clear manner. And some may not want to explain things at all. They might say, “You should have learned that last year/month, so I am not going to explain it over again.”
8. There are also teachers who don’t like certain students, and this can affect their willingness to help those students. Also, some students don’t like certain teachers and thus may not cooperate in class
9. Poor attitudes lead to poor grades. If you have negative attitudes toward school and studying, it can result in getting weak or failing grades
10. Sometimes, you lack the motivation to do well in school. One reason can be that you have no dreams of what you want to do, or can see no benefit from going to school. It is good to have dreams, and for a mentor to guide you on how to achieve them step by step
11. One of the biggest reasons why students do not do well in exams is because they didn’t study or do their homework
12. Some students attend class but don’t pay attention

Our experienced specialist tutors have the latest best insights on each MOE/IB subject.

Every individual aspect of each exam section is given significant attention.

For each particular section, we build the skills required for your grades to improve.

We guide you in the thinking process behind how the correct answer can be generated, and how to accurately organize and present the answer to achieve maximum marks.

During home tuition, we will make sure you are spending the majority of your time on the key concepts that matter.

Learning how to think things through is a much better use of your time than trying to memorize everything.

Memorizing everything takes a lot of time and results in errors, whereas understanding everything will allow you to apply your knowledge to unexpectedly difficult questions.

After you have progressed beyond the foundational level, we will teach you more advanced and sophisticated techniques that help you secure perfection in your responses.

We believe that a mastery of the exam questions requires enhancing two broad sets of skills:

1. Being able to understand what the question specifically requires you to answer
2. Learning how to find the answer and how to present the answer in a precise manner for each question type

Therefore, we teach analytical and reading strategies so that you can break down each word in the exam question. 

This way, you will not carelessly misunderstand, and give the wrong answers.

You will therefore be able to make the right inferences, as well as understand how and why the question was structured this way.

We will then teach you how to construct your answers to meet the requirements of the questions, and to get your A.

Here’s a little secret: nobody actually wants anyone to fail an exam.

It’s not good for your school or university, nor for the exam boards. They really want everyone to pass, because then everyone is happy.

All students take exams.  But some students have better exam skills and therefore perform better at exams than others.

It is, therefore, important to develop the skills you need to prepare for, to take and excel in exams.

Effective and robust exam SKILLS are critically important to exam takers, because these skills allow you to respond at your best to all the challenges presented by any exam.

Fortunately, these skills can be learned.

One of the best ways to learn how to manage better during exams is to look at what NOT to do.

Apart from panicking, common mistakes made in exams include:

1. Not answering the question. This is usually because you have misread the question, or have prepared a different response that does not answer what the question requires you to do (ie your answer was off-point). Always make sure that you read the questions several times, and re-check your answer against the question at every step of your answering process.
2. Failing to notice the obvious clues. This might include the strong hints in the question itself (for example, ignoring words like “Analyse…” or “illustrating your answer with evidence from x”. You also need to be very aware of the marking scheme, and the number of questions. If you have a question worth 15 points, you will need to give more than a one-sentence answer.
3. Failing to plan ahead. You need to plan your time for any essays that you have to write, and for any MCQ questions that are in the paper. Take a moment to work out how long you have for each question before you start – and make sure that you don’t take more time than this. If you are writing essays, plan them briefly before you start, to make sure that you have a sensible argument and structure. This will also mean that you might get some marks for your ideas even if you don’t have time to completely finish your essay.

Exam skills improve with practice, over time.

With the right focus via coaching, exam skills can be improved significantly.

Students taking exams often describe difficulties like anxiety and stress, various mishaps or mistakes during an exam, poor decisions during an exam, or the effects of poor preparation and/or overconfidence leading up to an exam.

Every student has his or her own individual strengths and weaknesses in exam skills.

Knowing what they are will lead to good exam performance.

Consider:

Thinking Positively: Do you sometimes struggle to think positively about your exam ability and your exam performance?

Achieving Results: Do you sometimes get worse results than your study preparation and school/mock exams indicate?

Reading Questions: Do you sometimes misread questions on an exam paper and present a half-done or wrong answer?

Experiencing Exam/Mental Blocks: Do you sometimes experience “Exam/Mental Blocks” and struggle to calm down and continue with your exam?

Preparing Properly: Do you sometimes fail to prepare properly for exams, only to regret that when the exam starts?

Time Management: Do you sometimes run out of time and are not able to complete all the questions on an exam paper?

Answering All Questions: Do you sometimes choose to answer some questions well rather than attempt all questions required?

Picking Up Marks: Do you sometimes feel uncertain about how to score the maximum marks for your answers?

Having Panic Attacks: Do you sometimes have “panic attacks” right before an exam or during an exam?

Leaving The Exam Early: Do you sometimes leave the exam room early or put your head down on your desk, because you have exam anxiety or are disappointed with the questions you were given?

Performing As Expected: Do you sometimes leave the exam thinking that you did not perform as you were expecting?

When you are more aware of what are really causing you to lose marks (and sleep), you are one step closer to improving your exam management skills and your exam performance.

Active listening, reading comprehension, note taking, stress reduction, time management, testing practices, and memorization are some of the skills that our home tutors will teach you.

Perhaps the most important part of doing homework and/or revision – and often the most difficult – is simply getting started.

It is easy to allow yourself to get distracted, to decide that you just don’t feel in the mood today, or that there’s plenty of time.

The best thing to do is just to get on with it.

Just getting started will be a huge boost to your confidence.

We will keep your end goal in mind and will also use interim goals along the way:

1. Set clear personal learning goals. Students perform better when they know what exactly is expected of them. They also want to know how they will be able to achieve those learning objectives. After we have established what is the gap between current skill levels and those required by MOE/IB exams, we will discuss with you your expectations of your upcoming learning schedule, based on your unique needs and personal goals
2. Make learning convenient. Your tutor will structure content in small, manageable chunks that are easy to digest. We can also provide notes, tools, short videos, checklists or infographics to help make the content easier to understand and remember
3. Get creative with course content. Boredom causes students to lose interest in the subject. We will use active engagement strategies so that we can deliver learning content that is creative and interesting
4. We coach students. Instead of giving them the right answer, we ask the right questions so that the students are able to arrive at the right answers themselves. Hence, instead of spoon-feeding students, we guide them and encourage them to think critically, so that they are able to produce complex and insightful answers on their own, during their exams. This helps them consistently get higher marks, and prevents panic attacks when the questions are more difficult than they expected

Students who are weaker are given more help to meet the fundamental requirements.

We also constantly stretch our high-achieving students by introducing more complex concepts to help them develop greater critical thinking and more sophisticated writing and answering skills.

We want to help students develop the right strategies, higher-order thinking skills, techniques and analyses to score their A.

And to obtain perfection in exam techniques and skills.

With such expert guidance, you will soon have results that are superior to your peers in school.

It’s relatively easy to score the first 40% but increasingly difficult to achieve the next 60% in any exams.

It also helps if you bear in mind that the examiner may be faced with as many as a hundred (or more) exam papers/assessments to mark within a very short period of time.

What you should avoid when answering exam questions:

1. Inability to address the question’s topic in your introduction
2. Stray from the focus of the question (especially in the conclusion)
3. Insert quotes without introducing them or relating them back to the topic
4. Fail to provide credible references
5. Use informal language, colloquialisms, or overuse rhetorical questions
6. Write words that are too informal, unsophisticated, vague, exaggerated, or subjective, as well as those that are verbose, generally unnecessary, or incorrect
7. Struggle to develop your ideas fluently (poor ideation)
8. Have difficulty in keeping track of your thoughts

Exam responses that score higher marks have three well thought-out components: Introduction, Body, and Conclusion:

1. Introduction. The purpose of an introduction is to introduce your essay. Importantly, it sets the stage to let your reader know that the content is worth reading further
2. Body. The body of the essay develops and elaborates your argument, as well as the appropriateness and accuracy of references. The information has to be relevant and substantial in order for you to score well
3. Conclusion. Your conclusion should not offer any new material and should summarize why the content in the Body is credible and important

There are many reasons students avoid writing. Primary reasons may be one or more of the following:

1. They have a hard time getting started and feel overwhelmed by the task
2. They struggle to organize and use mechanics of writing
3. They are slow and inefficient in retrieving the right word(s) to express an idea
4. They feel that the paper never turns out the way they want
5. They realize that their answers are still sloppy even though substantial time and effort were spent

To write good answers:

2. A reply to an exam question should have a single clear central idea
3. Each paragraph should have a clear main point or topic sentence
4. Every paragraph and sentence should support or expand the central idea of the paper
5. The idea of each paragraph should be explained and illustrated through examples, details, and descriptions
6. Be specific, use short sentences and avoid tripping around your points
7. Make sure your work uses evidence of insight and synthesis, and has quality arguments. The confidence in your writing will shine through, gaining you those extra marks
8. Remember to be clear on your view in the introduction and use the body of the essay to argue that position
9. Include your point of view, supported by relevant ideas, arguments and evidence
10. Summarize your arguments/points using a clear, organized structure that includes an introduction, body paragraphs and a conclusion
11. Try to write neatly
12. Use paragraphs of appropriate lengths (long paragraphs are difficult to read and/or understand)
13. Try to have some meaningful ideas of your own rather than simply repeating “model answers”. Some exam markers do not like “model answers”. Also, do be aware that “model answers” are often wrong
14. Be careful about spelling, punctuation, grammar, writing style, and legibility