Are Mocks a wake-up call? By Emma Hourihan, Royal Russell School
Everyone at some stage of their school career will take part in mock exams, but what are they really? Are they a way to learn from your mistakes, or just ruin your Christmas holidays? Whatever your opinion on them there may be some things you are unaware of.
Firstly, good luck to everyone who has already taken or is soon to take their mocks, it is a stressful time so make sure you fit in some relaxation time around your studying. Depending on which way you look at them mocks can be both good and bad, on one hand they are a wake- up call and tell you what you need to work on, however on the other hand they are stressful and impact young peoples’ mental health and how they view themselves. If you put a lot of hard work into your examinations but your friend who has not revised at all gets higher than you, it hurts right? It can even bring down your self - esteem.
Mocks, in my opinion, are a great way to learn from your mistakes. It is exams in general that do not make such sense. Yes, testing knowledge is important but these days exams have become more of a memory test than knowledge based. In the work place, you have to apply your knowledge to real life, but in exams? No, we have to learn everything from Shakespeare in English to sentence structures for History. Mocks are very important in general to see your progression but should exams really be written instead of practical’s?
Preparation for everything is very important, the effort you put in relate to the results you get out of it. This especially applies to school examinations, making revision cards is great; you feel really accomplished after, but that is not revision. You need to be actively re-reading and testing yourself on exam style questions. Mocks are not made by exam boards, they are made by your school so the grade boundaries are for your school not the whole country. This means that if you think you did really good (or really bad) in your mocks it does not necessary correlate with what you would get if it were grade boundaries from the whole country. However they are an eyeopener and a great way of exam grade predictions.
One important thing to remember and thing to avoid after exams, is to ask what other people got for certain questions. This causes panic and a false sense of insecurity. Do not compare yourself to others, only your own achievements define you.
By Emma Hourihan
