c4countdown

It's the dreaded month(s) in the academic calendar. Anyone else taking any exams? Did my AS English Language exam today and it went swimmingly well methinks

As someone who never intends to take another exam, I have great sympathy for anyone going through that experience right now. I tried to enjoy them as an opportunity to show off my knowledge and, on the rare occasions when I managed to adopt that attitude, I usually did well. So I recommend that.

Charlie Reams wrote:As someone who never intends to take another exam, I have great sympathy for anyone going through that experience right now. I tried to enjoy them as an opportunity to show off my knowledge and, on the rare occasions when I managed to adopt that attitude, I usually did well. So I recommend that.

I do fairly well at exams and am usually reserved when sitting any exam! Ironically, a question on today's language paper which I chose to attempt was a transcript of a conversation between two members of a forum!

"How is the language influenced by the technology?"

It was a beaut of a question

Oooh, I've got my Maths GCSE Module 5 Higher Tier Paper A on Monday. Yup.

I've got them too in the next couple of weeks, starting off today with my second utter failure of English.

My son Mike is in the middle of his GCSE's and all appears to be going to plan at them moment. My daughter is doing her maths GCSE a year early so fingers crossed that she can get a good result.

Best wishes to all forumites taking their exams in the coming days and weeks as I know what you are going through on several levels.

Good luck!

This will be the first summer I've not had (proper) exams in 10 years, which is a bit scary. Good luck to everyone else, although I'm moderately envious - I quite enjoyed exams.

My job involves supplying resource materials to university students, so I'd also like to wish anyone on this forum who is taking exams good luck!

I'll be resitting my level 1 jolly-phonics exam, hopefully I'll get into my first choice playschool this time.

I had both AS English Language and AS ICT yesterday. Because they clashed, I had to sit in quarantine between the morning and afternoon sessions so that I didn't run off and find all the questions to ICT. But, the great organization of my sixth form shining through, there were people in the same isolation room who did the exams the other way round.

Jacob Sutton wrote:I had both AS English Language and AS ICT yesterday. Because they clashed, I had to sit in quarantine between the morning and afternoon sessions so that I didn't run off and find all the questions to ICT. But, the great organization of my sixth form shining through, there were people in the same isolation room who did the exams the other way round.

Haha, were you not monitored whilst you were in quarantine?

Jacob Sutton wrote:I had both AS English Language and AS ICT yesterday. Because they clashed, I had to sit in quarantine between the morning and afternoon sessions so that I didn't run off and find all the questions to ICT. But, the great organization of my sixth form shining through, there were people in the same isolation room who did the exams the other way round.

I hope you traded information with each other.

Yes, dreaded AS exams! Had Psychology yesterday, was a bit dodgy in terms of wording of questions. I had two friends who sat the paper early because it would have clashed with German, so they did Psychology in the morning, were in isolation and didn't see us again all day, and then went and did German with the rest of their German class. I have French on Monday.

Oh, erm, hmm. A2s this year: some maths exams next week (FP2 and FP3, I think) and then computing, physics and the dreaded STEP in June.

Got the most futile exam tomorrow for an hour and a half - AS critical thinking ! Considering it does nothing in terms of UMS marks, I don't understand why me and some students in general should be subjected to such nonsense . Anyone else doing this?

Good luck to everyone who's taking exams this month and next.

Michael Wallace wrote: Haha, were you not monitored whilst you were in quarantine?

Sadly yes, so we couldn't trade information, Ben!

And Jason, we were meant to be doing an AS Critical Thinking exam sometime in January 2010 - but in March they decided to stop it entirely, and we're now doing AS General Studies, which, going by the first few weeks of lessons, seems just as terrible.

Jacob Sutton wrote:And Jason, we were meant to be doing AS Critical Thinking sometime in January 2010 - but in March they decided to stop it entirely, and we're now doing AS General Studies, which, going by the first few weeks of lessons, seems just as terrible.

Gargh I recall general studies - what tripe! But according to my teacher it differentiates between those who just parrot their subjects and those that have "inherent learning abilities" and "zest for real life applications"

One of the module papers was science and mathematics which pretty much just constituted a GCSE Maths paper

JasonCullen wrote:Got the most futile exam tomorrow for an hour and a half - AS critical thinking ! Considering it does nothing in terms of UMS marks, I don't understand why me and some students in general should be subjected to such nonsense . Anyone else doing this?

Critical Thinking is a great module. Firstly, everyone ignores General studies, so if you're taking CT instead there's at least a chance that Universities will look at the result. Second, it's easy- my school allowed us to do a full A-Level in the subject, but we had to teach ourselves the stuff. Needless to say, I made absolutely no effort to find out what the course was about, and then sat the exam and got a B (i'm not exaggerrating either- I had no idea what I would be asked to do before I went into the exam). That B helped me get into my first choice Uni. Thirdly, it's actually pretty interesting, at least compared to GS (although I'm not really a good person to judge...)
So don't knock it. And good luck!

JasonCullen wrote:Got the most futile exam tomorrow for an hour and a half - AS critical thinking ! Considering it does nothing in terms of UMS marks, I don't understand why me and some students in general should be subjected to such nonsense . Anyone else doing this?

I did it last year as well, it does actually help with analytical skills and if you intend applying for Oxbridge for anything that needs the TSA then you will realise within 10 seconds that the multiple-choice part of the TSA is just the multiple-choice part of Critical Thinking. And Conor, especially good luck with STEP- a guy in my Maths class is sitting it and it sounds like an absolute wanker of a paper.

As for me, I have Mechanics this Friday (mathematical mechanics, not car mechanics) followed by a mixed selection of English, History and more Maths after half-term. As I need 3As (I'm in my A2 year atm, carrying forward 3As from last year) I'm not so much bricking it as full-blown, Olympic-size construction site, grossly over-budget shitting myself. That said, I've done pretty well in practice exams and the like, but that's no guarantee.

I did AS Critical Thinking last year as an extra. It was ridculous! It's sort of common sense mixed with knowing how to argue- it was difficult and some of my friends resat it today. Jason- our exam was three hours and we had two papers- did you only do one paper? We were subjected to both of them, one right after the other. One of my friends was really ill and only came in to do the exam- she was clearly well out of it, didn't remember any of the exam and got a D! She was resitting it today, and I hope she did well!

Forget Critical Thinking - World Development is the biggest pile of fucking shit I've ever been taught. And the exam's not even easy.

Had paper 1 of my GCSE module today. Cake

Kai Laddiman wrote:Had paper 1 of my GCSE module today. Cake

GCSEs are modular these days?

Hannah O wrote:I did AS Critical Thinking last year as an extra. It was ridculous! It's sort of common sense mixed with knowing how to argue- it was difficult and some of my friends resat it today. Jason- our exam was three hours and we had two papers- did you only do one paper? We were subjected to both of them, one right after the other. One of my friends was really ill and only came in to do the exam- she was clearly well out of it, didn't remember any of the exam and got a D! She was resitting it today, and I hope she did well!

I did one paper today but it was split into two modulars with the first one being sat in January! It was relatively straightforward because the case study was interesting and easy to understand . The main conclusion was that "summer holidays should be reduced" and I spent two pages arguing AGAINST that claim in Section C . But overall I think I'm on course for a B in this tripe! Fingers crossed

Jimmy Gough wrote:Forget Critical Thinking - World Development is the biggest pile of fucking shit I've ever been taught. And the exam's not even easy.

Ouch, I touched a nerve there . I didn't know World Development was an exam but it sounds like hell!

Quite a lot of people on here are doing As's. I had my second general studies exams on Thursday. Stupid time to have it, cos it meant i couldn't go home and watch the lost season finale online straight away!

My college offers As extended project as an alternative to CT a GS, which is basically a project on anything you like. I might try it next year and base it on countdown.

AQA have organised two maths exams on the same day at the same time, so i'll have to be in isolation in between them.

Kai Laddiman wrote:Had paper 1 of my GCSE module today. Cake

I imagine someone of your apparent ability with stuff like this would have a good shot at getting full marks. It would be super if you did.


It really annoys me when people say good luck to me after exams when im going to collect results. Do you understand what im getting at?

But good luck to everyone who is about to do exams

I wish we sat a Crit Thinks paper in January, it'd sure help with the stress! Jack- I think when we're in Upper 6th we get to do an Extended Project, but people are complaining about deadlines in it. I might do it next year...Well, I'd better revise for AS Latin! It's in June sometime, but there's lots to do.

Hannah O wrote:I wish we sat a Crit Thinks paper in January, it'd sure help with the stress! Jack- I think when we're in Upper 6th we get to do an Extended Project, but people are complaining about deadlines in it. I might do it next year...Well, I'd better revise for AS Latin! It's in June sometime, but there's lots to do.

I wanted to do AS Latin but I was the only nerd at college who wanted to pursuit it hence it was cancelled this year . I bet it's all vocabulary lists and declension groups . The mind boggles!

JasonCullen wrote:I wanted to do AS Latin but I was the only nerd at college who wanted to pursuit it hence it was cancelled this year . I bet it's all vocabulary lists and declension groups . The mind boggles!

Ditto. Latin rocks! Ours was the last school year to start studying it before it was written off the syllabus
We also had Latin Club after school, but the teacher that ran it and was an absolute gem has since retired. I enjoyed taking it up to GCSE though, especially since the last lesson before every term break we had a massive DVD fest with stuff like Spartacus and Gladiator and a Roman feast! Also I'd host a Latin quiz which didn't really contain much Latin but was basically an excuse for a Shooting Stars-esque game with zany questions and awesome scripted role plays penned by myself. Good times indeed

As for exams I've got 5 level 2 exams coming up in a couple of weeks: 3 chem and 2 maths which I'm not looking forward to. But then after that I've got lots on: The big Summer break, moving in with Emma, looking for teaching experience, excelling at karate and of course going to Manchester to watch a few Countdown recordings

...In fact I think we ought to start a Summer plans and activities thread...

Jason- well, there is a giant vocab list that I've been given, and I need to learn all of it before the start of June... As for declensions, we get that, but due to patchy teaching during Year 11, we've been going through all the grammar we've ever learned since Year 7, which means reading through all the grammar notes from Book 1 to 4 of the Cambridge Latin Course! Madness! And there's not only that- there's the lovely set texts. Something like 200 lines of Ovid's poetry to memories in English, and 19 out of about 30 chunks of a Ciceronian speech against some conspirator against Rome. Lovely. It's like GCSE Latin, but about five times more hardcore. I'm glad I did it though!
Dinos- our Latin teacher is brilliant- he's lazier than his class (and that takes some serious skill!), messes around more than his class and when he just can't be bothered he makes us watch DVDs that are loosely connected with Latin or Ancient Rome in general. In fact, he subjected us to the terrors of 'I, Claudius'- the particular one where that crazy emperor cuts his wife open and eats her child because he thinks he's some god (Cronos??). Super!

Hannah O wrote:Dinos- our Latin teacher is brilliant- he's lazier than his class (and that takes some serious skill!), messes around more than his class and when he just can't be bothered he makes us watch DVDs that are loosely connected with Latin or Ancient Rome in general. In fact, he subjected us to the terrors of 'I, Claudius'- the particular one where that crazy emperor cuts his wife open and eats her child because he thinks he's some god (Cronos??). Super!

That would be Caligula, as played by John Hurt (assuming you mean the classic 1970s BBC serialisation). Utterly brilliant - 13 of the best hours of TV drama ever made. I read somewhere that the creator of The Sopranos intended it to be a modern-day I, Claudius, which makes absolute sense.

I did a cursory count found that I've taken somewhere in the region of 75 exams since beginning my GCSEs. Finally on the home stretch though, with four exams to go: Computability, Natural Language Processing, Number Theory and Semigroup Theory.

Good luck to all those unfortunate enough to only be in the middle of that road. It does end eventually!

Yes, we did watch the BBC series. It seemed very interesting, though rather disturbing. I don't want to count the amount of exams I've taken so far, it depresses me!