Maybe you're just dumber than you thought
- Feb 3
- 3 min read
You know you need at least a grade 6 in your English exams to study the A levels you’ve chosen. Yet you’re scared it just may not happen that way for you.
How much confidence will it give you to get that good grade in your English? For some of us, a great grade in English is a weirdly tall order. I mean, you’re bright – you know you are. In ‘sensible’ subjects like Geography and science, you do great (sometimes effortlessly: remember that Geography test where you scored 94% and you hadn’t even remembered you HAD a test, let alone revised for it?). Yet in English – which you can’t revise for anyway - it just always seems a little more, meh.
You understand the books better than many people in the class, you have great ideas (well you think they’re pretty great, but then so does Miss). Yet when it’s the EXAM…you just don’t get what the teacher and the examiner are looking for. Like how are you supposed to write pages and pages of analysis about a single paragraph? How is that you answered the question in a sentence, and everyone else just keeps writing? When you get your paper back, the comments you get are confusing. What does the teacher mean by ‘extend your analysis’? What on earth does analysis even mean? It’s really demoralising sitting in a lesson, feeling like everyone else gets it and you’re just stuck. Like you KNOW that Joe isn’t any cleverer than you. Yet how does he get better grades EVERY TIME? He doesn’t even work that hard. It can make you feel really stupid, even though you know you’re not. You start to think that maybe you are actually really dumb. I mean, surely the exams don’t lie? (spoiler – they do lie, you’re not dumb..and we can fix it).
How different it would feel to go into your exam with a plan of action! Knowing exactly how you will get started AND keep going. Knowing that you will not be THAT student (there’s one in every exam hall) who stares at the paper for a while, only to put their head on the desk and go to sleep. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a method that you could FOLLOW so that you could know what to write to get a ‘yes, good point!’ from your teacher? And fewer of the ‘hmm, not quite’ remarks? The truth is, there ARE systems and methods out there that can get you there. You just haven’t been taught them yet.
Most students I have worked with who study hard and do well in class but do not improve their grades are lacking skills. It is this lack of skill that holds them back, not their work ethic and definitely not their ability. They are skills that schools have not had time to teach effectively but that CAN be taught. This is what I have spent the last 5 years focussing on: how to teach the skills that underpin good grades in English (and btw, in any subject where there is writing to be done). Most schools teach the ‘what’ very effectively, but few teach the ‘how’. And if you’re trying hard and doing well in class, I bet it’s the ‘how’ that you’re missing.
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