How To Get More Marks In Your History & Geography Exams

And all of your other essay subjects

It truly makes me upset,

When I see students trying to revise an essay subject,

And they muster up the motivation to write a practice essay,

And then when they are finished,

They usually stick it in a draw,

Or a folder on their laptop,

Never to be seen again.

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History is my subject.

I studied it at the University of Bristol.

And then I went on to do a Masters in Human Rights at LSE.

And embarrassingly,

It only dawned on me during my masters that I wasn’t really getting any better.

Roughly,

The writing calibre I started the year at,

Was the writing calibre I ended the year at.

And whilst grades and marks fluctuate,

Largely it averaged out to a very predictable grade in the end.

I don’t want to scare anyone,

But every year,

The subjects that end up surprising the most people on GCSE & A Level results day,

Are the essay subjects.

Because it is all about how you write.

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So how can a student get better in these subjects?

I have said it before,

And I will say it again.

It all comes down to obsessing – I mean OBSESSING – over your feedback.

This will feel quite unnatural for a lot of students.

And sometimes teachers don’t massively help by failing to provide thorough and deeply personalised feedback (of course many teachers absolutely do).

But one way or another,

Your teenager NEEDS to get thorough and personalised feedback and then needs to take action on it.

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Excuses students make as to why they can’t obsess over their feedback

I am going to challenge each of the excuses students make as to why they can’t take their feedback seriously below.

1)     My teacher always says how much is on their plate – I don’t want to add more.

Personally, I think this is an excuse to avoid writing more practice essays.

Most teachers would take more essays on without a complaint if it meant their student was improving.

Please do not make assumptions which then damage your chances of achieving your goals.

2)     I don’t have a teacher at the moment so there is no one I can send my essays to.

I really do sympathise with this.

But you really can send your essays to another teacher in the school.

They are there to support you.

But to be honest beyond that,

You deserve the support of a consistent teacher so please do not feel bad reaching out to someone you do not know very well.

3)     My teacher doesn’t give good feedback.

You have to go and verbally ask them to expand on what they meant and how you can do better.

Teachers are busy,

Save them time by asking them to verbally give you more detail rather than expecting paragraphs in a written format.

4)     My teacher (and the other teachers in the school) take a very long time to get my essays back to me – That is if they get them back to me at all!

If you have tried everything else.

And you don’t have a tutor and are not planning on getting one.

Then I would suggest you do two things.

Find the most intelligent acquaintance you can in your subject.

And swap essays with them.

Additionally, use model answers that you can find online and compare them to your essays.

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Parents,

The only thing I will say is please encourage your teenagers to take their feedback seriously as it does take effort,

And we all know teenagers usually don’t like putting in ‘extra’ effort.

If you have got to email in to the head of year or the head of subject,

Please don’t leave it too late to do so.

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I hope you all have a great week ahead,

Best wishes,

Joel