Don’t fixate over your Prelim results

I’ve taught thousands of students in the last 14 years, did two Masters degrees (in Economics & Business Administration), did my Bachelors in Economics at NUS & also landed a prestigious RSAF Pilot Scholarship (post A Levels).

What did I get for my JC Prelims though? Well here goes

B- Geography

E - Economics

F - Mathematics (F in those days is equivalent to your U these days)

Yes - Economics wasn’t even the subject I scored a B in. I scored only an E in Economics.

Of course, I jumped by 4 grades from E to A at the A Levels. Which meant I turned things around in a short 5 weeks or so.

I’ll thus be sharing some tips & tricks in this post to help you out here.

Focus more on your answers to the exam questions

Really - stop fussing over the score. The prelims score isn’t really that important.(unless you are one of the top scholar-type student in school intending to use the results to do early admission to prestigious universities overseas).

Here’s what important though - take a hard look at all your exam scripts.

Look at the questions you did poorly / failed in. Look through the answers. Understand why you got the answer wrong. Read through the school’s model answers. Seek consults with your tutors if you don’t understand. For Math papers - trying solving the questions you flunked again and see if you now understand how to do them.

For Economics papers - take the time to do the questions you did not choose to do during the exams.

For essays you would have chosen 3 essays out of 6 to do. Try the other 3 essays, you didn’t attempt them for a reason - you probably weren’t that confident. Try them now and get somebody to go through them with you. See if you would have done well in those.

Seek to improve on your weaknesses from your exam papers, find gaps in understanding & fix them.

That should have been the function of a prelims paper - its a self gauge for you to figure out where and what you are weak in - and to work on them from now till the A Levels!

What are actionable steps you can take

At this stage - using lecture notes / textbooks as a primary tool for revision is highly ineffective. Don’t waste time doing that.

During JC days - weeks before the A Levels I was doing revision with my friends in the school canteen. I saw a friend from another class with a really thick stack of notes. I asked her what was that and what was she doing.

She said that her teacher was saying that ‘her class was hopeless’ and so their teacher printed both the question paper and answers from ALL the schools (and well we had 4 more JCs back then compared to now). She was reading through the questions and answers and for those she felt that she was more confused about, she took the time to try the question and also write out the ‘model’ answer to the question.

Going through the stack of essay questions and answers was particularly helpful because it helped her see a pattern in the type of questions that usually comes out for the exams, and also figure out that there is a certain structure towards answering the questions.

I started on this same strategy- and it worked for me too for the A Levels.

Of course, there were also other things I did - like finishing and mastering the A Level TYS questions..

The Economics Essence Workshop

It was 2010 where I first had this idea to take this revision strategy and convert it into a useful full-day crashcourse / workshop for my students.

I decided to go through ALL the school prelim questions for the year, sieve out the really good questions and ensure that there was a good range of questions covering a wide range of skills, content & topics.

I booked the auditorium at a library, made all my students come down for the workshop & also charged a premium to members of the public who wanted to attend the workshop.

Here’s my thought process while planning the Essence Workshop - find the best questions from this year’s prelim questions, break down the questions into manageable parts, teach students how to structure their answers, come out with awesome evaluations for them to write at the exams and help them gain some exposure to a wide range of questions with a slant towards what I predict will appear at the particular year’s A Levels.

So since 2010, I’ve been holding this Essence Workshop every year. Pre-COVID19 days, we will sell out 250 tickets in most years and the auditorium would be full house. Of course - last year was the first time we had to do this through Zoom.

Essentially - we will be covering 10 Micro Essay Questions + 10 Macro Essay questions from mostly this year’s prelim questions. Students can expect to

1. Cover a wide range of concepts across Microeconomics & Macroeconomics

2. Learn to break down difficult questions to easier / manageable parts

3. Learn to write great evaluations

4. Be exposed to different question types in time for the A Levels

5. Learn some of my predictions for the A Levels

As opposed to doing it on your own - you can be guided through the process with me.

The workshop will be held via Zoom on 21 October 2021

10am - 1pm - Microeconomics

1pm - 2pm - Lunch Break

2pm - 5pm - Macroeconomics

If you would like to join us for this year - hurry and grab a ticket now at the early bird promotional price of $190 (U/P: $320/-)

If you missed the workshop - you can purchase the recorded video lessons after.

Click here to find out more about the Economics Essence Workshop