Importance of Past Papers

It does not matter whether one is student of O level or A level. It also does not matter  which subject one has chosen to study in O level or A level. It also does not matter  whether one is taking O level or A level exam through any of Cambridge International Examinations, Alliance for Qualification and Assessment, Edexcel or one  of many other boards. All a student desires are higher grades and that is exactly where  one’s future success revolves around. If one is looking for excellent college placement or interested in a particular profession for practical life, higher grades take you where you dream of.  

 

Expectation & Simulation

 

It is widely, and perhaps truly, believed but seldom practised in letter and spirit, that  past papers of a subject of any qualification and any board are most reliable  reparation material. These past papers extend a helping hand in more than one ways. These not  only give one a very clear and concrete idea about what to expect in exam but also provide a “simulated” environment to learn how to manage time and stress while taking actual exams.

 

Ingredients of Exam Preparations

 

However, these are only secondary type of advantages of solving past papers for O  level and A level subjects’ preparations for examinations. As the adage goes, practice  makes a man perfect.

So is the case with exams, if one wants to stand perfect among others in exams, the  only way out is practice, practice and more practice. But one may, perhaps must, be  interested in knowing to practice exactly what. Next we analyze what are the main  ingredients of an exam preparation.

 

Learning Application of Theory

 

One’s exams require one to solve some problems in a given specific time. Hence the  path to success in exams is twofold; understanding a theoretical concept so that one  can solve a given problem. This can be easily achieved by following your class lectures or self-study of your text/reference books. Even text/reference book exercises may also take you an extra mile.

 

Learning Time Management

 

However, solving a given problem within a specified time requires only and much more  practice. This is what past papers make you do. Here comes the role of past exam  papers. Since you are required to solve exam questions, you need to practice exam  questions.

 

True Exam Questions

 

For this to achieve you need exam questions. In this regard, no other resource can  claim to be as large a question bank of exam questions as the past exam papers. Even  if there is some resource with such a claim to be as huge exam question bank as  exam papers, it cannot claim to be the true exam question bank. That is the  peculiarity of past papers and only of the past papers.

 

Huge Practice Resource

 

Once availability of exam questions is fixed one needs to solve them which requires a  theoretical concept and its application to a real life problem but with a restriction on  time limit.

One may be very comfortable with a theoretical concept, however, implementation of the same to solve real life problems, or for that matter real life exam problems, within  specified time constraint demands practice with actual real life questions which are only  available through past questions paper. Luckily, past papers of all subjects of both  O level and A level are made available by all the examination boards. All these  past papers constitute a huge exam questions’ bank.

 

Practice & More Practice

 

Therefore, it is strongly recommended that one must thoroughly study the text/reference  books for the theoretical concepts and must solve the exercise given in  the same text/reference book to have an idea of how to apply these theoretical  concepts to real life problems. However, after that one must solve each and every question of all the available past papers. Each of these questions has been asked at  one point in time or the other in exams. These questions contain that peculiar sting of  the exam questions which may not be available anywhere else.

 

Various Examination Aspects

 

Solving these question, each and everyone, reveals most if not all the aspects in which  a one’s theoretical concept may be put to test in a given real life scenario within bound  of a time limit. Each time a question is solved from past papers; the theoretical concept  gets revised and becomes part of learning.

Once all the question papers are solved, one may like, and is urged, to start it all over  again. If all past papers of a particular subject of a given qualification are solved in a  mock exam environment for a couple of time, or until one feels confident, it is highly  likely that it would result in higher grades. Ultimately, dreams coming true.

So start solving past papers today.