How to use past questions effectively

Why past questions work

A well-known review of learning research (Dunlosky and colleagues, 2013) rated practice testing as one of the most effective study techniques. Trying to answer a question from memory strengthens learning far more than rereading notes. Past questions are practice tests built by the people who set the real exam.

They also show you things a textbook cannot: how questions are worded, how long papers are, which chapters come up often, and how marks are shared out. For a concours, where you are ranked against other candidates, that familiarity is worth a lot.

But past questions only help if you use them actively. Reading a paper with its correction beside you feels productive and teaches you very little.

Where to find them legitimately

• Your school. Teachers and libraries often keep past BAC, Probatoire, GCE and mock papers. Ask early in the year.
• The Cameroon GCE Board. Its website has a past questions section for GCE candidates.
• Bookshops. Annales and past question booklets with corrections. Prefer recent editions from known publishers, and check that the syllabus has not changed since.
• Older students and teachers who sat or prepared the concours you are aiming for.
• Official texts. Before using old concours papers, read the latest official text on MINESUP’s concours page to check the current papers and programme. Formats sometimes change.

Never buy “leaked papers”. People selling the “real subject” before an exam or concours are scammers. You lose money, you waste revision time on fakes, and being involved in exam fraud can get you excluded.

When to start

Use past questions in two stages:

• During the year, by topic. After finishing a chapter, find the past questions on that chapter and do them. This shows you what the exam expects from that topic while it is fresh.
• In the last two or three months, full papers. Sit complete papers under real conditions to train timing, stamina and choice of questions.

If you are starting late, go straight to full papers in your weakest high-coefficient subjects, and use the results to decide what to revise. Our 12-week plan shows how to fit this in.

Practise under real conditions

A past paper done with the phone nearby, the notebook open and no clock is not practice. Recreate the exam:

• Sit at a table, at the time of day the real paper takes place if possible.
• Set a timer for the official duration.
• No notes, no phone, no help. Only the materials allowed in the exam.
• Follow the instructions exactly: number of questions, choices, answer format.
• When time is up, stop, even if you have not finished. Note where you were.

This is also the best place to practise exam-day technique: reading the paper first, budgeting time and choosing your order.

Mark yourself honestly

Marking is where most of the learning happens, so do not rush it.

• Use the official marking scheme if you have it, or a reliable correction. Be aware that unofficial corrections can contain errors; if something looks wrong, ask a teacher.
• Mark strictly, as an examiner would. If your answer is “almost right”, it probably did not get full marks.
• Give marks for method in problem-solving subjects, as real marking schemes usually do, but only when the method is actually written on your script.
• For essays, compare your plan with a model plan, and ask a teacher or tutor to mark one or two essays properly. It is hard to judge your own writing.

Write the score and the date on the paper. Watching scores rise over the weeks is motivating.

Turn mistakes into progress

Keep an error notebook. For each question you lost marks on, write:

• the question (or a short summary);
• what you did wrong;
• the correct method or answer;
• the type of mistake: knowledge (I did not know), method (I knew the topic but not how to approach it), careless (sign, unit, misreading) or time (I ran out).

The type tells you what to do. Knowledge errors mean revising the chapter. Method errors mean more exercises of that type. Careless errors mean slowing down and checking. Time errors mean more timed practice and better budgeting.

Reread the error notebook every week, and redo the questions you got wrong a few weeks later without looking at the correction. Coming back to material after a gap, called spaced practice, was also rated highly in the 2013 review.

Practising with a classmate

Working with one serious classmate can make past papers more useful. Sit the same paper at the same time, then swap scripts and mark each other’s work with the marking scheme. Explaining why an answer loses marks forces you to understand the method yourself.

Keep the group small, agree on the paper in advance, and keep the timing strict. If you disagree on a correction, note the question and ask a teacher.

Common traps

• Memorising corrections. The same question rarely comes back word for word. Learn the method, not the answer.
• Only doing your favourite subjects. Past papers in weak subjects are uncomfortable but give the most progress.
• Doing too many papers without correcting them. One paper well corrected is worth more than three papers rushed.
• Using very old papers without checking the syllabus. Topics may have been added or removed.

A sample weekly routine

In the last two months before the exam or concours, a balanced week might look like this:

• Two or three full timed papers in your main subjects, at the weekend or on free afternoons.
• Marking and error notebook the same day or the next.
• Short topic sets of past questions on weekday evenings, 30 to 45 minutes each, on the chapters your errors pointed to.
• One rest half-day.

If you would like someone to set, time and mark papers with you, a tutor can do exactly that. On Houselewa you can find a tutor for the GCE, the Baccalauréat or concours subjects, at home or online. Our free exam readiness check is another quick way to see which topics need work.