4 Mock Exam Tips 5

MICHELE SCOTT-AKANBI

REVISION AND EXAM PRACTICE

STAIRWAY OF SIGNIFICANCE Create a stairway of significance as a revision tool to assess the main themes of significance that you will need to assess in your different essay plans for each topic. (see example below)

Assess the constraints on the President’s role as commander in chief (15)       

Most significant factor because the

     

Ignores      

Thus.      

       

PEEL Create a PEEL table (as below and use it with your essay plan to ensure you are outlining and assessing the question as best as possible.

PEEL TABLE

Point made (P)

Point explained (E)

Point evidence (E)

Point Evaluate & Link (EL)

The Brown-Peterson study used a lab experiment so it is low in external validity.

This means that it is difficult to generalise the findings to real-life …..

….. because we don’t usually get asked to remember trigrams while counting backwards, so we don’t know if this accurately measures our real STM.

Therefore, the Brown-Peterson study demonstrates that whilst it offers us insight, it lacks applicability to the real world.

ESSAY PLANS Write as many essay plans for the previous exam questions as you can and then when you have finished all the past papers. Begin to start writing your own questions and creating plans for those, it is likely they will phrase a question in a new and unusual way and you want to be prepared for any question they could ask.

CREATE YOUR OWN Outline and assess the functionalist contribution to crime and deviance (50)

Evaluate and critically assess the view that crime and deviance is both inevitable and normal (50) made up question

Intro: What is functionalism? Value Consensus, biological anatomy etc. They see crime as functional however many social theories disagree I.e. Marxism. 

Literally work your way down the theorists and concepts.P1: Durkheim critique with MarxismP2: Merton’s Strain Theory Critique with New Criminology

P3: Albert Cohen evaluate with Left realism

P4: Cloward and Ohlin evaluate with Feminism+ Many more

Conclusion:There valid in this sense: blah blah blahThere not good in this sense: blah blah blah

For the top grades you need to evaluate a point as soon as you explain it. So rather than having a chunky evaluation at the end, you criticize your own point as soon as you write it. Really abuse those evaluative words, "However", "On the other hand", "Per Contra"... try and spell it out to the examiner. Don't worry about the AO3 marks, if you did an essay in the structure I just gave you then you will be fine.

EVALUATION GRID It is important when revision to create an evaluation grid which you can use generically and specifically with the topic which highlights the strengths and weakness of the topic under discussion.

EVALUATION GRID OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

Strengths WeaknessesRepresentation     Calling government to account     Scrutiny     Legislating     Deliberation     Checking government power  The commons retains the power to veto legislation and this represents a discipline upon governments

Party loyalty and discipline means than many MPs are reluctant to challenge the government. The government rarely loses a major vote in the Commons.

Overall analysisTherefore in overall evaluation of the effectiveness of MPS in relations to the functions of Parliament, clearly MPs Parliament has significant strengths in relation to calling the government to account, the use of scrutiny, legislating and via deliberation. Especially because MPs can effectively question ministers on the floor of the House. Additionally, some independent-minded, campaigning MPs can work effectively on behalf of pressure groups and political campaigns. Nevertheless, Whips can enforce strict party discipline on all key debates and votes. Finally MPs have little time reserved in Parliament for backbench business. Therefore, whilst Parliament can be an effective check on government power nevertheless…. (make your own judgement)