A-level students warned longer exam answers are not better after 27-page effort given grade E
'Quantity does not trump quality'
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
Students have been warned that longer exam answers are not necessarily better after a 27-page effort in an exam was given a grade E.
Researchers have found there is no benefit in students writing overly wordy answers in their A-level exams as they can still be awarded low grades.
Writing more than 1,300 words in an A-level English literature exam does not necessarily lead to a higher mark, a study from Cambridge Assessment found.
The student in question filled the entire length of their 11-page answer booklet, as well as four 4-page extension booklets, in an A-level English literature exam in 2016, but any hopes it might have merited one of the higher grades were disappointed.
The finding comes after an earlier study into the ideal length of a GCSE English Literature essay, which discovered that students should not write too little, but should not write too much either.
Tom Benton, a Cambridge Assessment researcher, said: “As with the GCSE analysis, quantity does not trump quality. The curve flattens off at around 1,300 words per essay, and so writing more than this isn’t consistently associated with getting higher marks,”
The research, which analysed data from the OCR A-Level English literature exam in 2016, also found that a student student achieved an A* with two essays that were only three pages long.
On average, A-level English Literature students write around 1,000 words per hour in an exam - or 17 words per minute - which is faster than GCSE students who write around 800 words an hour.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments