As schools and teachers work hard along with their students to prepare for success in the 2024 BECE and WASSCE examinations, they all need to keep an eye on the 5 Ways to FAIL the 2024 BECE and WASSCE examinations.
These issues raised in this publication are not in any way to scare students or anyone but to help them become more alert and focused as well as work to avoid them as they prepare for their final examinations.
5 Ways to Fail the 2024 BECE and WASSCE Examinations.
Spend more time on the phone.
One of the 5 ways to fail the 2024 BECE and WASSCE examinations is to spend precious time on your mobile phones.
While not all students have mobile phones, this issue is very important. In the past, students hardly had or used mobile phones, but it has become so common today. Using a mobile phone as a student can lead to a waste of precious time on social media.
Just spend useful time doing useless things on your phone every day or most hours of the day, and you will be working harder towards failing your BECE or WASSCE.
Students who spend a lot of time watching movies, reading messages on social media, and having chats with friends on irrelevant topics and issues on social media will end up spending all the time they should have spent on their books.
Social media and mobile phones are very addictive, and when you get hooked on them, you may end up spending your entire day there.
Instead of wasting time on social media and getting glued to their phones on the internet, students are advised to put off their phones, hide them under the pillows, or leave them with an adult when they have to study.
Smart students can also set a time in the day when they can access their phones as part of their study schedule. The more you reduce the use of mobile phones now as you prepare for the examination, the more time you will have to study your books.
Instead of also spending time on the phone doing nothing useful, you can use the mobile phone to record your notes or record questions and answers in your voice. Listen to these voices you have recorded when you are tired, ready, or studying from your books.
Study without a personal timetable.
Students who want to fail the 2024 BECE and WASSCE are advised not to have their personalised timetable. To fail, study without a personal timetable. A personal timetable helps you plan each day’s study routine. It is also possible to have a detailed timetable where you include the topics to cover or study each day of the week for each subject. This way, you can measure how effective you have been in your study. Without a personal timetable, you are likely to study some subjects and leave others out. Without having a specific topic or area to cover, you are likely to concentrate on some topics and leave others unattended.
If you fail to plan how to study or study without a timetable to guide you, you will be making less progress, and a lot of topics will not be covered.
Neglect topics and questions not chosen and solved in your mock examination.
Each school and candidate preparing for the 2024 BECE and WASSCE will have to write at least four to five mocks to test their readiness, identify challenges, and find solutions to them.
One big mistake that students and schools that perform poorly make is that they fail to revise the topics and questions their students fail to answer or select to answer in the various mocks.
After each mock, teachers and students must not only revise the questions asked but carefully revise the topics from which questions were asked, but their students must not answer or choose those questions.
The topics students have challenges with are the ones they avoid in terms of the questions they choose in their mocks. Schools and teachers who pay attention to this will be able to help students deal with it.
During the main examination by WAEC, the same questions students avoided in their mock examinations can end up being the questions WAEC will be asking. Helping to revise the identified topics will reduce the number of students attempting to answer them. This will go a long way towards helping.
Teachers can come out with a frequency table showing the number of students who attempted to answer questions 1, 2,… 6. Questions with fewer attempts are problem areas to keep an eye on.
Not solving past questions
To fail the BECE and WASSCE, students are advised not to solve past questions. Solving past questions offers students an opportunity to test their knowledge and apply themselves to standard examination questions.
Just in case you want to fail the 2024 BECE or WASSCE, do your best not to solve past questions as part of your study routine.
These past questions can be solved in many ways. One of the best ways is to time yourself and solve the questions as though you were taking the final examination. After that, compare your solution to the suggested marking scheme.
Always check the way marks are allocated to the questions and master how to develop good answers to the questions.
You can also solve them by working with other serious candidates as a team of study group members. Solve and compare answers, and let one of the members who had the answer correct explain how it was solved. After that, all of you should try solving the same question again, this time faster than before.
The final suggestion for solving past questions is to discuss the answers and the approach to follow in answering the question among members of the study group. After the discussion, members can do their independent study and attempt to solve the question and similar ones.
Write incomplete answers, and do not read questions well.
A good piece of advice for students preparing for the BECE and WASSCE is that they should develop the bad habit of writing incomplete answers and not reading questions well.
Students who want to pass their examination, apart from preparing for the exam, also master reading and understanding the demands of questions. Once they understand the question, they move a step further to plan their answers. Through brainstorming, they jot down the points they want to explain for each question before they start writing answers.
If you do not plan your answers, chances are that you will mix things up or waste so much time thinking about what to write in between answers. This can create stress in the examination hall and cause you to lose focus.
READ: Mistakes To Avoid During The 2024 WASSCE and BECE
To pass the 2024 BECE and WASSCE…
- Always brainstorm questions and ask yourself.
- What topic is the question related to?
- What is the question asking me to provide answers to?
- Am I describing, discussing, stating, explaining, or defining?
- List the points and examples.
- Determine which points to explain first and second in that order.
- Plan your introduction.
- Start answering the question.
In explaining the 5 Ways to Failing the 2024 BECE and WASSCE Examinations, the tips and guides needed to excel have also been provided. You now know what to do to pass, apart from the hard work you have been doing.