Brevity is the soul of wit and also in getting an A* in exams, it appears.
Teenagers would be best heeding Shakespeare’s wisdom by keeping their GCSE and A level answers succinct.
Analysis by Cambridge Assessment, one of the main exam boards, has found that verbosity brings no benefits.
Examiners have told pupils not to confuse quantity with quality and said that a candidate recently secured an A* in English literature A level by writing two essays each three pages long. At the other end of the spectrum, a pupil who filled 27 pages earned only an E grade.
The analysis follows a similar investigation into GCSE English, which showed that the average candidate wrote 13 words a minute, or 780 an hour. A level English candidates wrote 17 words a minute, or 1,020 words an hour.
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Tom Benton, a statistician at the exam board, said: “As with GCSE analysis, quantity does not trump quality. The curve flattens off at around 1,300 words per essay [in A level], and so writing more than this isn’t consistently associated with getting higher marks. There are examples of candidates achieving full marks with fairly succinct answers, and of very long responses resulting in a low grade.”
The exam board said that the analysis showed a “Goldilocks effect”, with candidates advised not to write too little nor too much.
The data came from a two-hour A level English literature exam in June 2016. Candidates were required to supply two essay answers, each of which could be awarded a maximum of 30 marks. The word counts were collected by computer processing digital images of a sample of 5,010 handwritten scripts. The total word count was then halved to give the estimated word count per essay.
School exam scripts are still handwritten, leading to aching fingers for many pupils and training in writing for long periods in the build-up to exams.
Cambridge University is considering allowing its students to type exams. A reported dip in the quality of students’ handwriting is one reason for the proposed change, which is being investigated by a committee at the university.
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Last years Sarah Pearsall, senior lecturer in the history faculty, told Cambridge’s Varsity magazine: “Student exam scripts are without question becoming harder to read. Handwriting is becoming a lost art.”