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Hi,
I failed SBL in the March sitting and I suspect it was primarily to do with my timings during the exam. I struggle with how to distribute the recommended 40 minutes for reading and annotation between all of the paper and I think I became too bogged down on certain parts of the annotation. I wondered if you had any suggestions or advice on this and how to focus my time more effectively? This is my final exam and all of the other exams have been clearer in terms of cut off of timing e.g if a question takes the 20 minutes and you reached this but you haven’t finished the answer just move on and come back if you have time later. This has always worked for me in the past but I found this harder to execute in this exam.
Any recommendations would be great!
40 minutes is reasonable for reading, annotation and planning. The first question will certainly take up 20 minutes or even longer. I think disproportionately longer is needed for 50 mark questions than 25 mark questions ie if you find 5 mins is ok for a 25 marker, 15 mins might be needed for a 50 marker because making sense of all the data is more involved.
Q1 can have question parts that rely predominantly on one exhibit and, if so, do your planning etc in stages, not all at the start (though all of the question has to be read in case of relevant information being at a different location). That should focus your preparatory work.
It is still important to try to move on after time’s up. Overall, there are 2.4 minutes per mark, so you need to try to stick to that for each question or question part. However, inevitably a little flexibility will be needed as questions vary so much.
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