If your goal is to get a good mark, you must be aware of what your teachers and examiners expect from you, and get on the same wave length.
Don’t tell me you don’t know what ASHQ means?
No, it’s not a new behavioural disorder!
It stands for the Advanced Strategies for Handling Questions.
Never heard of it? Well that’s probably because I just made it up.
So what do you need it for? In order to deal with enemy no.1 during an oral exam: THE UNEXPECTED QUESTION! But how?
It is a little bit being the coach of a sports team preparing the tactics for the BIG MATCH.
First of all, it is important to study who will be out there facing you.
In your case the audience or the teachers or other members of the board.
First of all, who are they?
Dai Namite your Welsh chemistry teacher, a bit slow but with an explosive temper
Dr Al Gorithm, your insanely meticulous IT teacher
and Fraulein Killer, the scary German language assistant
Teachers are all different, with their own preferences and pet hates.
Try to predict what their moves might be and guess what they may want to hear.
Try to predict not only what they expect from you in terms of content, but also what they expect from your performance, in other words how you communicate your knowledge.
There are those who like to hear exactly what they taught you.
Others who prefer students who express their own personal opinions, or present new and different things. Then there are those who like it long, or others who easily get bored if you’re not concise and cut out the needless “waffle”.
So, if your aim is to get a good mark, try to imagine what the audience wants and get on the same wave length.
