Advice from a lead Examiner (AQA A-level Sociology Paper 2)

In this episode, Matthew talks to Kate Flatley about Paper 2 for the AQA A-level Sociology exam. Kate is a lead/senior examiner and here she explains some top tips in terms of what the examiners are looking for and how to structure questions.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Hi, You're listening to a studentfocused episode of the Sociology Show podcast.
If you're studying the subject at gcsA level, foundation degree, or any
other discipline, then this podcast couldbe of help to you. If you
have a question for the show,then you can email the Sociology Show podcasts
the Gmail dot com and one ofthe teachers, lecturers, examiners, or

(00:27):
experts will answer your question for you. You can sponsor the show on the
go fund me page and subscribe onall the usual podcast platforms. If you're
going to class, going to thegym, or just chilling, put your
headphones in and let's be sociology geatstogether. Ah Hello, and welcome to

(00:48):
the Sociology Show podcast. This episodeis for those of you taking AQUA A
Level sociology paper two and I waslucky enough in this episode to be able
to talk to Kate Flatley. Kateis a lead examiner or a senior examiner,
and Kate gives her advice on dusand don'ts for this paper. How
to structure the questions, how todo the ten marker the second ten marker

(01:08):
remember those two are slightly different fromeach other. And how to do the
twenty marker and a few tips interms of how to get up to the
very top levels if you are aimingfor the A and the A Star bracket.
So, without further ado, let'sgo over to the interview with Kate
Flatley. Okay, would you mindstarting by telling us a little bit about
who you are and you'll roll withthe AQUA please. Hi. Yeah,

(01:32):
So my name's Kate Flatley and Iam a senior examiner for AQUA. So
I've been marking for quite a fewyears now, just starting off as a
general examiner, but now I'm classedas a team leader. So I go
down and I standard as before thelead examiners and the other team leaders.
Thank you very much, Thank youvery much. So we're gonna focus on

(01:53):
Paper two, the topics in sociology. Obviously there's three questions on the paper,
and just want to talk a littlebit about the stre and sort of
dos and don't wests tend to goright where they tend to go wrong,
and so starting with the ten markers, obviously there's two of them. What
is the difference in terms of whatthe examiners are looking for in terms of
the students answer. So the firstterm marker that you'll get is a outline

(02:16):
and explain. So their focus ison application, and they will be looking
for you to apply links across twodifferent topics, okay self. For example,
if you're looking at say the familytopic, it will be asking you
to make links between maybe a changein gender roles and impact on policies or

(02:37):
childhood or something like that. Sothat is about application by the linking two
topics together. The second is applyingmaterial from the item, So they're looking
for you to show application from somethingfrom the item that will help you answer
the question. And sometimes there's oftena little bit of application to another within

(03:00):
the question as well. Okay,So they're both about application, but in
different ways. And when you doget a question with the item, students
are often concerned how much do theyhave to refer to it? Do they
have to quote from it? Howmany times? So for this ten mark
question, what's your advice on thatone? So the ten mark with the
item is that the instruction is veryexplicit to say apply from the item,

(03:24):
and it tells you it three timesin the question. It'll say read the
item, and then it'll tell youit in the question, and it'll tell
you in bold the item as well, so the instruction is clearly there.
So if you don't make any referenceto the item at all, you are
going to cap your marks at threemarks. And that might mean that you've
answered the question really well, you'veshowed excellent knowledge, you've analyzed, and

(03:46):
you've done everything else that the questionis asking you to do. But if
you don't apply it from the item, you don't draw your knowledge from whatever
the hook has been placed in theitem, you are going to cap yourself
at three. What if the studenthe makes one link to the item it's
really well made, is that enoughto get to the top. So if
they only apply the item once,the maximum amount of marks that they can

(04:09):
get is seven. Others are oftena misconception that because the question is asking
for two paragraphs or two ways,that the marks are equally balanced between the
two paragraphs, that you get fivemarks with paragraph one, five marks with
paragraph two, and that is notthe case. The mark scheme explicitly says
that you can have once or tworeasons applied from the item analyzed and so

(04:32):
on to get seven marks. Youcan do it in one way, so
you can get seven marks from oneparagraph. So I always advise students that
if they're running out of time orthey are a bit on shore, I
would also say to them do oneparagraph really really well, because then at
least you know that you can geta maximum of seven. You know,

(04:54):
if they're thinking about time management,maybe yeah, that's really good advice.
Good advice. And then working ourway through the three questions. Then so
they thinking about the structure question one, what would you expect the structure to
look like? For the first tenmarker? So, because it's asking you
to show application between the two differentparts of the specification that you are being

(05:15):
asked about, you will need toshow knowledge about both of those different parts.
So I would start off with thefirst part and then show how does
it link to the second. Butit does also depend on what the questions
asking actually ask him, because ifit's asking for a reason, you would
have to say, well, whatthe reason was, and how does part
A link to part be? Orif it's asking for a way, it's

(05:38):
more about you need to talk theexaminer through a process of how the first
thing has led to an impact onthe second thing. So it does depend
on what the questions asking, butdefinitely show a bit of knowledge about what
part A is and then how thathas logically led to something that's going to
happen with Part B. And thenadd you analysis and at the bottom right,

(06:00):
and would you expect to see asociologist or theory in every paragraph as
well? I would expect the studentanswer to be conceptually detailed. I would
expect them to make reference to theories, not necessarily sociologist names. It's not
about the names. It's about howwell they can show the explanation of what

(06:20):
is something is being explained. Andstudents often get hung up about but I
don't know who said what, Andit's just really reassuring for them to know
that it's not about the sociologist names. It's about the explanations that they're given
in their answers. Thank you,thank you, And for the second ten,

(06:41):
what would you expect that to looklike? So? I think a
logical way to answer it is startoff with the item and then you basically
show what do you know about thathook in the item, explain what that
is, and then apply it ina way that answers what the questions asking.
So I would start with that,but I have since students that have

(07:02):
given their explanation and then said thisis drawn from the item at the end.
So there isn't a hard and fastway of structuring that, but I
think logically it would make sense tostart from the item hook and then develop
your answer from that way. Yeah, I think that's as good as not
logical way. Yeah, because ifstudents then forget to make the link,

(07:23):
they say no, they've done itstraight away, then yeah, definitely,
definitely. And then onto the twentywhat would you imagine a good twenty market
looks like? So a good twentymarket is you would be probably expecting a
student to be writing about three tofour paragraphs about whatever the question is asking.

(07:43):
And again it's following that really strongstructure in the fact that they might
have used the item as a pointof reference. The items there to give
you clues, so they might drawsome knowledge from that, applying sociological knowledge
so that could be through concept orit could be referencing theories or through studies
that they might know, and thenmaking sure that as they go along they're

(08:07):
analyzing and evaluating. And the topband answers will do those skills consistently throughout
the maybe three or four paragraphs,depending on timing. A top band answer
would also come to a reasoned conclusionas well. So whatever the question is
asking, they will go back tothe overall picture of what the question is

(08:28):
and make a direct reference to thatin that final paragraph, thank you,
and you just mentioned top band.Thinking about top band, one of the
most common questions I get is whatmakes a star distinctive from say an A
grade or a high B grade.So to get to that very top,
what does an A star answer looklike? So an astar student and an

(08:48):
answer that an A star student wouldproduce would be answering explicitly what the question
is asking. Okay, so let'ssay the question was about the division of
labor. A good student will writea lot of knowledge about the division of
labor. They will analyze it,they will evaluate it as they go along.
But an a Star answer will reallyknit their answer explicitly to what the

(09:13):
question is actually asking, and theywon't deviate from it too much, if
that makes sense, but they willbring in It's like when you read it,
you can tell that they really understandwhat they are writing about, and
that really does come across and it'sreally hard to explain it. It's really

(09:33):
hard to teach it explicitly. Butwhat I would recommend for students to do
if they are aiming for the Astar is read as much as they can
look at you different textbooks, differentviewpoints, so they can formulate a real
good understanding about the different topics thatthey're studying. And that really does come

(09:56):
across when they answer the question andthey understand what the questions asking and their
answers really knit very closely to that. Yeah, a lot of students a
kind of answered by rote, don'tthey They've learned something and they're just regurgitating
it rather than specifically what the questionsactually actually asking. And what about a

(10:16):
star in general? Across all threepapers? How's the student going to achieve
that? So I would say thatif they were aiming for the A star
is that they would probably do it. From year one. You'd probably start
to see them having those habits andthose qualities that is really getting them to

(10:37):
be that A star student in thefact that they are reading around the subject,
they've got that genuine interest in societyand the topics that they're being studied,
and they're just constantly practicing and honingtheir skills throughout the two year course
to being really practicing exam questions,looking how they've been worded, looking at

(11:00):
the mark schemes, but also lookingat the examiner reports because they give you
such a really good insight to whystudents got high marks and worse students loss
marks, and the common misconceptions thatthere were, so then you can avoid
falling into those traps. And Ithink, you know, doing things like
that really will give you that advantage. And and I think it's sort of

(11:22):
remembering that if you look at theexam paper, and you know, we're
equa if you look at the exampapers, we're quite lucky in the fact
that when you drew a tem marker, the skills are the same for whether
it's a teen marker outline and explainon paper one, a tem marker outline
and explain on paper two or paperthree, same with a thirty marker.

(11:45):
You know. The only difference isthat one twenty market methods in context,
which is approached slightly different from allthe other questions, but actually in terms
of skills that it's very consistent acrossall the three papers, and I know,
some different subjects. What you doon paper one, it's totally different
from what you do on paper twoand what you do on paper three for
example. So sociology is a verygood subject if you are very you know,

(12:11):
if you can practice those skills andalso think synoptically, there's a lot
of overlaps that you can be usingand drawing upon your understanding from different topics
to give yourself a really good answer. Thank you, okay, thank you,
And just one final question, ifyou've got any other advice, particularly
for paper two. Top tips dosand don'ts so massive top tip and this

(12:35):
is what's something that I've read fromthe examin of ports that I've been looking
at for the past few years,and they students always run out a time
on that final essay whatever it ison section B. So I would be
recommending students to be practicing time.Stick to your timing, you know.
So they recommend it's an hour onsection and our on section B fifteen minutes

(12:58):
per ten marker, morothly thirty minutesfor a twenty marker. Obviously a just
if we've got extra time or examaccess arrangements, but really just focus on
your time and you don't compromise markson the bigger questions that you potentially probably
could answer quite well, and you'dhave probably really good solid knowledge about and

(13:20):
spending too long on maybe section astwo ten markers, so definitely be practicing
time in as well. To meblack Man, that's excellent. Thank you
so much for helping out. Okay, I really do appreciate it and some
top advice there. Oh, thankyou so much for inviting me. It
was good. Yes, thank you. If you are a regular listener to

(13:41):
The Sociology Show, then you couldhelp with the cost of promoting and hosting
the podcast. If you can spareeven a small amount, then you can
donate on the GoFundMe dot com websiteby searching for the Sociology Show. There
is no obligation, of course,and all future downloads will continue to be
free. A huge thank you toall those that have already donated. Your

(14:03):
kind gesture will help to continue keepthe show going and growing. Best wishes
and keep enjoying the show. Thankyou for taking the time to listen to
the podcast. If you would liketo contact the show or be interviewed,
then please email The Sociology Show podcastat gmail dot com.