There are typically three reasons schools run a trial English exam:
*It allows students to practise performing under exam conditions.
*It provides students with information about their current level of performance.
*It provides teachers with information about where their students are at.
But when you closely examine these reasons, are they actually as convincing as they first appear? Let’s consider them one by one.
Practice exams are often held five or six weeks before the real thing. So are students really practising exam conditions, or are they preparing for the exam? And if it’s about becoming comfortable with exam conditions, is completing a single practice exam enough to make a meaningful difference?
The second and third reasons raise a similar question. What useful information are students and teachers really getting about performance six or seven weeks before the real exam? Feedback from a practice exam can take weeks to be returned and, when it finally arrives, it is often little more than a score. How much can students actually learn from that?
This isn’t an argument against running practice exams. Rather, it’s an argument for thinking more critically about why we run them and how we use them pedagogically.
One genuinely valuable purpose of an early practice exam is that it can become the starting point for a structured revision plan. If students complete a self-feedback checklist (like the one in the accompanying image) immediately after the exam, it provides a foundation for a post-exam lesson in which they identify priorities and map out their study for the weeks ahead. You can work through each item on the checklist together, discussing practical strategies students can use to improve each area. In this way, the practice exam becomes much more than a score—it becomes a tool for planning, reflection and targeted improvement.
To download a Word version of the checklist, click here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12k3p4CUH62X7To6CBFZ3YFTYDipuKcZP/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=106164061503417626351&rtpof=true&sd=true
To purchase Ticking Mind’s 2026 VCE English Practice Exam, click here: https://www.tickingmind.com.au/product/2026-ticking-mind-practice-vce-unit-34-english-exam/
