A low score by itself is not a diagnosis
Two students can both score 50, one losing points to vocabulary and the other to poor time management, and the next step for each is completely different. The number alone does not tell you the cause.
So deciding to “assign more practice problems” based on the score alone skips the diagnosis step, and can end up being the long way round.
Breaking the lost points down by cause
When marking a past paper, it helps to note not just right and wrong, but which skill each question was actually testing.
| Skill | What to check |
|---|---|
| Vocabulary | Did she not know the word, or know it but still miss the sentence's meaning? |
| Grammar | Is the sentence structure being misread (tense, passive voice, comparatives)? |
| Reading | Can she follow the passage as a whole, not just each sentence individually? |
| Listening | Is she hearing the sounds but slow to convert them into meaning? |
| Writing | Is she stuck forming an opinion, or stuck turning it into English? |
| Time management | Did she run out of time, or would she have missed it regardless? |
| Reading the question | Is she misreading what is actually being asked? |
| Careless errors | Could she have gotten it right just by double-checking? |
How to analyse this at home
Judging from a single past paper can be misleading: one attempt can just be an off day. Where possible, look across two or three papers together and check whether the same type of mistake keeps showing up.
A repeating pattern is a strong signal that skill is worth prioritising. Mistakes that come from a different cause each time, on the other hand, can point to unstable foundations across the board.
Why “just study more” does not always solve it
Increasing study volume without first identifying the cause often means repeating practice on what is already solid, while the actual weak point goes untouched.
In particular, if timed repeat drilling continues without separating “ran out of time” from “didn’t know it even with time,” the underlying weak point tends to stay hidden.
The analytical approach Petra Tutors takes
At Petra Tutors, we look beyond the raw score to where points are concentrated and whether the same mistake keeps recurring, and set study priorities from there.
Doing this kind of analysis alone at home takes real time. We are working on a more structured way to do this kind of past-paper analysis, which we expect to be able to offer as part of a free trial lesson going forward.
