So you've got exams coming up? You've worked hard, so you just need to show what you are capable of in each exam. Reminding yourself now about exam techniques - and examiners - will pay off. Get into the examiner's head with the following ten tips, and turn your effort, skills and knowledge into good grades!

1. Spend the first 5-10 mins reading the instructions and the paper. Underline important points, and make a note of exactly how many questions you need to answer from each section, and which ones are compulsory. This is time well spent. You are avoiding wasting time on mistaken extras, as well as allowing your brain extra time to recall and work out answers.

2. Read each question a few times. Underlining important words in the question - such as predict, outline and explain - helps you to stay on track, and so gain most marks.

3. Work out how you're going to divide your time between all the questions you have to do, but make sure you look at the marks awarded for each part of an answer. Obviously, if there are 20 marks for one part of a question, and S for the second part, you know you need to include a lot more information in the first part.

4. If you can't answer part of a question, don't worry about it. Just leave it and go on to the next part. It's a good idea to leave some space on the page, because you can always come back to that difficult bit towards the end of the exam. It's amazing how your memory may be jogged while you're picking up marks answering other parts of the paper.

5. Read through-what you have written, and you can score many marks by adding points or correcting errors. While you're doing this checking, ask yourself "does this answer sound or look right?" You can often spot simple mistakes, such as if you've been asked to calculate the percentage of boys in a class of 20, 14 of whom are boys. If the answer on your calculator is 0.7, you know this isn't a sensible possibility. You've forgotten to multiply by 100 Correct your answer to 70%.

6. Always show your working, because there may be more marks for that than for the final answer to a question. Also, even if your actual answer is wrong, you'll still pick up marks for your working, up to the point when things went wrong!

7. Write down only what you are asked for in as few good sentences as you can: sadly, no one ever received a single mark for waffle Also, be selective about what you write, because there are no marks, either, for lengthy renderings of everything you know but weren't asked about.

8. Units are important in maths and science - marks are usually only awarded for answers accompanied by units. So, if the answer to a question is 34 grams, write 34g. Remember to include decimal places, rounded up to the nearest 2, unless asked to do otherwise. An answer such as 34.128456 should be recorded as 34.13.

9. If a question asks for a single answer, and you're not sure of it, make a decision, but don't write down a list of possibilities! Remarkably, examiners say this sort of chance-taking is common. Even if the first answer in your list may be correct, your second answer will cancel out the mark you could have scored for it.

10. Good handwriting helps the examiner enormously, and good grammar and punctuation also count, even in exams other than English Language. Examiners always try to read answers, however badly written they are, but cannot award marks if an answer cannot be read or fully understood.

C. Durbin