Biology HL

[censored]

I've been working through some past papers and noticed that in each paper there is usually a question with multiple answers and/or one to which the answer in the mark scheme is simply a "dash" (-). I was wondering about the latter... does this mean that there is no answer? In which case, would any response you choose be wrong, or does it mean that any answer would be accepted? Either way, this is very misleading. Cos it says that you should answer every question in the beginning instructions. Hope you see what I'm getting at!

[moneyfaery]

Sometimes, teachers can appeal to questions that are 'unfair' or ambiguous. It just might have been such a case where the question was deemed as such and removed. I don't know how they would count it though.

[censored]

Cool, thanks. That would make more sense.

[Vvi]

I was wondering the same thing, because one question on an old exam paper was "Which one of the following most affects the rate of photosynthesis: a) temperature b) C02 concentration c) light intensity and I forgot what D was".

But in any case, the answer on the markscheme was a question mark, probably because there is no mention in the syllabus about which one of these would be the correct answer (and so most students that year probably geussed the answer, causing the examiners to ask it to be removed).

Maybe they give everyone an extra mark then, to make it out of 30 and leave the weighting the same. Or then they mark it out of 29 and adjust the weighting. Not sure.

[Ruan Chun Xian]

They give everyone an extra mark. Goes for all science paper 1

[tazz]

The biology (HL) paper 1's are notorious for TERRIBLE questions, (at least from my experience.) My teacher gave us about five past paper 1,2,and3's to study from and all of the paper 1's had like three or four questions that were either extremeley ambiguous or had multiple answers for different situations (but only one answer was accepted.) For example, in the may 2005 paper 1 (I think) there was a graph question dealing with enzyme/substrate concentration. The question had two answers. On the same test there was a question asking the sutdent to identify which of the following substances contained hydrogen bonds. The choices were a.) water b.) DNA c.) obvious wrong answer d.) obvious wrong answer. The correct answer in the marking scheme was B, but how is it wrong if you choose A?

[Sandwich]

The biology (HL) paper 1's are notorious for TERRIBLE questions, (at least from my experience.) My teacher gave us about five past paper 1,2,and3's to study from and all of the paper 1's had like three or four questions that were either extremeley ambiguous or had multiple answers for different situations (but only one answer was accepted.) For example, in the may 2005 paper 1 (I think) there was a graph question dealing with enzyme/substrate concentration. The question had two answers. On the same test there was a question asking the sutdent to identify which of the following substances contained hydrogen bonds. The choices were a.) water b.) DNA c.) obvious wrong answer d.) obvious wrong answer. The correct answer in the marking scheme was B, but how is it wrong if you choose A?

If teachers kick up a fuss, fortunately, they do reconsider questions. Usually they use some statistics to work out how discriminatory a question was between candidates, and supposedly to identify guesswork that way. Sometimes in the markscheme, after a reconsideration, some questions are allowed 2 answers.

They do tend to be rubbish at inventing them though, I agree.