Going over word count in Paper 2

[Guest]

Do examiners really count every single word in Paper 2? And do they really take away marks if you're over word count? (I'm in SL so this would be 400 words). Even if I was just 5 words over the word count, would I still lose the same amount of marks as if I was 100 words over?

 

[SC2Player]

I'm assuming you're talking about language B paper 2, and so I'm going to go by what my Chinese teacher says (seeing that I'm taking Chinese B SL).  Apparently it's ok for us to go over the word limit by a pretty large amount, even up to about 200 words over (word limit is supposed to be 360-480, but teacher says that we can go up to 600 or even 700 if we feel the need to).  However, if you feel that you don't need to go beyond the limit, and can state what you want to convey in fewer words, then don't force yourself to add more.  In fact, this is probably better - it'll make your piece more concise, and you won't have superfluous words, so examiners should be able to really get what you're trying to say.