After marking thousands of exam papers, the same mistakes come up again and again. The frustrating thing? Most of them have nothing to do with not knowing the maths. They’re avoidable errors — if you know to look for them.
Here are the five most common ones.
Mistake 1: Not Reading the Question Properly
This is the biggest one, and it costs more marks than anything else.
Mathematical Literacy questions — especially in Paper 2 — are long. There’s context, tables, maps, and multiple parts. Students who rush read the first line, spot a number, and start calculating. Then they answer the wrong thing entirely.
How to avoid it: Read the full question before picking up your pen. Underline exactly what’s being asked. Only then start calculating.
A useful habit: read the question, ask yourself “what am I actually being asked to find?”, and write that down in one sentence before you start.
Mistake 2: Not Showing Working
If your final answer is wrong but your method is correct, you can still earn method marks — but only if you’ve shown your working.
A blank page with a wrong answer gets zero. The same wrong answer with clear steps might still earn 2 or 3 marks.
How to avoid it: Write every step, even if it feels obvious. Don’t do calculations in your head. Show the formula, show the substitution, show the answer.
Mistake 3: Forgetting Units
Maths Literacy is full of unit conversions and measurements. Students calculate the right number and then write it with the wrong unit — or no unit at all.
Examples of where this goes wrong:
- Calculating in centimetres but the question asks for metres
- Giving an area answer without writing cm² or m²
- Calculating time but writing it as a decimal instead of hours and minutes
How to avoid it: As you write your final answer, check: does this answer have a unit? Is it the right unit? Make unit conversion a deliberate last step.
Mistake 4: Misreading Tables and Graphs
MathLit exams are full of data — tables, bar graphs, pie charts, line graphs. A lot of students lose marks not because they can’t calculate, but because they read the wrong value from the table or misinterpret what the graph is showing.
Common errors:
- Reading the wrong row or column in a table
- Misreading the scale on a graph axis
- Confusing a cumulative graph with a regular one
How to avoid it: Before reading a value from a table or graph, check the headings and axis labels first. Run your finger along the row and column to make sure you’re reading the right intersection.
Mistake 5: Running Out of Time on Paper 2
Paper 2 is 3 hours and 150 marks. That’s just over a minute per mark — but because the questions are long and require lots of reading, many students spend too long on early questions and run out of time at the end.
How to avoid it: Know your time budget. With 3 hours for 150 marks, budget roughly 1.2 minutes per mark. If a question is worth 5 marks, you should spend no more than 6 minutes on it. Move on if you’re stuck — come back at the end.
Practice doing past papers under timed conditions. Timing is a skill, and the only way to get better at it is to practice with a clock running.
None of these mistakes require you to learn new maths. They just require awareness and practice. Go through your last test and honestly identify which of these you made — then work on that one specifically.
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