How to practice the word-based questions for your GCSE Maths exam

The maths curriculum has changed a lot over the last few years, and whatever your parents tell you, the exams are not getting easier. Some of that extra difficulty comes from harder topics moving down into the Foundation paper. But a big chunk of it comes from something else entirely: contextual questions, and there are far more of them than there used to be.

In fact, on the current GCSE Maths specifications, roughly half of all the marks are awarded for reasoning, interpreting and problem-solving rather than for straightforward calculations. The exam boards are no longer just asking "can you do the maths?" They are asking "can you spot which maths to do?"

"Contextual questions" sounds like something out of a History lesson, where you take a source and put it into context. This is maths, so why should we care about context? It sounds odd, but context is actually the whole point. What's the use of knowing how to work out a percentage if you never learn when to use one? Why does Pythagoras matter if you want to be an architect? Contextual questions are how the exam checks you can take the maths out of the classroom and into the real world.

Strip away the fancy name, though, and what you're really facing is a wordy question: a wall of writing that, at first glance, doesn't seem to make much sense. The good news is that there is a reliable way to make sense of it. Even better, there is a reliable way to pick up a good chunk of the marks even if you can't see your way to the final answer.

Step 1: Learn to Spot the Maths Words

Examiners can't write a wordy question without leaving clues in it. Those clues are maths words: ordinary-looking English words that secretly tell you exactly which operation to perform. Once you train your eyes to spot them, half the battle is already won.

The maths isn't always hiding in the words, either. Sometimes it hides in the numbers and units. If you spot m², the question involves area. If you spot km/h, it involves speed. If you see prices in both pence and pounds, you can bet a conversion is coming. We'll see both kinds of clue in the worked examples below.

Worked Example 1: The Gas Meter Question

Let's put the method to work on a classic exam question. The first thing to do when you see a question like this is to stop panicking — it will get you nowhere (and screaming will get you thrown out of the exam hall, which helps no one). The second thing to do is read it calmly, hunting for maths words.

Did you spot the maths word? It's difference, and it's standing right out at you. Difference means subtract. So the very first move is to take the previous reading away from the present reading:

Here's the part students don't always realise: if you write that one line on your exam paper, you have just earned 2 of the 4 marks. Half the marks, and notice that we haven't even fully worked out what the question wants yet. All we did was find a maths word and do what it told us. That's not a trick, and the exam isn't trying to trick you either — it's simply checking whether you can follow the instructions hidden in the wording.

Now for the second half. Look back at the question and gather up what we know:

• 197 units of gas were used (we worked this out).
• Each unit costs 21p — there's our next maths word. "Each", when you're totting up a cost, means multiply.
• The answer must be given in pounds, but the price is in pence.

That last bullet point is the sneaky bit. The question mentions money in two different forms, so one of them has to be converted. Which one? Easy — they want the answer in pounds, so we convert the pence into pounds. There are 100 pence in a pound, so we divide by 100:

Now we're on the home straight. We used 197 units, and each one costs £0.21, so we multiply:

Four marks in the bag, and not one part of it was complicated. We found the maths words, did what they told us, and used the results to finish the job. That's the three-step method, start to finish.

Worked Example 2: Jim's Garden

This next one is slightly different, because the maths is better hidden. It isn't sitting in the words this time — it's tucked away in the numbers and units. See if you can spot it before we break it down.

Did you find it? The clue this time was m² — metres squared. And what are metres squared a measure of? Area. The question has quietly told us that we're going to need the area of that garden. Each bag covers a certain area, the diagram gives us a shape, so it stands to reason that working out the shape's area will tell us how much garden needs covering.

The slight snag is that the shape isn't a simple rectangle. There are two perfectly good ways to deal with it, and both earn full marks — so use whichever one clicks for you.

Method 1: Split It into a Compound Shape

A compound shape is just a shape made out of simpler shapes stuck together. To find its area, we split it into pieces, find the area of each piece, and add them up. Watch what happens when we draw one vertical line:

The line splits the garden into a rectangle that is 12 m by 9 m, and a triangle that is 9 m tall. We aren't told the triangle's base directly, but we can work it out: the bottom edge of the whole garden is 18 m and the top edge is 12 m, so the triangle's base is the leftover bit — 18 − 12 = 6 m.

• Rectangle: 12 × 9 = 108 m²
• Triangle: half of base × height, so (6 × 9) ÷ 2 = 54 ÷ 2 = 27 m²
• Total: 108 + 27 = 135 m²

Method 2: Recognise the Trapezium

The second way is to recognise that the whole shape is a trapezium — a four-sided shape with one pair of parallel sides. The area of a trapezium is found by adding the two parallel sides, halving the result, then multiplying by the height:

Both methods land on exactly the same answer, 135 m², and the examiner is equally happy with either. At this point we've already earned 3 of the 5 marks — again, without fully untangling what the question is asking. We just looked for the maths and did the logical thing with it.

Finishing the Job

Now we go back to the question for those last 2 marks. Each bag covers 20 m², and we need to cover 135 m². How many bags? Divide:

If dividing feels risky, there's an even simpler back-up: count up in 20s until you pass 135. That gives 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120, 140 — seven jumps, so 7 bags. Same answer, no division required.

Why This Works: How Method Marks Are Awarded

You might be wondering whether this is all a bit too good to be true. It isn't, and the reason lies in how GCSE Maths papers are marked. Most wordy questions are worth 3, 4 or 5 marks, and those marks are split between method marks (for showing a correct step of working) and accuracy marks (for the right final answer). The mark scheme actively rewards you for every correct step you put on paper, whether or not you reach the end.

That's why "find the maths and do what it says" is such a powerful strategy. In both of our examples, the first calculation alone was worth around half the marks. Across a whole paper, picking up half marks on the questions you find baffling can easily be the difference of a whole grade.

Your Turn: Practice Question

Pulling It All Together

Does all this mean you should skim questions and never bother reading them properly? Absolutely not. Always read the full question — but read it like a detective, hunting for the maths as you go. If the question still doesn't make sense after a careful read, don't panic and don't skip it. Fall back on the routine:

As long as you find the maths in the question, you will always pick up some of the marks — and more often than you'd expect, you'll find the full answer was hiding in plain sight all along.