The Curious Incident of the Dog After the Anaesthetic, and Other Mysteries of the English Exam Brain

This week my puppy had surgery.  It was routine, the sort of procedure vets perform every day of the week with calm efficiency. The interesting part, as it turns out, happens afterwards.

Anyone who has watched a dog wake up from anaesthetic will recognise the moment  The eyes open first, followed by a faint sense that the world has become deeply suspicious.  My normally confident puppy stood up, wobbled, stared at the floor as if it had personally betrayed her, walked in a determined circle, and then seemed to forget why she had stood up at all.  To say I felt guilty is an understatement. 

There's a certain look only a disgruntled puppy has...

There was a particular look on her face: confusion mixed with mild indignation, as though the laws of physics had been quietly rewritten while she was asleep. And I realised I have seen this exact expression many times before.  Usually across a desk when a teenager opens an English exam paper.  Go with me on this one.

Students often assume that the difficulty with English exams is a lack of knowledge.  Not enough quotations memorised, not enough context, not enough clever things to say about imagery or structure.  So they try to carry everything into the exam hall with them, hoping that somehow it will all organise itself into a coherent argument once the clock starts ticking.  Take a look at their multi-coloured, land-filled revision notes if you don't believe me.

However, what frequently happens instead is rather like the post-anaesthetic puppy.  The knowledge is in there somewhere, but it is floating around in a kind of intellectual fog.  A quotation appears, but the analysis wanders off.  An idea begins confidently and then dissolves halfway through the paragraph.  The brain knows what it wants to say, but the sentences refuse to line up in the right order.

At that moment the problem is rarely information; the problem was the lack of focused revision strategy.  Once students understand how to revise properly, planning essays, building arguments, and moving from idea to quotation to analysis (even evaluation), something very reassuring happens.  The fog lifts.  The essay begins to move forward again with a sense of direction.  The thinking becomes clearer because the framework is clear.

Watching my puppy eventually remember how legs work was oddly encouraging.  The wobble steadied.  The confusion passed.  A few hours later she was back in the garden inspecting things with the grave authority of a creature who believes she runs the household (which, of course, she does).

The brain, it turns out, is remarkably good at finding its balance again once it has the right support.