Randomramblings

I have read many books on effective studying and exam preparation and since it is exam time at University in Slovenia, a quick glance over strategies for doing well on exams can't hurt.

Naturally, the best way for doing well on exams is to prepare thoroughly. Second best way is to know how to answer the exam questions effectively.

In the exam, read over all of your choices and make selections early. Divide your time so you know how many minutes (approximately) you have per question and in an essay style exam make a brief plan for each question before writing. Plan a little time to review, usually 5 to 10 minutes will be enough for an hour-long exams.

Begin with the easiest alternative to accumulate marks quickly and boost your confidence. Read over the questions and plan time. Note the relative worth of questions so you can plan your time accordingly. A question worth 50% of the grade should probably take 50% of the allotted time. Decide which questions you want to do, if you have a choice. It is often advisable to begin with questions you can do readily. Do not worry about doing the questions in order unless the professor specifies otherwise.

If you fall seriously behind your time plan during the exam, leave adequate space for the question you are working on, and start answering the other questions. You will be more likely to get a passing grade if you answer all the required questions at least partially rather than trying to make one or two answers perfect.

Re-read the questions, noting what each question asks you to do. At this point your knowledge about organizing essays from key words like "compare and contrast" and "discuss" will be helpful in focusing you on what you have to write and how to organize the answer. Students sometimes lose grades or fail exams because they fail to answer the question; instead they ramble on about material that may be related to the question but not precisely what the question requires.

Organize your thoughts before beginning to write with a brief outline. A well-organized answer will be better received than one with a less coherent presentation. Write a brief introduction including your statement or thesis adapted from the question you are answering. Tell the reader how you will prove this. Keep your point straightforward and clear. To do this, use clear transitions to link your points. Also, include some examples or references to authors of your course. Examples demonstrate your grasp of the subject matter. References to specific and precise examples from readings and lectures support and illustrate your point.

Sum up to reinforce the coherence of your answer and review the paper for errors, legibility, and for things you might want to change. When writing essay answers, favour a direct, concise, precise writing style. Do not waste time trying to compose a graceful lead paragraph as you might if you were writing an essay; get to the point quickly and directly. State what you intend to discuss and develop those ideas with well-chosen examples. Demonstrate that you can analyze and evaluate the subject matter and not merely repeat information from readings and lectures. The essay exam is an exercise in thinking and expressing yourself, not in memorizing and parroting.
Be sure to write legibly, even if you have to print, and write on every other line. If your writing is virtually indecipherable, you may lose credit because the grader cannot understand what you have written. Writing on every other line produces a less crowded appearance, and also allows you to add material to your original answers when you proof-read them. If you use several exam sheets, be sure to number them before handing them in, for example, "1 of 3," "2 of 3," "3 of 3." Protect yourself if one booklet becomes misplaced.

Wih OPEN BOOK EXAMS, the important point to remember is that you should prepare effectively and thoroughly. Do not expect to be able to simply look up everything you do not know: you will not have adequate time to do so. Be prepared to use your texts and notes efficiently. Know where to locate information you might need when writing your answers (quotations, dates, definitions, graphs, diagrams, etc.); you can also mark the important pages with some post-its. But do not let yourself be drawn into a false sense of security so that you do little or no prior preparation.

For MULTIPLE CHOICE EXAMS the following strategies come in handy: Start with the easy questions. Don't waste time labouring over troublesome questions at the start. Be sure to get credit for items you know well. When you come to the end of the test, recycle - try to answer the questions you could not do on the first attempt. Sometimes the answer will occur to you just because you are more relaxed after having answered other questions. Sometimes an answer to one question provides a clue to the answer of another.

Allocate your time according to the relative worth of questions. Try to save a few minutes at the end for revision. Your first answer may not always be your best answer. Change answers, but only if you have a good reason for doing so. For instance, changing an answer from "b" just because your response to the previous four questions was also "b" and you cannot believe that five questions in a row would have the same item as the correct response, is likely not a good reason.

Read the questions carefully, twice if necessary. Avoid jumping to onclusions about what you think the question asks. Circle or underline key words in questions! Multiple choice tests examine your ability to read carefully as much as they test your ability to recall and reason. Watch for words like "all," "always," "never," "none," "few," "many," some," "sometimes."

Try to recall a concept from memory before looking at the options. Doing this successfully may help you "wade through" the alternatives and find a reasonable answer or choice. Also consider reading the question and try to answer it by recalling before looking at the alternative answers.

Sometimes the alternatives differ in one or two words or in the order of one or two terms. These can seem very confusing. It helps sometimes to read the stem of the question with an lternative while covering up the others. By methodically thinking through the alternatives this way, you may be able to make more sense of the options by labelling them true or false and eliminating those that don't correctly complete the question.

Use the hint of highly similar pairs - this says that often the answer is imbedded in one of two very similar pairs and the "most correct" answer is often the one that correctly uses course terminology; consider the all or none of the above cues - if two of the preceding alternatives are opposites then one of them and the all or none of the above choice is also wrong. Consider guessing when there is no penalty for a wrong answer.

Be alert to terminology which links the alternatives or questions to key areas of the course, lectures, or chapters of a course's materials -- this may help you narrow the field of possible choices and think through to the best answer.

Be wary of the words which are overly exclusive or overly inclusive. These absolute terms tend to portray things as right or wrong where this is often not the case. Words like always, never, completely, and only are absolutes. Relative words like often, usually, seem and may are often more accurate.

Translate double negative statements into positive ones. Examples like "Not lacking" or "not none" become "having" and "some" and this can reduce confusion. Note that these are often partly in the stem and partly in the choices of a particular question.

If you must guess, look for some of these possibilities: the style of an answer option is very different from all of the others - this may disqualify it; the grammar of the question stem is not in agreement with the grammar of an alternative; some alternative is not in the area or topic of the question, but comes from some other part of the course- this may disqualify it.

Overall, remember that you are looking for the best answer, not only a correct one, and ot one which must be true all of the time, in all cases, and without exception.

I hope this helped and wish you luck in your upcoming exams.