Exam Writing Strategies Part

Knowing the material on exams is only half the battle; you also need to make sure that you have good exam writing strategies. Your performance during this 3 hour period will determine 30% of your grade, so make sure that those 3 hours are focused, effective, and your best. While preparation will give you the tools to succeed on your exam, training yourself to become an effective exam taker will allow you to use that preparation effectively.

Hopefully up to this point you have worked hard during the term, studying your material on a regular basis. You have planned and studied hard for your exam. There is no strategy that can compensate for a lack of knowledge and inadequate preparation. The goal for this article is to maximize your performance during your exam so you can walk away from it successfully.

The 4 key strategies to success in exam writing are as follows:

1) Managing Time

2) Prioritizing

3) Dealing with troublesome questions

4) Confidence

Let’s discuss these items one by one.

Managing Time

This is probably the single most important part of exam writing. Many students waste time focusing on one single problem and forget the rest of the exam. That one question ends up costing much more than they bargained for. You need to be able to complete the majority of the exam, not just one problem. I have seen students spend as much as 30 minutes (1/4 of the total exam time) on a question only 8% of the exam!

Put a watch right in front of you, and track your time constantly.

When you start the exam, the first thing you should do is to develop a rough game plan. You should quickly (spend less than 30 seconds) browse through the exam and get a sense of its difficulty. Look at what questions you can do, and the ones you can’t. In addition to the allocation of marks per question, you will begin to develop a broader sense of the exam.

The post is originally written by Queen Elizabeth Academy - English Tutor Oakville.