Research has shown that not all students are good at exams. Some don’t take advantage of the opportunity to gain credit for what they know or can do. Some simple techniques that can improve your exam result.
Exam philosophy: The aim in marking exams is to find out what you know, what you can express, what you understand and what you can do. You can only get credit if show evidence of your abilities. A skeleton answer might get some credit for a correct conclusion, or the right jargon, but it does not constitute evidence that you actually know what you are doing! If a question asks you to “explain”, “describe”, etc something, then write in proper English sentences – don’t just jot down buzz-words. Usually notes do not provide convincing evidence, because they are indistinguishable from vaguely remembered phrases.
If you are asked to work something out then include your working out (neatly) as part of your answer – then you may be able to get some credit for your method, even if you make a mistake or get the wrong answer.
Read the exam paper carefully: The “rubric” at the start provides important information: e.g. make sure that you know how long the exam is, how many questions you have to do, and check whether there are special directions given.You may wish to read the whole paper thoroughly before selecting the questions that you wish to answer, but, even if you don’t, do read carefully each of the questions that you do answer.
Candidates sometimes forget to answer parts of questions, for no apparent reason, and lose credit that otherwise would have easily been gained. Make sure that you have dealt with everything that has been asked.
Read the instructions on the cover of the exam answer booklets: Especially the statement about writing clearly.
Keep to a rigid timetable: Usually each question on the exam paper is worth the same amount (check this). Divide the time available equally among the questions that you have to do (you might even consider dividing the time up between the individual parts of a question). It is usually not worth struggling on with a question that is proving too difficult: if you have reached the end of the question’s time slot then you should definitely go on to a fresh question (the early parts of the next question are almost certainly more easily won credit than the struggle you are currently having); if the time slot is not up, then either attempt other parts of the current question if there are any, or go on to a fresh question and come back to the current one if you have time left at the end (and you should have if you stick to the timetable
Count the questions that you do carefully: On the one hand make sure that you do enough – if you are required to do four, and you only attempt three, then your maximum possible total mark is reduced by 25%! On the other hand make sure that you don’t do too many (unless the rubric makes it clear that you simply have to as much as you can). If we ask you to do four questions and you do five, then we will simply not count one of your answers: so you might as well have spent the time checking and polishing just four answers (it may sound ridiculous, but students actually do make this mistake every year).
About crossing out: Examiners have no time to read any more than they have to. Therefore anything which is crossed out they tend to simply ignore (whatever stupidities it may contain). So feel free to put jottings in your exam book and then cross them out. Equally, if you have done something wrong then simply cross it out and carry on. This applies to a reasonable amount of correction within written text – but if there are too many crossings out and rearrangements then it is probably better to put a line through the whole paragraph and re-write it. You should be very wary of using Tipp-Ex to make corrections,they take so long to use for little or no benefit over a simply horizontal or diagonal stroke of the pen. Admittedly, there are occasions on which Tipp-Ex is probably useful (for example, to correct mistakes in diagrams), so I will just caution care.
Long questions vs. short questions: Questions which occupy a lot of space on the exam paper look intimidating, but this may be an illusion. Often, long questions consist of many small, well defined parts which can be answered independently: so you can probably gain straightforward marks from any part that you answer. In contrast, questions which appear to be short often consist of just a few parts, each of which requires sustained creative and compositional effort – and, although the marks are certainly available, it can be far from obvious how to guarantee that you win them!
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