13 How Do I Take Exams?
Exam week always amused Carol. Of course, exam week brought Carol her own moderate level of stress. But Carol’s studies throughout the term were generally thorough and effective enough that she really had few if any worries during exam week. Carol knew that she just needed to go through her usual effortful and well-planned motions. What amused Carol were the antics of students who didn’t study throughout the term, things like pulling all-nighters while consuming intolerable doses of caffeine and begging to borrow outlines or outright stealing them. Carol could see the usual suspects rushing around the quad with dark circles under their eyes, lugging armfuls of books and folders stuffed with disorganized notes. Ah, exam week. What glorious amusement.
Assessment
Test taking, or assessment as educators call it, is a common practice in education. Schooling generally means taking tests. The reasons are several. First, an early, day-one assessment can show instructors what students already know and don’t know, to adjust instruction. Second, periodic quizzes can show what students are learning and not learning, to aid both the student and instructor in making adjustments. Third, taking tests has its own positive instructional effect. Test taking forces recall, rehearsal, and elaboration. Periodic quizzes having at least some credit toward a final grade also encourage continuous engagement and review, reducing the notorious procrastination curve in which students do nothing all term until the week before the final exam. Finally, exam scores form an objective basis for grading, advancement, and graduation, while certifying for accreditors, employers, and other constituents that the program is meeting standards and accomplishing its objectives. For all these reasons, instruction generally means taking tests. And in general, the greater your test-taking skill, the greater your academic success.
Formative
Educators call formative assessment tests that you take to aid and evaluate your learning but that do not count toward your grade. With formative assessment, the stakes are low, indeed non-existent other than your pride in doing well and interest in confirming your learning. Not all instruction uses formative assessments. In many instances, the only testing is at the end of units or the full course, for a score counting toward your final grade and advancement. Some students will skip formative assessments if offered as an instructional option rather than a requirement. Even if required, some students will give formative assessments little effort. After all, they don’t count toward the final grade. Don’t skip formative assessments. And when you take them, give full effort. When you invest the time and effort, formative assessments can be tremendously valuable to prompt your rehearsal and elaboration, hone your skill, and show you where you need to improve your studies. Indeed, if your instructor does not offer formative assessments, seek them out from other sources. Your extra rehearsal and practice may move you well ahead of your classmates who do not avail themselves of a similar resource.
Summative
Educators call summative assessment tests and exams that count toward your final grade, for advancement, graduation, and other benchmarking purposes. Whether you learn from a summative assessment or not isn’t its point. Rather, a summative assessment certifies the level of your competence on the tested subject for institutional purposes. Those institutional purposes should matter to you. You may not be concerned with honor roll, dean’s list, class standing, and other academic honors, all dependent on your final exams and grades. You may not need a high grade-point average to get into a preferred college, university, or graduate program. And you may not want grades-based scholarships, fellowships, or employment. But at a minimum, you probably want to advance through your program to graduation. To do so, you’ll likely need to at least pass, if not score especially high on, tests and exams. Schools have satisfactory academic progress standards students must generally meet. Those standards depend in large part on test and exam scores. Give summative assessments your best effort.
Content
As already suggested in a prior chapter, the content of your test or exam should be your first consideration when preparing for it. Your instructor should have clearly identified the course content over which each assessment will test you. Educators consider the alignment of instruction to exam to be a fundamental of instruction. While instructors don’t entirely teach to the test, they should be aligning their instruction with their assessment. Otherwise, what’s the point? To teach one thing but test another thing is fundamentally nonsensical and unfair. Check your syllabus and learn from your instructor exactly what each test or exam will cover, whether for instance the whole course from its start or only certain units. Then, study for that coverage. Frequent rehearsal of everything you’ve learned is generally helpful to form and preserve long-term memory. But to do well on a specific test, you should focus your preparation on that test’s content.
Format
Also as already suggested in a prior chapter, the format of your test or exam can be another critical test-taking consideration. Generally, the greater the number of test items or questions, and the shorter the amount of time allowed for each question, the greater the automaticity your learning will need to have produced. Some tests have dozens or even hundreds of items, with the expectation that the examinee must answer each item without hesitation, as soon as comprehending the question. For that form of test, you’ll need instant recall and application of discrete points you’ve learned, drawn entirely out of their context. See the tips in a prior chapter on flashcard use to develop the necessary fluency. Other tests, in an essay or scenario form, may have only a single item or two or three items, giving the examinee a half hour, hour, or more to answer a single item. For that form of test, you’ll need to recall a full knowledge framework to deploy in your response and argument justifying your response. Outline preparation and review may serve better for that form of exam. Know the format so that you know how to prepare for the exam.
Pacing
The number of items your test or exam presents, and the time allowed to complete the test, can also be critical to the success of your test-taking effort. Before beginning an exam, you should have a clear idea of the time you can afford to spend on each question or item. If you don’t know your allowable time, you may either rush through the exam, finishing well before your time expires but reducing the quality of your responses, or crawl through the exam, leaving multiple items without a response. The typical exam treats unanswered items as incorrect responses. You generally want and need to answer all items. Thus, determine in advance or when the exam begins the number of items and allowable time, to make a rough calculation of time per item. Then, check your time partway into the exam, at the halfway point, and as the end time nears, so that you keep pace and answer all items. Time is generally important on exams. Prepare to manage it wisely. Neither rushing nor dilly dallying your way through a timed exam work.
Instructions
No matter what your instructor or fellow students may have told you about the exam in advance, read exam instructions carefully and thoroughly as soon as the exam proctor permits it, before time begins if possible. Also, listen carefully to any instructions the exam proctor may give. Follow exam instructions precisely. For example, well-designed exams generally keep each test item independent. But if, instead, your exam instructions tell you to make certain assumptions for a certain set of test items, then do so. For another example, if the instructions say to choose only a single option or instead to choose all correct options, then follow those instructions precisely. For another example, if exam instructions permit or require certain writing implements or devices, like a calculator, then be sure to bring those items and use them as instructed. For another example, if exam conditions provide scrap paper, and if instructions permit you to use the scrap paper in the minutes before the exam begins, then consider writing out helpful mnemonics or portions of your outline to which to refer during the exam. But if, instead, you must not begin to write until the proctor says so, then do exactly as those directions provide. Any departure may bring cheating charges.
Preparation
The above chapters on how to learn, read, study, take notes, and review should all help you with preparing for a quiz, test, or exam. Don’t, in other words, wait until a test or exam is approaching to begin exercising sound learning practices. Everything that you do well in your educational disciplines, from reading effectively to taking helpful notes during lectures, and rehearsing and reviewing your learning to ensure that you retain what you learn, helps to prepare you for an exam over what you learned. If you otherwise follow sound study practices, then you can focus your exam preparation on having the right resources in place, the right exam format for which to prepare and exam content in mind to study, and the optimal study schedule. So again, for effective exam preparation, get your outline, flashcards, notes, readings, or other review materials in place. Ensure that you know the exam format and content so that you are studying the right materials in the right way. And then plan study time backward from the exam so that you can complete your review and preparation timely, while being reasonably rested for the exam. No over nighters. They exhaust and deplete you exactly when you need the opposite. Finally, ensure that you have an hour or two immediately before the exam for a final review. A last-minute review can refresh critical memory.
Habituation
Much as with the stress of public speaking, the stress of exams can produce adverse physiologic responses that interfere with attention, concentration, and processing. The exam environment can also be different in its light, sound, and other stimuli, in ways that disrupt your memory and recall. Ideally, you would have access to the exam room in advance. If so, visit the exam room to accustom yourself to the surroundings. If you can even review your outline and otherwise study there, you might effectively reduce some of the unfamiliarity that can otherwise heighten exam tension and stress. Whether you have advance access to the exam room or not, expect some degree of nervousness and excitement around your exams, without letting it alarm you and unnecessarily add to your distraction. Natural stress reactions like ringing ears, sweaty palms, and shortness of breath may only slightly reduce your concentration at the outset of the exam before wearing off. If, instead, physical and mental sensations seriously distract you during exams, degrading your academic performance, seek evaluation for accommodations. Extended exam time and isolation from other examinees may eliminate the interference and restore your natural capability.
Correction
A prior chapter already addresses your effective review and processing of your new knowledge base, to ensure that you have ready retrieval of your knowledge for exams and other use. Use those review techniques and that review timing to solidify your knowledge base for exams. But you may also have time during your exam to review your responses to test items. If you finish your exam early, which you may well do if your studies were thorough and effective, then don’t waste the extra time. Instead, as you take the exam, mark items where you were unsure of your responses. Don’t let a large number of unsure responses disturb you, even if you mark a quarter or more of your responses as unsure. Test items can be ambiguous. Don’t leave questions unanswered if your exam is of the usual type that scores an unanswered question as incorrect. Instead, make an educated guess if necessary, after ruling out clearly incorrect options. By marking unsure responses, you can return to those items for review if you end the exam with extra time. When you do return to your unsure responses, don’t change any response unless you are confident that your initial response was incorrect. In other words, don’t second guess yourself. Don’t simply guess again. Your first intuition may have been the better one. But do change and correct responses if your review of them shows that you clearly erred.
Attitude
Your attitude toward exams can be important to your preparation and success, just like attitude can be important to so many other things in education and life. Don’t approach exams with a fatalistic air, as if failure and bad consequences are sure things. Instead, treat exams as an evaluation of your study habits, which is in fact what they are. Create and implement a sound study and exam-preparation plan, consistent with the above advice. If you do not get the good results for which you hoped, then diagnose the cause, with help if necessary, and then adjust your study practices and exam-preparation plan. Exams are more a test of your planning and implementation skills than they are a test of intelligence. Treat them that way. Exams that you fail aren’t condemning you. They are telling you that something needs to change in your studies and preparation or other conditions surrounding the exam.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how would you rate your test-taking skill? Do you have significant adverse physiologic responses to exams, to the point that they interfere with your mental processing and degrade your exam performance? If so, can you attribute those adverse responses to a lack of preparation, lack of habituation, lack of rest or nutrition, or other things that you can control? If not, and if instead they have to do with your physiologic response to the stress of an exam, make a plan to consult with academic advisors about an evaluation for accommodations. Do you take full advantage of formative assessments that your instructors offer you? Would you be willing to try finding formative assessments to practice if your instructor does not offer them? Do you regularly confirm the content and format of your tests and exams in advance, so that you can assemble your resources and plan your studies? Do you routinely calculate in advance the time that you can take for each exam item so that you know how to pace yourself through exams? If you suffer unusual exam anxiety at the start of exams, try locating the exam room in advance of your next exam, and study there, too. How would you describe your attitude toward exams? Do you need a better attitude? If so, articulate it to yourself and at least one other friend or family member.
Key Points
Taking quizzes, tests, and exams is an important skill to develop.
Avail yourself fully of practice assessments for best benefit.
For any test or exam that counts, first confirm the content and format.
Confirm the number of test items and time allowed, to pace yourself.
Read and follow all exam instructions precisely and rigorously.
Prepare by assembling your resources and scheduling study time.
Habituate yourself to both the exam room and test-item format.
If you have extra exam time, review items you marked as unsure.
Take the attitude that exams evaluate your study practices and plans.