How To Do Better On Tests - Testing Smart

It's that time of the year when students, young and old, return to the classroom. No doubt, even on the first day of the school year, some students will encounter a gung-ho teacher already with a test handy -- just to determine what their strengths and weaknesses are.

Now, I don't know how it is in other countries, but American students from grade school up, are not always taught (or in some cases never taught), how to be "test proof." Being test proof means being test wise in test-taking strategies -- and it all begins long before any test in knowing how to study and prepare for exams.

From kindergarten through high school and even into college and adulthood, every student is engaged in a battle to survive. The more study habit and test taking knowledge they have, the more weapons they have in their knowledge base to succeed both in tests and the grading process, but also in life later on -- for all of life is but a series of tests.

In the United States, seven out of every ten freshmen who enter community colleges, four-year colleges, and all of our universities -- never achieve their expressed academic goals. A vast majority struggle through, but fail to even come close to their potential for success.

This has nothing to do with their intelligence -- it however, has a lot to do with deficiencies in basic learning skills in the following areas:

• Reading
• Writing
• Listening
• Remembering
• Note taking
• Test taking

All of the above are at the heart and soul of the failures many students endure. In fact, for a sad huge number of students -- the ones who don't make it to a higher education -- had they been taught some basic learning skills and test taking skills -- all of which can be learned -- who knows what they might have achieved?

One key factor to surviving academic life and thriving in academic learning, is learning how to prepare and take tests or exams.

 Most Used Test and Exam Directional Words

In taking any test, regardless of subject, the keys to success begin with the first key -- the key of knowing that the most important thing the test taker can do -- is to understand and thoroughly read the directions.

The following words are key directional words that every test wise student should be aware of. They generally have specific meanings:

• Compare -- Show how something is the same or different
• Contrast -- Show how something differs
• Criticize -- Look at the pros and cons and give your opinion
• Defend -- Give details and examples to prove your opinion or show value
• Define -- Give the meaning
• Describe -- Details and examples that tell what it is
• Discuss (or review) -- Examine the subject from all angles
• Distinguish -- Tell how something is different from others similar to it
• Evaluate -- Give your opinion of advantages and disadvantages
• Explain (or show) -- Show how or why something happened (sometimes show both). Remember do to this in a logical sequence.
• Illustrate -- Give examples
• Justify -- Give the facts and proof of why they are true
• Name (also list, tell, and enumerate) -- Show the information that is asked for
• Prove -- Tell what is true and what is false
• Summarize (also outline) -- Tell main points
• Trace -- Show how the subject developed step-by-step. Here it is best to work chronologically or in sequence

How To Take Different Types of Exams or Tests

Possibly eighty percent of all tests any student will take throughout their academic lifetime will be multiple choice exams. The reasons they are popular with teachers and professors is that they are easier to prepare and also grade.

Here are some tips for getting better grades on multiple choice tests:

• Always carefully read the directions. Remember, that directions can be tricky. Make sure you understand precisely what the directions tell you too.
• You are looking for the most correct answer, so always choose the closest answer.
• Read each question on the test thoroughly, then look at the choices and try to answer the question.
• Pay attention to words that could throw you off. (See sidebar for qualifying words for multiple choice trick qualifying words).
• Eliminate implausible answers that are obviously wrong. Move quickly to the next possibility.
• Look for grammatical clues and familiar phrases.
• Look for degrees of correctness.
• Work quickly, skipping but lightly marking ones that you are unsure of to come back to.
• If you don't know the correct answer or are unsure, eliminate those answers you know or suspect are completely wrong. Try to break the question down to two possible answers (allows you a 50/50 chance of making the right choice).
• If you completely do not know the answer to the question -- make an educated guess (see below).
• Make sure that you read every word of every answer. Remember that teachers often include answer that are almost right, except for a single word.
• If the multiple choice questions are tied to a reading passage, read the questions first, not the paragraph. This will help you focus on obtaining the information you need to answer the multiple choice questions below it.
• Never give up! -- Research has proven that many students lose points on tests because they give up before they've worked their way through the whole test. The odds are in your favor if you just keep going using the hints above.

Of course, it's far better to know the subject so well that you don't have to guess, but in the real world that doesn't always happen.

Here are some multiple choice test proof tips for making educated guesses when you simply don't know the answer to a question:

• An answer that is more general than the others is often the right answer.
• An answer that is longer than the other possible answers can be (but not always) the right answer.
• An answer that falls in the middle (examples: small to large or recent to old) may be the right answer.
• If two answers are similar in meaning -- one of them is most likely the right answer.

True and false questions are designed to measure and test your knowledge of the basic facts and concepts of a subject. The keys to success with this type of questions are:

• Read them carefully (every word) to determine what they are truly trying to say.
• Break down complex sentences into smaller phrases or sentences that state every one of the thoughts in the longer statement.
• Each thought has to be true, without exception, or the entire statement is false.
• Always look for qualifiers in the question, such as -- all, only, always, generally, often usually, because, none, and sometimes -- as they can sometimes make a true statement false.
• Don't quibble over details -- remember a true statement may only be approximately true.
• If you are completely stumped for the correct answer, usually it's best to guess (unless the directions to the test state that you will be penalized for each incorrect answer.
• It's a fact -- there are usually more trues than false on a test, as they are easier for instructors to write.
• Keep in mind that most true sentences come straight out of a textbook or lecture, so if the statement seems familiar it's a good bet.
• In true/false tests, your first hunch is usually the correct one. Don't second guess yourself, unless you are very sure of the change.

Fill-in-the-blank questions, known to educators as sentence completion questions -- are the ones that ask you to supply one or more words (or a phrase) with the missing information that completes the sentence.

Teachers are exceptionally fond of these types of questions as they tell them a lot about how much their students are learning.

Here are some tips for making the right choices:

Be logical -- lightly put your answer in, then reread the sentence from beginning to end, to be sure it is factually and grammatically correct and that most importantly -- it makes sense.

Don't look too hard for hidden meanings -- they are mostly looking for short answer key words and phrases used in the lectures and assigned readings.

Pay attention to the length and number of the blanks -- Often they are important clues to the answers the teacher seeks. This isn't an absolute, but very likely. If two blanks appear right after another, the instructor is most likely seeking a two word answer. Conversely, if the blank is long, the correct answer may require several more words.

Pay attention to how the blanks are separated -- If these is more than one blank in the statement and the other blanks are widely separated -- treat each one separately. This insures that you will get at least one answer correction and at least 1/2 credit if you are wrong on one part of your answer.

Think outside of the box-- If you know more than one correct answer to a question, it is permissible to put both of them down. Sometimes teachers are very impressed with this. In other words, over answer.

If you are stumped for the correct answer-- make an educated guess. Always with guessing, be sure to factor in qualifiers (like may, sometimes, and often) in your answer to insure that it is at least partially right.

Remember: To have confidence in yourself and the fact that all of your studying, somewhere in your subconscious mind your guess may possibly really be correct.

If tests and exams didn't count, no one would worry about them. However, they do count and most of us do worry. In fact, those who don't worry at all -- actually don't do as well as they would if they did worry about being tested.

To a certain degree, some worry or test anxiety is good for us. However, we've probably all experienced at one time or another -- worrying a lot when facing an exam whose results matter a great deal to us. That kind of worry interferes with our memory and ability to do well.

It's important to remember that if you haven't studied at all for your test, you ought to be frightened of the test. There is no magic formula to eliminate valid fear. However, if you come to your exams prepared, you should keep your anxiety to a minimum. More importantly, if you've both truly learned "how to take the different types of tests" and studied for the exam -- you should relax and know that you will do your best because now you are test proof.