Joanne Jacobs points to this interesting article about a school that is teaching students how to behave like students, and getting excellent results:
Top achievers, they found, had mastered a behavioral code that equaled school success. They spoke up in class. They balanced when to speak and when to listen. They turned toward the speaker. Those behaviors — not their brightness — separated them from their lower-achieving peers and enabled them to absorb information. If the school explicitly taught students those behaviors, White reasoned, wouldn’t they do better?
It’s an interesting article, and something that hadn’t occurred to me before — but we kind of assume students will have mastered those things by the time they get to college. It did remind me of something I noticed for years, though.
I have always been amazed — and a bit depressed — by the number of students who have no test taking skills. They’re the ones chewing on their pencils, the ones who never look at their watches, the ones who plod their way through and rarely get to the end of the exam. It’s like they’ve never taken a test in their lives.
One might think with increased emphasis on testing in the schools, we’d see the numbers of these students decrease. But no, we haven’t. I’d say anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of the students in any test administration have no test taking skills — and I don’t sit at the front of the class, I actively proctor, walking through the students and watching what they do closely.
In fact, there are so many that I started covering basic test taking skills in class whenever I had a few free minutes.
Why are the things I tell them news? Does nobody in the schools cover test taking skills, and if not, why not?
Look over the exam
Before you get your pencil anywhere near the scantron, scan (sorry) the exam. How many questions are there? Do some quick math and figure out how much time you can allot to each question. Never forget that you’re taking a timed exam, and keep an eye on your watch, or the clock at the front of the room.
Don’t rush
Yes, it’s a timed exam, but when you rush, you get careless. It’s easy to miss the “not” in the question (bad test design alert!), or just misread it. Mind the time, but don’t hurry yourself, and for God’s sake, when you read, read carefully.
KISS
You know what that acronym means, right? Keep it simple. If I had a dollar for every question a student missed because he over-analyzed it, or the distractors, I’d own my own island in the Caribbean. Interpret the question exactly as it’s written. If you start asking youself, “Do you mean in this circumstance, or in that circumstance?” then you’re over-analyzing it. Stop it. If the professor had meant that, he would have put it in the question.
Of course, you will run into poorly-worded questions from time to time. And if the question only makes sense in one or another specific circumstance, ask. But as a general rule, don’t try to out-think the questions.
Question types
There are three types of questions: Questions you can immediately answer, questions you think you could probably answer if you could think about them for a minute or so, and questions you will never be able to answer. If you don’t know now, you won’t know fifty minutes from now, unless there’s something nagging at you in the back of your head, and in that case, the question is the second type, not the third.
How you approach the question depends on which type it is.
A lot of people will tell you not to skip around. Nonsense. That’s exactly what you should do.
First, answer all of the questions of the first type (those you can immediately answer). When you encounter a question of the second type (you think you could answer it if you could think some more about it), mark it, and move on. When you encounter a question of the third type — you have absolutely no idea what the question or the distractors mean — answer B, statistically the most frequent correct answer on a multiple-choice exam. Go through the exam and answer all of the first-type and third-type questions.
Check your time, and calculate how much time you have left. Again, keep an eye on the clock.
Tackle the second-type questions. Answering them can involve a number of strategies, for example, try using the process of elimination, so you know which distractors are not correct, then focus on the remaining ones. If more than one distractor seems that it could be the answer, re-read the question and ask yourself which of the two is the best answer to that specific question. So if it’s a general question and one of the two possible answers could be true, but only in a specific set of circumstances, the other answer is most likely correct. Also, look for keywords in the question and the possible distractors. Absolutes (all, always, none, never, etc.) usually indicate incorrect answers (bad test design alert!)
Substitute. If the question is, “Which of the following is used for forecasting?” and the two options are “Exponential smoothing,” and “Pearson correlations,” substitute the possible answers in the question.
Associate. Memory is visual. Using the above question, if substitution didn’t work, visualize your notes. What did “Exponential smoothing” appear with? Moving averages? Aha! You know moving averages are used for forecasting, so you’ve just answered the question.
The “trick question” is largely a myth. There are lots of poorly written questions, but there are few faculty members with a sadistic streak who want to see you stumble. There are a few, but a lot fewer than students believe.
If the question reeks, ask
Even on a carefully written exam, there are poorly written questions. If you find a question that doesn’t make sense, or distractors that don’t make sense, raise your hand and ask the proctor. Many faculty don’t analyze their test results, so they don’t always know if there are bad questions unless you call their attention to them.
To second-guess or not to second-guess
If you did not rush, don’t second-guess your answers to questions of the first type. However, you’ll most likely have time left, so carefully go over some of those second-type questions, particularly the ones that gave you more trouble.
I said second-guess, which isn’t checking your answers. Yes, if you have the time, check your answers. If you feel good about your performance on the exam, leave. If you feel shaky, you may want to look over some of those second-type questions again.
And make sure you filled in all of the bubbles to the edge. Dark.
About those Bs
If each of the four distractors (we’re assuming four here) is equally likely to be the correct answer, and if there were (out of 100 questions) 16 you had absolutely no idea about, you would most likely get 4 of them correct. However, all four distractors are, in fact, not equally likely to be correct (unless you have a really anal professor who runs frequency analyses on his exams before he sends them to be printed, and not even I am that anal), and B is more likely to be correct than A, C, D, or E (on five-distractor exams). I don’t recall the overall probabilities for the four distractors, so I can’t be more specific, but the odds are you’ll get at least 4 of those questions correct if you answered B for all of them.
And since you have no idea what the answers to those 16 questions are, 4 or 5 correct beats 0 correct, doesn’t it?
However, if your professor uses guessing penalties, you’ll have to do a little math to calculate the risk, since the best strategy depends on what the penalty is. If you have more to lose by leaving the questions blank, use the B strategy (and vice versa). By the way, it’s best to do this before you go take the exam.
I think guessing penalties are a very bad idea, by the way, but some professors use them.
Anyway, those are some general test-taking strategies. I hope everybody is enjoying finals week!
Entries (RSS)
Good to know. I always suspected “B” was the most common answer on exams, and now it’s confirmed (assuming I can trust your data :-). My highschoolers will appreciate the strategies you list. I was really good at taking tests, but not everyone was born with the knack.
Thanks–