04/22/2024
Hi there! Savannah from Boggs Friendly Neighborhood Tech Support here with a few tips and trick for students.
I’m going to start with an anecdote, if you don’t want to hear my childhood story just skip the next 2 paragraphs! I won’t be mad, I promise. :D
Way back when I was in middle school, I had major test anxiety, stressing myself out so bad that it didn’t matter how well I knew the information, my brain was so overwhelmed I couldn’t get to those answers. My amazing mom found a class to help support test taking. It was a one day, 8 hour class, at the local college. She did not know I would be the only non-college student there! The teacher on the other hand was delighted. I was the perfect experiment to prove his methods worked. He asked me what my best subject was, Math, and at the end of the day gave me a college level test, which had math concepts I had never heard of.
I passed. I didn’t get an A, I got a solid C+ but I only had the barest grasp of the subject matter, and I definitely had no idea what most of the answers were.
So, without further adieu, here are the concepts he taught me, concepts I still use to this day!
Test Taking Skills
The first step is ALWAYS to read through the questions and answer the ones you know right away and mark the ones you don’t know so you won’t forget to go back to them later.
Keep an eye out, there are only so many questions teachers can ask, sometimes the answers you need are available later on in the test! There is a great example of this in the first episode of the Mysterious Benedict society where they take a 40 question test in which the last 20 questions answer the first 20 and vice versa. I also saw this on a history test in 9th grade with questions involving the paper like substance Egyptians used to write on and what do Egyptians use papyrus for…
Once you’ve done everything you can answer confidently, then we move into Game Theory.
Game Theory for Test Taking
- If you have 5 choices and don’t know the answer, you have a 20% chance of getting the answer right.
- If you can eliminate 1 of those choices, you have a 25% chance.
- Eliminate 2 and you have a 33% chance.
- Eliminate 3 and you have a 50/50 chance of getting the question right!
How to Eliminate Choices
- Reread the QUESTION to make sure you understand context.
- Read through ALL the answers twice.
- Eliminate the answers you KNOW are wrong.
- Look at the longest and the shortest answer, one of them will usually be obviously right or obviously wrong.
- Look through the test again for questions that cover a similar subject matter.
Once you have eliminated everything you can, look at the remaining answers and make an educated guess. When in doubt choose the most complete answer.
Thank you for taking the time to read my little tips and tricks. This skill has helped me a lot over the years. If I knew the name of that professor I would love to shake his hand and say thank you!
Photo Credit Lacie Slezak on Unsplash
