Just
when you presume the day will be relaxing and easy-going, your teacher springs
a quiz or test when you least expect it. As much as we all despise taking an
exam, exams are, inevitably, an unavoidable part of school life. Everyone hates
taking exams, but you can improve your study technique for them to avoid being
caught unprepared.
Focus on your work objectives. What do you intend to accomplish during this session?
Setting a concrete study goal may help you. Creating study plans is also a good
idea. If 3 out of 5 lessons are easy and can be finished fast, finish them
first, so you can spend quality time on the difficult lessons without fretting.
Also, keeping a folder for your exam reviews is a good way to keep organized.
Write yourself a study guide. Go through your notes and rewrite the most important
information. Not only will this give you a more focused way to study, but it
creating it is another form of studying! Just don't spend too much time on the
guide itself: you need to have time to go over it too!
Reinvent your notes in other
formats. Rewriting your notes is great if
you're a kinesthetic learner. Mind mapping is the most effective way of doing
this. Also, when you re-write something, you will probably think about what you
are writing, what it's about, and why you wrote it down. Most importantly, it
refreshes your memory. If you took notes a month ago and just found out that
those notes will be relevant in your exam, rewriting them will remind you of
them when you need it for your exam.
- Don't simply copy your notes over and over again. This tends to lean towards memorizing the exact wording of your notes instead of the actual concepts. Instead, read and think about the contents of your notes (such as think of examples), and then re-word them.
Ask yourself questions about your
material. This can help you tell if you have
remembered what you just studied. Don't try to remember the exact wording from
your notes in your answer to yourself; synthesizing that information into an
answer is a much more useful tactic.
- It can also help to say the answers to your questions out loud, as if you were trying to explain it to someone else.
Review previous tests and
assignments. If you missed questions on previous
work, look up the answers and understand why you missed these questions. This
is particularly helpful if the exam you're studying for is cumulative or
comprehensive, meaning it covers things you also covered earlier in the course.
