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Beat Your Examiners with Exam Techniques
By Ian McAllister
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Are exam techniques better than knowledge?
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Half a century ago I learned about exam
techniques. At that time I was snowed under
with study, and my headmaster said that I had
as much chance as the Man in the Moon of
passing three Ordinary level GCE subjects.
He was right at that time! It didn't matter how
much study I did, term exam questions were
always about stuff I hadn't studied.
Then I learned that you perform best in an
exam if you know more about exams rather
than about the subject of the exam.
I liked that.
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Using Exam Techniques
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So I studied exam techniques. What were the
results? I passed eleven GCE ordinary level
subjects.
When artistic talent was handed out, my
brother got it all, and there was none left for
me. I panic every time I am asked to do a stick-
drawing.
However in the GCE exam, my brother set out
to do good art, and I used exam techniques to
get good marks. To my great glee I got a better
pass mark than my brother did. I was sure that
proved that exams are unfair, but remained
very smug.
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Multiple Choice
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My wife had a multiple-choice paper on a
subject about which I knew nothing. I tried the
exam techniques in my book. My wife assured
me that I would have passed - without knowing
anything about it.
Then came a time that I studied maths again,
and I was hopelessly at sea. I learned maths
where the best methods were those that
worked - fast. New maths had been introduced
since I was at college. Now the explanations
were just nonsense to me. However when the
exam came around, it was another multiple
choice test, and I passed!
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We've learned nothing
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My daughter's final exams were coming. I
searched libraries for the most modern
examination techniques, and received a great
shock. All the books still advised lots of hard
work. There was no mention of exam
techniques at all.
They mentioned mnemonic techniques to help
me remember, but I'd been using them since
the middle of last century and knew how they
could let me down.
The day before a university exam I decided that
I would probably get a question about the life
cycle of Fasciola hepatica. So I used a mnemonic
technique to memorise every number in the
complicated life cycle.
Next day the expected question appeared, and
I remembered every number - BUT - I had
forgotten the units. It was no use remembering
the number 3 if I didn't know if it was three
hours, or three days, or three weeks, or three
months, or three years. So I couldn't answer
the question. Fortunately examination
techniques got me through the exam.
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Birth of Exam Mastery
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I wrote a book about how to pass exams to
help my daughter. Unfortunately she thought
that she knew everything... and didn't bother to
read the book... and failed her exams. Recently
I updated the book to take the internet into
account.
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The arithmetic of success
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Suppose you're taking an essay exam with five
questions. You know you can give good
answers for three questions, but think that you
know nothing about the rest. I've seen
students walk out of essay exams in that
situation - they hadn't studied exam technique.
Your teacher has brainwashed you by punishing
anybody who wrote a three line essay for
homework. But two essays of three lines each
could take you from failure to a pass mark. My
book shows what to put into these few lines,
but think of the arithmetic.
You got 45 marks out of 60 for your three good
questions. The pass mark is 47%. You get one
mark out of 20 for each of the remaining two
answers. You have a pass mark. That is better
than walking out of the exam in a panic - isn't
it?
In fact I usually got about 75% by using exam
techniques. Oh, they aren't magic. I failed an
occasional exam, but I passed many exams that
I didn't deserve to pass, especially using crafty
essays.
About the Author
You too could write crafty essays to beat the examiner...and more. Get your free report here.
http://studying-techniques.com/essays.html
Article Source: http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/8115.html
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| Some other articles by Ian McAllister | |
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