How to Study and Take Tests
- What should you do BEFORE you take a test?
- Where can you get help in preparing for a test?
- Are all tests created equally?
- Will I get better at taking tests?
- How do I improve my memory?
- How do I reduce test anxiety?
- Are there tricks for improving test taking?
- What are some specific types of test question and how do I handle them?
Modified: 2025-09-15 1:31 PM CDST
The Long View
- Before the Test
- Ask your instructor
- Plan your time wisely
- Work on your study habits (see below)
- Physical Prerequisites
- Sleep regularly
- BBC Human rhythm test
- Sleep hygeine
- Child: (dinner, bath, story, sleep) repeat
- You: try to come up with a schedule. (I'm in bed by 10:00 pm, up by 6:00 am, at work by 8:30 am)
- Exercise regularly (walking is good)
- Peleton sold like crazy during the height of the pandemic, why?
- Now, it's possible to exercise in more places
- Eat healthy
- Breakfast is important!
- Freshman 15
- As a freshman I weighed 165 pounds, as a sophomore 190, won't tell you what I weigh now...(actually, I'm lighter now than in the past 5 years)
- Freshman 15 more likely with social isolation and Covid-19?
165 pounds!
260 pounds (just you wait!) I becomes harder and harder to keep from gaining weight as you age. I'm down to 220 pounds now.
- Social Help for Studying
- Join or start a study group
- Find a tutor
- Be Ready Emotionally
- Know the material
- "A little learning is a dangerous thing"--Alexander Pope
- In other words, overlearn
- Think of sports, military drill, and being in a play
- In all of those contexts people do not stop learning when they first succeed
- Overlearning
- Overlearning means going beyond shallow knowledge
- Think of learning script in a play or a play in football or basketball
- "I came to shoot craps, let's shoot craps." a line from a play I was in in 1977 (Guys and Dolls) I was big Jule from Chicago. An overlearning example.
- Football plays are another overlearning example.
- All eleven offensive players have a role to remember
- From: https://www.football-tutorials.com/football-plays-101/
- FYI, there is a thing as TOO much overlearning, so watch it. After a while the overlearning effect helps less and less
- Have a positive attitude
- Think of succeeding and not of failing
- Math and Science Tests
- Know rules
- Calculators?
- Formula sheets?
- Work the homework problems
- Understand the homework problems
- Be careful with details (like + or - signs)
- Use instructor's outlines
- Aim high
- Be prepared
Other Study Strategies
- Review sheets, mind maps, and more
- Summaries
- Read everything that will be on test
- Try to predict test questions
- Analyze the material
- Look for connections
- Select, condense, and order
- Write a draft summary
- Review draft summary
- Test yourself
- Leave time to review and self-test before taking the test
- Exam plans
- Make a plan to prepare for the test, include:
- type of test
- material on the test
- type of questions
- how you will prepare
- study sessions (self or with others?)
Improving Your Memory
- You can't change your memory, but you can learn to use your memory better
- Parts of memory
- Encoding
- Putting items into memory
- This is what you do when you study
- Storage
- Holding those items until needed
- Repetition helps storage last longer
- Retrieval
- Finding the items you stored
- This is what you do when you take a test
- Mnemonic Devices
- Acrostics
- "Every good boy does fine."
- Acronyms
- Loci
- Put items in specific places (rooms in your home)
- Link
- Put all items together into one concept (the grocery dog)
- Peg Word
- one-bun
- two-shoe
- three-tree
- four-door
- five-hive
- six-sticks
- seven-heaven
- eight-gate
- nine-wine
- ten-hen
- etc.
- Associate each set with item to be remembered
- Keep a list (no encoding)
- But, must keep something to write on and to write with!
- Backing it up is helpful too
- Summary
- Chunking game
- hard to do online: let's play now :-)
- We will do this on the phone
- Also works for sentences:
- You can lead...
- That dog won't...
- A stitch...
- All of these are aphorisms or common sayings
- See HERE for more such aphorisms
- Flashbulb memories
- Sometimes something so shocking happens that people remember it as if they had taken a flash picture:
- Pearl Harbor, Kennedy Assasination, Challenger, 9/11
- Can also be personal: when you opened that admission letter to Harvard Grad school
- Specific hints
- Filter out unwanted information and focus on your classwork and homework
- Once is NOT enough!
- Analyze your successes and failures on previous tests
- Say things aloud
- Visual register-lasts about 2 seconds: everything you see before it disappears in 2 seconds, psychology fact
- Auditory register-lasts about 30 seconds: everything you hear, lasts longer, about 30 seconds
- When I'm alone in the office I use this, I say things aloud to myself, they last longer
- Information on sensory registers
- Think about related facts when you get stuck
- Take notes on your notes (I'm not kidding!)
- This called elaboration
- Example: who was SAU's recent president?
- He has office in Overstreet
- Drove a white Ford F-150
- He's shorter than I
- He's bald
- He's now at HSU
- His name is:
- When I write, first I read, I take notes while I'm reading, after a put all of those notes together in front of me (I have hacksaw blades and magnets attached to my reading lamp so I can put 5 pieces of paper next to each other at the same time). At some point, I know what I want to write and get to it. I strive for 500 words at a time.
- Join a study group
- Be organized
- My office in Peace Hall is full of boxes containing the notes for my chapters
- One of my colleagues does the same thing when he writes, but he puts it all on his computer
- Make up your own organizational method
- Pick the right place to study
- Avoid TV, bed, loud friends
- Use the Internet, but be careful
- Avoid stress
- Remember these?
- Holmes and Rahe Stress Questionnaire
- What was your score?
- The CUSS
- Renner, M. J., & Mackin, R. S. (2000). A life stress instrument for classroom use (pp. 11-12). In M. E. Ware, & D. E. Johnson (eds.), Handbook of demonstrations and activities in the teaching of psychology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
- Take the College Undergraduate Stress Scale
- Both give you a way to operationalize your stress
Taking Tests
- Relax first
- Success on Tests
- Write your name down on test, do it first thing
- Read the test directions, ask if you don't understand
- Watch your time, most tests are timed
- Don't the let the harder questions slow you down
- Stay focused and don't panic
- If you finish early, check your answers, look for careless mistakes
- Essay Question Success
- Watch your time (who has a watch nowadays?)
- Many now only rely on their cell phones to keep time. What about you?
- Write a brief outline first (it can even be written on the margin)
- Be sure to answer all the parts of the question
- Organize your answer (don't ramble)
- Know what the following words mean
- analyze
- compare and contrast
- critique
- define
- describe
- discuss
- evaluate
- explain
- interpret
- justify
- narrate
- outline
- prove
- review
- summarize
- trace
- Multiple Choice Success
- Beware of the words: always, never, and only
- Look for the words: not, except, and but
- Try to predict the answer before looking at the choices
- If two choices seem correct, look for "all of the above"
- If none of the choices seem correct, look for "none of the above"
- Fill in the Blank Success
- These are similar to multiple choice questions
- Fill in the blanks are usually harder than multiple choice
- The answers may be listed or not
- True or False Success
- Don't look at the pattern of true or false answers
- Watch for words: always, never, and only (usually false)
- Often and frequently may signal true answers
- Matching Success
- Matching questions are hard
- Look at all possibilities first
- Match the questions you are sure of first
- Use elimination to work out remaining questions
- Sometimes it is possible to double match (see demo below)
| Question |
Answer |
| 1. dog |
A. feline |
| 2. cat |
B. ungulate |
| 3. deer |
C. rodent |
| 4. rat |
D. marsupial |
| 5. kangaroo |
E. canine |
Suppose you know that:
1 is E, 2 is A, 3 is B
but you don't know 4 and 5.
You could answer: 4 is C and 5 is C
(or 4 is D and 5 is D)
Get it?
Back to Main Page