Test-Taking 101

One of my students complained about a test. (Fancy that! I just know that the rest of you have model students who never do that type of thing. For some reason the whiners end up in my class, instead.)

Without going into detail, I will admit that there is room for improvement on my part, and in my quest for reasonableness I am willing to adjust and make amends where necessary. However, in listening to the student harangue me after class (which, btw, is what frosts my shorts just as much as anything else – listen, you don’t have to like me or agree with me, but whatever happened to respecting someone on account of their position? There is still respect due them because of the office that person holds, regardless of your personal opinion as to whether or not respect has been earned), she made a telling admission:

“There were so many questions on this test, I didn’t have time to look at them all.”

That statement right there clued me in that whatever percentage of blame lies with me due to my shortcomings, Little Miss Innocent shouldn’t get off scot-free, either. Why?

This gal apparently forgot all about Test-Taking 101: Look over the test completely before you plunge ahead and start answering questions. Before you make a single mark on your scantron or write a single jot in your blue book, you need to see what you’re up against so you can prioritize and pace yourself accordingly.

• How many questions are on the test? You’ve got to figure out the average length of time you should spend on any given question. (Skip this step, and you'll regret it. I guarantee it.)
  
• Are all questions weighted equally? If not, which ones are worth more?
• Mentally sort the questions into three categories:

1. Really easy – ones that can be answered without too much thought.
2. Really hard – ones that you haven’t a clue about, or you know are going to be time-consuming.
3. Everything else.

Since you (presumably) want to maximize your points, you have to use these categories (and point values of the individual questions, if they’re not weighted equally) to help you prioritize. Why lose easy points by spending too much time on hard ones that you probably won’t get anyhow? This should be a no-brainer.

Yet I suspect that’s where Little Miss Innocent flubbed up. Since, by her own admission, she hadn’t bothered looking at all the questions on the test, she evidently didn’t prioritize, and spent too much time on the wrong types of problems. Well, yeah, if you do that, of course you’re going to complain that the test is “too long” and / or “unfair.”

If Little Miss Innocent had looked at the questions first, she would have seen that there were a number of concept questions that didn’t require long, tedious calculations. (Yes, I admit it – that’s the way some of this stuff is. Like it or not, tedium just goes with the territory sometimes.) If she had spent some time answering those concept questions, she could have improved her score significantly.

But, you know, it’s just a lot easier to blame everything on the teacher.

Test-Taking 101, folks. Ignore it at your own peril.