Test Taking: How to Improve Your Score

See also my Study Hints and Succeed sections.

In order to do successful academic work, you need to understand the grading process and how it works. One way or another, in most social science and humanities courses, grading is necessarily subjective. Even with objective or multiple-choice questions, subjectivity comes into play because the instructor writes and selects the questions based upon his or her opinion of what is most important, or at least what is representative of the work covered. This means that you as a student will need to pay attention when you are taking tests to what the instructor really wants. After you have taken the first practice quiz or exam, think about what it is that the instructor seems to be after. If you can get a grasp of that, you'll be able to improve your performance on tests as you go through the course.

If that strikes you as unfair, consider that in the real world things work the same way. When you have a job, your boss or supervisor will have certain attitudes about how things are to be done. You will have to adjust your performance to suit the expectations of those over you if you want to have a successful career. If you do that well, you will not only advance, but once you become a supervisor, you will also be more sensitive to the needs and concerns of your employees.

In academia there is a phenomenon known as “examsmanship”: the ability to do well on exams beyond the point where your actual knowledge will take you. This is not so much something that you do deliberately as it is a matter of techniques you will pick up as you go through college.

Examsmanship includes things like this:

• You realize that words like “always” and “never” should raise flags; very little in life is always or never true or false.
• If multiple-choice questions have an “all of the above” response, and you know or are reasonably sure that two of the answers are correct, you can also be reasonably sure that the answer must be all the above.
• Conversely on a multiple-choice exam if there is an “all of the above” option, and you know one of the answers is false, then you know that the answer cannot be all of the above, and your odds of getting the question correct are improved.
• Some multiple-choice questions will allow multiple answers, and in that case each item in the question is essentially a true false question. They are much more difficult to answer as a rule.
• Sometimes just thinking about the answers in a multiple choice question may lead you to the answer: For example, if answer A and answer C are contradictory, then one must be correct and one incorrect. That's a step in the right direction and means you should not select “all of the above.”

For a long time there has been a theory going around in academic circles that if you go back and change an answer on quizzes, you are likely to change it from right to wrong on the grounds that your first instinct is probably most correct. This just isn't true. No one has ever demonstrated that fact conclusively, and in fact some studies have shown the opposite to be true. Here's what makes sense: as you proceed through a test subsequent questions may stimulate some memories or provide information that relates to an earlier question. If you use that later information to go back and change an answer, you will probably change it from wrong to right. This is a good reason to go over all of your answers after you have completed a quiz because you may think of something new that you forgot the first time around.

Some of the exams in my history courses have essay questions. You need to know that I grade them liberally and what I am looking for in answers is this: does the student gets what's going on here? For example, in one exam I asked about life in the Jamestown County. A simple answer “it was a disaster” would likely get you at least 8 out of 10 points because even that brief answer would show that you understand what Jamestown was like. Clearly you don't want answer that briefly when you answer an essay question; but stop for a minute and think, What is really important? What is he after here?

You should also understand that I do consider improvement as you go through the course. If you blow the first exam but do well on the last three I do not drop the first exam, but I take that into account in computing your final average. The same is true for projects, which is a good reason to read my comments when I return them. Your grade for the forum counts 10% of the course, and as a rule, a serious degree of participation will get you those 100 points. So go in regularly and make substantial if brief contributions.

My goal is for everyone to do as well in this course as possible. I do not curve grades; that is, I do not limit the number of A's I might give, nor do I raise low grades automatically. Years of experience in teaching have shown that students will find their own level; if a lot of students do very well in the course I will give a lot of students a top grade. So try to approach exams and projects with confidence, and with some degree of reflection on what it is you are really doing. This entire processes about learning, not about getting a grade. If you go at the course as a learning experience, you will substantially improve your chance of getting a good grade.

History 121 | History 122 | Sage Home