test taking skills

[userrrname]

What part strayed off the topic...?

[vox nihili]

I've always been bad at taking tests and exams, will I have the same problem in uni?

Taking exams is still a pretty new thing for high school students. It takes a little bit of time to sort out how to do them to the best of your ability, and even then the inherent variation in the way exams are set up can still throw you off guard from time to time.

The short and simple answer of it though is that you're not at all disadvantaged going into uni if you've found exams difficult. It takes some time to sort out how to do them well and to find your rhythm, with uni providing a really good opportunity to do that. Personally, if I got anything out of my undergraduate degree it was how to prepare myself to take exams.

[integrationbyrecognition]

Taking exams is still a pretty new thing for high school students. It takes a little bit of time to sort out how to do them to the best of your ability, and even then the inherent variation in the way exams are set up can still throw you off guard from time to time.

The short and simple answer of it though is that you're not at all disadvantaged going into uni if you've found exams difficult. It takes some time to sort out how to do them well and to find your rhythm, with uni providing a really good opportunity to do that. Personally, if I got anything out of my undergraduate degree it was how to prepare myself to take exams.

Thanks, I was just a bit frustrated that people have always said that if you know the material, you'll always do well on tests, when clearly that's not the case for me, in that even when I knew the material well, i always get slaughtered on the questions in the test
@miniturtle and insanipi, what part of this discussion strayed away from the topic?

[K888]

@miniturtle and insanipi, what part of this discussion strayed away from the topic?

I believe it was a pre-emptive warning

[integrationbyrecognition]

I believe it was a pre-emptive warning

what's a pre-emptive warning?

[vox nihili]

Thanks, I was just a bit frustrated that people have always said that if you know the material, you'll always do well on tests, when clearly that's not the case for me, in that even when I knew the material well, i always get slaughtered on the questions in the test
@miniturtle and insanipi, what part of this discussion strayed away from the topic?

And that sometimes happens for people who are unfamiliar with exams. Like I said, a bit of time and practice and careful consideration of the above tips will help you get used to it more at uni.

what's a pre-emptive warning?

Just a friendly reminder of the rules when things might look like they're heading away from the original topic. I think we can all relax about the off-topic warning

[integrationbyrecognition]

And that sometimes happens for people who are unfamiliar with exams. Like I said, a bit of time and practice and careful consideration of the above tips will help you get used to it more at uni.

Just a friendly reminder of the rules when things might look like they're heading away from the original topic. I think we can all relax about the off-topic warning

are exams generally designed to throw you off? (aka, have questions completely different to past exams)

[vox nihili]

are exams generally designed to throw you off? (aka, have questions completely different to past exams)

No

[integrationbyrecognition]

No

what really? I always thought exams were designed to be like that, at least from personal experience

[Bri MT]

Thanks, I was just a bit frustrated that people have always said that if you know the material, you'll always do well on tests, when clearly that's not the case for me, in that even when I knew the material well, i always get slaughtered on the questions in the test
@miniturtle and insanipi, what part of this discussion strayed away from the topic?

My initial comment was because I noticed that the conversation had started tending away from being about test taking skills in uni and more towards the difficulty of the methods exam last year. At that point the thread wasn't off topic yet, but it was heading in that direction. This was a pre-emptive warning to try and prevent posts being about the methods exam (when they should be about whether VCE test taking skills (or lack thereof) will significantly impact university performance).

Then, there was a response specifically about the methods exam, which is why Insanipi stepped with another remark (I'm speaking on insanipi's behalf here - I'm happy to be corrected)

The place for conversations about the methods exam is the maths exam board. So far, there have been occasions where threads have been locked due to having that conversation in the wrong place, so I was more cautious about that possibility and wanted to remind you early to stay on topic.

I know that test taking skills can be relevant to exam performance, exam difficulty etc. but if you want to talk about the methods exam (how you did on it, how difficult it was etc), please do it in the methods exam discussion threads.

I hope this has cleared things up. Since insanipi's warning things have been fine


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My experience has been that uni's want you to do well and be able to showcase what you've learnt and your abilities. There are difficult questions sometimes, but I've never had a uni question try to "trick" me

[vox nihili]

what really? I always thought exams were designed to be like that, at least from personal experience

Exams are designed to discriminate between students of abilities on an approximately normal distribution. How they achieve that depends on the exam.


I think, though, that miniturtle's warnings have become oddly prescient because we've now succeeded in getting off-topic. Please keep the discussion to test taking skills at uni and, as above, go to the methods thread if you want to vent your spleen.

[K888]

Re: tests being designed to throw you off - I certainly haven't found it to be like that in uni. They want you to succeed and all they want to do in your exam is to test your knowledge and see what your application skills are like - it's all about the principles

[Sine]

I felt that VCAA and university exams are extremely different. Even then, there is a diversity of VCAA exams. E.g. for some subjects such as methods/spec you cant just dump all your time into the subject and be guranteed to get a high score as it doesnt only test you what you know, but how you think and how you think on the day of the exam. For other subjects you could just learn all the concepts (+ key words, etc) and you will do very well.

As for university, i definitely think its less about your inherent ability and more about how much you know and how much you have studied. Even for the maths exams where they rarely have any "seperator" questions designed for most of the cohort to get wrong. At uni they are mainly explictly testing you about stuff that you have learnt and the real difficulty is the amount of content given to you in the semester. This is probably as big or bigger than a vce subject in 12 weeks.

[integrationbyrecognition]

I felt that VCAA and university exams are extremely different. Even then, there is a diversity of VCAA exams. E.g. for some subjects such as methods/spec you cant just dump all your time into the subject and be guranteed to get a high score as it doesnt only test you what you know, but how you think and how you think on the day of the exam. For other subjects you could just learn all the concepts (+ key words, etc) and you will do very well.

As for university, i definitely think its less about your inherent ability and more about how much you know and how much you have studied. Even for the maths exams where they rarely have any "seperator" questions designed for most of the cohort to get wrong. At uni they are mainly explictly testing you about stuff that you have learnt and the real difficulty is the amount of content given to you in the semester. This is probably as big or bigger than a vce subject in 12 weeks.

Not the case for this years methods exams imo. Lots of questions which never showed up in past exams

[Lear]

In my opinion, at the VCE level at least, unique questions are fundamental to testing student abilities. A skill of test taking (that is expected by VCAA) is the ability to apply concepts to new and unfamiliar scenarios.

If tests simply regurgitated past questions, they would be pointless. Everyone would find it easy