As the
Examinations are nearing in the month of November/December/January, here
are 7 tips to help every student pass exams:
1. No
limiting belief please
- Remove the limiting belief that you can’t pass.
- If you believe you can pass or you believe you cannot pass, you are right.
- I have seen students under the impression that examiner is their enemy. Please don’t think so. Pass percentage might be low, but students do pass their exams. So, don’t think that you will be in a failure category ever.
2. Understand
the structure of paper
- First of all, understand the structure of paper – is there any marks allocation for a particular topic?
- Secondly, if there is marks allocation, is examiner following it? The best thing to do is to review the past five papers.
- What is the key topic i.e. examiner’s favorite? Is there any article by examiner in the Students’ Accountant or any other relevant student magazine? Study that topic and prepare for it, even if you don’t like it!
3. Taking
notes
- Prepare for exams by way of ‘notes’ which you can recall quickly at the time of taking exam. This will help in two manner. First, when you write, you are in better picture of giving your mind instruction through written letters. Secondly, you can revise from your notes instead of opening the book when exam day is near. Here is my strategy for taking notes:
- Take a paper and turn it in landscape format.
- Put three columns in landscape form.
- Once done, take synopsis of a chapter in smaller fonts and the language which you can easily understand.
- Write bullet points, important concepts and key ideas which you need to remember.
- These notes should be used at the time when paper is on head and you need to revise whole subject in two to three hours.
4.
Remembering / memorizing key ideas and formula
- One of the key ideas to memorize ideas e.g. formula, is to write them in small charts and hang it in front of your bed.
- See those formula daily before going to bed and rising up.
- Use different colors and markers.
- Believe me, in my Maths paper, I was recalling the formula in the exact colors which I wrote on charts.
5. Exam
practice
- Practice mock exam – be your own examiner.
- Take any past paper and solve it as a mock exam.
- Solve past paper in the time allocated in exam. Think you are in exam hall and solve the paper accordingly.
- Check your paper and give yourself marks.
- See how are you performing in mock exam and be sincere to yourself.
6. Time
your paper
- Here is technique to time your paper: Take total marks and total time. Subtract 10 minutes from the total minutes. Divide the remainder with the marks and you get time per marks
- Example: If there are 100 marks for a paper and you have 180 minutes. Subtract 10 minutes. This means you have 170 minutes altogether or 1.7 minutes per mark.
- Make sure that you don’t spend more that 1.7 minutes per mark e.g. if a question is of 16 marks, maximum time you should spend should be 27 minutes.
- It happens that students try to focus on one particular question and if they are unable to solve it, they get confused. Don’t panic. Start next question. If student has time, he / she can take up that particular question later on.
- Try to allocate 10 minutes at the end of exam to review the paper thoroughly.
7. Don’t
annoy examiner
- See for spelling errors and
writing style. Writing needs to be legible and understandable. As a
teacher to many students, I have noticed that spelling errors and the way
students write, at times, is not understandable. Examiner has very less
time to check paper. If your paper is examiner friendly, you are going to
attract good marks.
All the best for your exams – good luck!
