Exam techniques Information and guidance on how to prepare for your exam

Exam techniques
Information and guidance on how to prepare for your exam.


Exams are a unique kind of challenge. After university, it's rare for people to sit another exam.But that doesn't mean you won't find yourself in a pressurised situation where you must produce or recall a lot of informati8on and explain your understanding.
Pressurised situations can bring out the best in us: they focus attention, force us to prioritise our work and make sure we properly rank our knowledge in terms of relevance. But their intensity can lead to stress, which can have a negative effect on your performance.
Feeling a degree of stress about your exams is completely normal and is a positive marker that you are invested in your learning. However, it's important to make sure that your stress levels feel manageable and don't impact negatively on your wellbeing.The more informed and better prepared you are, the more able you'll be to cope with the stress of exams.
Exam environment
Like any form of assessment, exams are designed to test your knowledge about a module's content. Exams are a special case, however. The testing takes place in a relatively artificial and controlled environment that involves other people, whose ways of working might be distracting.Each exam has specific regulations about location, duration, access to resources and question format, amongst other things.

At the beginning of an exam
Read the instructions at least twice, even if you are familiar with the style and format of the exam. There may be some unexpected differences that you will need to be aware of
Read the entire paper carefully at least once, noting how many questions you need to complete and the length of the exam
After reading the full paper, decide what questions you will answer and the order in which you will do them. It is not always sensible to choose comfort zone topics; instead carefully read the question being asked and select the most appropriate subject
Next, consider how long you will spend on each question, ensuring that the time allocated to a particular question is in keeping with the number of marks available.The day of the exam arrives. Hopefully, you have revised and prepared well. But are there exam tips and strategies that you can use even in the exam room to improve your grades? The good news is ‘yes!’