How to write a good answer in examination

1. Focus on the question

(a) What are the terms of the question?

(i) Decide what the key words of the question are, and underline them.

(ii) Ensure that you have defined them - at least in your own mind.

(iii) If you think they are problematic, define them at the beginning of your essay.

(iv) Make sure your definition is sound: do not try to stretch the meaning of words too far, but
do not just jump at the first possible idea.

(b) What has been asked?

(i) Answer the question asked not the one you would have liked to be asked.

(ii) Avoid being irrelevant.

(iii) Be sure that you show explicitly how your ideas relate to the question.

(c) Close analysis

If you are asked to analyse an extract:

(i) Read it through two or three times

(ii) On your second reading begin to underline key words and phrases

(iii) Make a plan of your answer, ensuring that you cover every point asked in the question

(iv) Concentrate on the passage and avoid irrelevant material.

2. Wake up the examiner!

(a) Be willing to think

(i) Do not adopt the first possible approach.

(ii) Try to range widely but keep to the terms of the question.

(iii) Be willing to dispute the terms of the question if you are given the opportunity (for example,
in questions that ask how far', to what extent' or do you think'?).

(b) Create a strong opening and closing

The examiner is going to be marking many similar essays. To send the examiner to sleep
immediately:

(i) Just repeat the words of the question This essay asks about and I am going to ')

(ii) Give a hackneyed dictionary definition of one or more of the terms in the question.

Instead, try to wake the examiner up. Try starting with:

(iii) A short controversial statement

(iv) A relevant quotation

(v) A striking piece of evidence.

The main thing is to demonstrate that you have thought about the question.

A strong ending is important in that it creates the final impression the examiner carries away from
your answer:

(vi) Save a bold statement until the end

(vii) Or finish with a useful quotation.

(c) Illustrate amply with relevant material

(i) Do not try to get by on ignorance and waffle the examiner will spot it!

(ii) Use a good number of brief but relevant quotations, derived from your thorough
knowledge of the text.

3. Think about your style

(a) Develop a fluent style

Give some thought, however brief, to each sentence before you write it:

(a) Does it say what you mean?

(b) Does it make the point?

(b) Be accurate!

Anyone claiming to be a student of English is expected to have a good knowledge of the mechanics of
the language:

(i) If you have problems with spelling, grammar and punctuation, take action before the
examination.

(ii) You will be penalized for errors.

 (iii) Examiners award marks for quality of language'.

(iv) Try to leave time to read through your paper before handing it in.

(c) Be succinct!

(i) Say what you mean in the clearest and shortest manner.

(ii) Leave yourself time to make new points.

(iii) Avoid repeating ideas: if you find yourself writing as I said earlier', be sure that it is really
helpful to repeat the same point.

(d) Use an appropriate tone and vocabulary

Most of the exams (and essays) that you will write require a formal register of language:

(i) Contractions such as don't' and can't', used naturally in spoken language, are not
appropriate in writing.

(ii) Also avoid slang or colloquial terms.

(iii) Make use of literary terminology words like form', structure', style', image', symbol'
where appropriate.

(e) Make good use of quotations

(i) You need to know your text so well that all its ideas are in your head and relevant
quotations come easily to mind.

(ii) When you use quotations, remember to try to blend them seamlessly into your own
sentence structure.

(iii) When you use a quotation, make it work for you: a well-chosen quotation may, for example,
enable you to comment on theme, style and character.

(iv) Do not use quotations simply because you have memorized them: make sure that they
are relevant to your answer.

4. Organize your time

(a) Divide your time appropriately

In an examination you will almost certainly have several essays to write or sections to complete:

(i) Decide on the order in which you wish to answer them.

(ii) Make sure that you answer them all.

 (iii) Jot down ideas about any of the questions you expect to answer: don't hope to remember
things especially bearing in mind that you may be pressed for time towards the end.

(iv) Give each question the appropriate time and don't exceed it: a brilliant but overlong answer
is no guarantee of success.

(v) If you are allowed your text in the examination, do not waste time in leafing through it in
search of ideas: use it only for reference and checking quotations.

(b) Plan your answers carefully

Have the confidence to take time to plan. You could usefully devote up to a quarter of the exam time
to this process. It is worth it because:

(i) You will save time in the end

(ii) It is much more efficient than sitting and trying to think of the next point

(iii) You will have a sharper, more fluent and authoritative answer.
Exam Techniques, Tips and Tricks

Part A) Preparing for an Exam

1) Revise actively.
Just reading through your notes is the worst possible way to revise. Well, OK, perhaps not the
worst possible, but its really not very good. The more of your brain you can engage in the
revision, the more you will remember. Memory is not a box in one part of your brain that things
are either in or out. Memory is spread out everywhere: theres verbal memory, visual memory,
audio memory, muscle memory, all sorts. The more your brain does with the information, the
more you will remember.

So dont just read. Make up poems and mnemonics. Summarise the notes. Set them to music.
Extract key points and write them down yourself somewhere even if youre just copying them
out, this is better than just reading, since more of your brain is involved. Make up quizzes and do
them. Write limericks. Above all do problems. Make up your own if you run out. Get active!

2) Plan revision.
Write a good revision plan, and stick to it. Dont do just one subject a day, youll get tired of it;
then again swopping too often means you dont get the chance to get deep into anything. I used
to do mornings on one subject, afternoons on another and evenings on a third.

3) Do past papers as many as you can lay your hands on.

The internal web has (at least) the last three year's papers on it. Papers from previous years are
stored in the library (at least that used to be true - it's worth checking if they still have them).
Work through them. If you can't do a question, check that it is still in the syllabus (the modules
change every year, and it's always worth checking what is new). With a good revision plan you
should be doing nothing in the last week before the exams except working through exam papers
and examples sheets making sure you can do them.

I cant emphasise the importance of this enough. Anyone who doesnt work through past papers
has very little chance of doing well in an exam.

Oh - and do the past papers, and the examples sheets, against the clock. Time is short in an
exam, you need to get used to thinking, and writing quickly. Get your hand trained up so it can
write fast (but legibly, please).

4) Question-spotting.
This can be risky, but if you're playing the percentages it's worth a try. Look for any topic that was
in the exam two and three years ago, but not last year. If you can get hold of papers from further
back, try and spot patterns: does any topic come up every other year, for example?

Another good tip is to make a very careful note if the lecturer says at any point "this is new in the
course this year". If he does, there's an above average chance that this will be in the exam - it
gets harder every year to come up with new questions about the same old subjects, and putting a
new topic in the course is an easy "new question" for the examiner.
5) If you cant do the past papers ask someone for help.
Study groups work well, provided you dont think this will mean other people are doing your
studying for you. They cant that doesnt work. You have to go and study a subject, or attempt
an exam paper by yourselves first, then meet together to discuss your answers. Dont work
through the past papers in the group the temptation to let other people do the work is too
strong. You need to learn to do it yourself. Always remember, exams are not a team exercise.

Failing that, make an appointment to come and ask the lecturer. Lecturers are usually perfectly
happy to answer questions of the form this is how far Ive got, but I cant see how to do the next
bit is this right? However, anyone turning up and asking for the worked solutions to an exam
question having made no apparent effort to try themselves first is likely to be told to go away and
do some more work. This is for your benefit if we just tell you how to do a problem, you wont
remember it very well. If you really struggle to get through it yourself, and then with some help
finally succeed, you may remember it for the rest of your life. The more effort you put into it, the
better it will stick in your memory.

6) If you just cant understand something, learn it parrot-fashion.

This really is a last-ditch solution. But it gives you at least something to do with the questions on
subjects you really dont understand. Even questions on these subjects usually start off by giving
you a few marks for describing XXX. Even if you dont understand it, you can get a few marks
by writing down the description straight from the notes.

Part B) The Last 24 Hours

7) Dont be tired.
If you have to stay up all night to do last minute revision, youve already failed. It doesnt work
you end up so tired in the exam you cant work anything out. It might work for the first one or two
exams in a year, but you wont be able to keep it up throughout a whole series of exams.

8) Eat protein before long exams not carbohydrates.

An exam is just as much a physical exercise as a race. Well, OK, perhaps not quite as much, but
you cant ignore your body if you want your brain to work at its best. Stuffing it full of sugar, or
some Red-Bull type drink just before will work fine for the first hour or so, but by the end of a
three-hour exam youll have completely run out of energy. You need some food that will slowly
release energy. Try pasta, fish or eggs.

9) Get the important facts into short-term memory.

In the last 24 hours it's too late to try and understand anything new. What you can do is cram
some facts into short-term memory. This is the time to go through the notes looking at those "key
points" sections. If you haven't already done it as part of your revision (and you should have done
it), write out a sheet with just the key facts. See how many you can remember. Then write out
another sheet with just the ones you forgot. See how many you remember now. Continue until
you've either remembered it all, or run out of time.

Also, read through your worked solutions for the last three year's papers. Then, get a good
night's sleep, or go for a walk and get some fresh air into your lungs.
10) Exercise - get the blood pumping round.
In the last couple of hours, go for a run, or work out in the gym. Seriously. Studies have shown
that the most creative periods come after a period of exercise, and that the benefits of taking
exercise can last for up to two hours. Exams aren't just about memory, you'll need your brain to
be in top working condition.
Part C) The Exam Itself
11) Planning your campaign
The first thing to do is read over, carefully, the entire exam paper. Spend a good ten minutes
reading before you write anything. In this time, work out which questions you are going to answer,
which order you are going to answer them in, and plan your time in the exam: how much time you
are going to spend answering each question. Take careful note of the marking scheme (see later)
when making this plan. Write down the plan on the back sheet of your answer book - you can
always score it out later. It helps you feel in control, and that helps keep you calm.

Don't be tempted to do a question on subject X just because it's the subject you know the most
about. It might be a real stinker of a question. Are you sure you can do it? Which parts can you
do? How many marks do you think you could get on the parts of the question you can do? You
might find there is another, much easier question on subject Y, which you might not have chosen
because you found subject Y is harder, or because one part of the question looks really difficult.
Work it out for each part of each question: which question is likely to get you the most marks? Do
that one.

Reading the whole question is also important because many questions lead you through a
problem - the answer to part a) is used in part b), etc. There might be clues in later parts of the
question about what the examiner is expecting. Make sure you spot them.

As an examiner I am constantly amazed by students who set out to do questions that they've
clearly got not the first clue how to do. Surely there would be another question on the paper that
they could have got a few marks on at least?

When working out timescales, try and balance the time spend on a part of the question against
the marks you will achieve. If it's a 90 minute exam, and it's marked out of 60, then on average
you've got 1.5 minutes to get each mark. Plan time accordingly. Remember: exam questions are
not about writing down everything you know about a topic - if you do this you'll almost certainly
run out of time. You're trying to get the best mark you can on the whole paper, not just on the
question you happen to be doing at the time.

Obviously, the plan (with timescales) is not a rigid one, and going a few minutes over on one
question is OK but try and catch it up if this happens.

12) Do the easiest questions first

There is absolutely no reason to do the questions in the order they are printed in the exam. I
would recommend doing the easiest one(s) first.
There are two reasons for this. Firstly, getting one question safely under your belt at the start of
an exam is a wonderful boost to confidence, and can help reduce any feelings of panic that might
arise when looking at the harder questions.

The second reason is that the easiest question is likely to take less time than the average. That
means youll be ahead of schedule from the start another good confidence boost. It also means
that when you get round to the most difficult question, you are free to spend all the time you have
left on it, without having to drop it half-way through and come back to it later, if time permits not
a good idea if it can be avoided.

13) Look at the marking schemes theres lots of useful material there.
We have strict marking schemes these days its part of the drive to be seen to be fair. So, if
there are four marks available for the description of XXX, then the marking scheme will probably
have four key points. Mention them all, and you get the marks. Often, for a question like this, I will
have a list of five or six points, and give one mark for each of them, up to a maximum of four. One
thing you can be (reasonably) certain of: if you havent made four key points, youve missed
something.

Dont spend half-an-hour writing a long essay for two marks. People still do this. Its a waste of
time better spent on other parts of the question.

14) One thing to try if you cant quite get a derivation to work out (not entirely serious smile

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What you could consider doing in questions of the form derive the result shown below where
youre not sure of all the steps: start at the top of the page, state the assumptions clearly, and
write down the equations where youre going to start. About a page and a half later, write the
result, and start working backwards from there. Where the two halves meet, write Clearly,

This gives the examiner a problem. Provided youve got the steps right, and the two halves
almost meet up, its hard for him to know whether the missing step is clear to you or not. It might
be. You could get the benefit of the doubt.

Of course, there is some risk here, if you have made a mistake, and your clearly connects two
lines that can not possible agree. While the strict marking schemes we use these days make it
hard to penalise students directly for this sort of thing, it will tend to put the examiner in a poor
frame of mind, and he might start being less generous in marking other sections of the paper
where he has some discretion.

15) Dont get stuck. Move on.

Avoid writer's block, you haven't got time for it. If you get stuck on a question, move on. Start
doing another one. Staring at a question you dont know how to answer is a waste of time, and
youd be amazed how often, when coming back to a question after half-an-hour, it suddenly
becomes clear.

16) Take a bottle of water in with you. Sip it slowly throughout.

Its a good way of remaining calm. Also, you can get through a lot of nervous sweat during a hard
exam. Your body will work better if you replace it. There is research that suggests this can make
a significant difference to your grades

17) Use common sense.

If the answer to how high is the radio tower is 217 miles, or to what is the free electron density
in the semiconductor is 0.003 electrons per cubic metre, then youre probably wrong. Even if you
dont have time to go back and find the mistake, at least write something to indicate that you
know its wrong. You might get some credit for that.

18) Always explain what you are doing.

Too many times I find an exam script where the student has written an equation with variables in
it, and not told me what the variables represent. If the answer is right, then I can usually figure
out what the variables must be, and the student gets the marks. But if the answer is wrong, then
sometimes it's impossible to work out what they were supposed to be. In this case the students
gets zero for an incomprehensible answer.

Don't just write long lines of mathematics. Explain what you're trying to do with the derivation
before you set off, and add comments as you go. It's easy, and can gain a lot of marks for
method, even when the answer is wrong.

19) If you're running out of time.

Suppose you've got time left to do one question, but two questions left to do. Which one do you
choose? The way to maximise your marks is to do the first half of both of them. You gain marks
faster at the start of a question than at the end.

If you don't have time to write sentences, but you do know what to do, then just write bullet
points. If you don't have time to do the calculations, write and explain what calculations you would
do. You can get marks for method.

20) Never leave an exam early.

The only possible excuse for this is when you are absolutely sure that you have got 100%, and
that should never happen. There is always something you can do to improve your paper. Check,
and check again. When youve finished, start back at the beginning, and try to do the questions
in different ways, and check they agree. Add more explanations.

If you've got time left at the end, try remembering the mnemonic: ACUTE.

Assumptions (have you explained them all, even when not explicity asked.)
Calculations (have you checked them all - doing things different ways if possible and time
permits. Did you press those calculator buttons right? Do the answers to different parts of the
question agree? Check, and check again.)
Units (have you written the units you're using? Do the units for all formulas make sense and
agree - this is a very powerful technique for checking that your derivations are right and you're
using the right formula.)
Truth (have you done all the parts of all the sections in the questions? If asked to make a list and
explain why, don't just make a list. This is probably the biggest cause of unnecessary lost marks -
read the question and answer the question, the whole question, and nothing but the question.
Just like the truth in a court of law.)
Explanations (have I explained what I'm doing at all stages - good explanations will get marks for
method even if the answer is wrong; miss out the explanation and you're throwing away easy
method marks.)

I have never left an exam early in my life.