Improving Your Performance on Exams and Tests

1. Improving Your Performance
on Exams and Tests

2. Getting Prepared for Tests and
Exams
• Prepare physically
• Get enough sleep, eat right, and follow your regular exercise
regime
• Prepare emotionally
• Know the material, practice relaxing, and use positive self-
talk
• Prepare for test-taking
• Find out about the test, design an exam plan, and join a
study group
• Prepare for math and science exams
• Do homework regularly and attend each class
• Create a review guide throughout the term

3. Your Turn
Are there times when you engage in
negative predictions about your
academic performance? What do you
think causes you to be so hard on
yourself? Do you think that changing
your predictions could change your
performance? Why or why not? How
can you reverse your thinking and
compliment yourself on your work?

4. Taking Tests and Exams
• Essay questions
• Budget your exam time and create a brief outline of
your answers
• Multiple-choice questions
• Take advantage of key words
• Fill-in-the-blank questions
• True/false questions
• Every detail must be true for the statement to be true
• Matching questions
• Review all terms and descriptions before answering
any questions

5. Your Turn
Do you think that essay exams are
more appropriate in upper-level
courses and multiple-choice exams are
more appropriate in first-year courses?
Why or why not?

6. Types of Tests
• Problem-solving tests
• Machine-scored tests
• Computerized tests
• Laboratory tests
• Open-book/open-note tests
• Take-home tests

7. Overcoming Test Anxiety
• Types of test anxiety
• Standardized tests vs. classroom tests
• Tests at a computer terminal
• Subject-specific
• Symptoms of test anxiety
• Butterflies in the stomach, queasiness or nausea,
headaches, faster heartbeat, hyperventilating, shaking,
sweating, or muscle cramps
• Strategies for combating test anxiety
• Take long, deep breaths, stretch your muscles
• Sit with shoulders back and relaxed
• Getting the test back
• Review your graded test and evaluate your own knowledge

8. Your Turn
Do you experience any type of test
anxiety? If so, what causes you to be
anxious? If not, what strategies do you
use to stay calm?

9. Your Turn
What actions do you take when you
look at graded tests? Take a look at an
exam you got back in one of your
classes. What can you learn from it?
Would you challenge an instructor if
you thought he or she had made a
mistake in your grade? Why or why
not?

10. Academic Honesty and
Misconduct
• Cheating
• Includes looking over a classmate’s shoulder, using a
calculator when it is not authorized, obtaining or discussing
an exam without permission, copying notes
• Plagiarism
• Taking another person’s ideas or work and presenting them
as your own
• Consequences of cheating and plagiarism
• Suspension or expulsion
• College degrees revoked
• Reducing the likelihood of academic dishonesty

11. Tech Tip: Fear Not the Online
Test
Tips for taking an online test
• Don’t wait until the last minute to study
• Get organized
• Resist the temptation to surf the Web for answers
• Don’t get distracted
• Budget your time
• Tackle easy questions first
• Beware of losing your Internet connection mid-test