Vital Tips For Taking Exams

When you sit an exam you’ll be nervous, so read each question twice before mentally composing your answer.

Essay questions are the most dangerous.  Some are long, some painfully short, some are trick and some are ambiguous.

The first thing you write is your understanding of what the question is asking you.   This is not just repeating the question, this is defining the question so that you know what your are being asked.

When you give this understanding of what you are being asked, in that very first set of sentences, if the question is ambiguous.

An ambiguous question is one that could be asking one thing but is actually asking another.  You might read one possibility when there is another.   The writers might have accidentally made the question capable of having two distinct answers.

If you state the question, that should inform the examiner what you believe you were asked.   In many cases, this restatement of the question in the manner you understand it will, often, not cause you to be penalised if your reading of the question is possible.

Ambiguous 

One of the most famous ambiguous questions is;

“If a woman plays her sister at chess and she’s a grandmaster, is she likely to win?”

Who is the Grandmaster?  ‘A Woman?’  or  “Her Sister?”   And which one are you being questioned upon?

If you state the question;   “If the woman is the Grandmaster and is playing her sister, who is not a Grandmaster, then it expected that the Grandmaster would win.”

And you go on to explain what a Grandmaster is.

This kind of sloppy composition of a question is sometimes used as a ‘trick’ to see how you think.  When you restate the question in such a manner as to betray how you have read it, then the Examiner must recognise that the question is open to that interpretation.

So the first step is to state what question you are answering.

Definitions

The next part of your answer should be the definitions.  This can also be described as stating the law.

Using the example above, you would define what a Grandmaster is, and why it is likely that a person who is a Grand Master at Chess would be expected to defeat the average player.

I used the term law, above to direct your thoughts to the reality of what you are being asked.  In a science question it would be one of the scientific laws.   In a legal question, the law.  In a history question it would be the significance of the time/place/date.

By defining the question your are answering and then stating the law, you then begin to match the question to the definition and the law.

In this way you have begun the question by telling the examiner what question you are answering, indicated the principles (law) you are applying,  you set the stage for answering the question.

Never plunge in and start writing away before defining and stating.  If the question is ‘trick’ you will be tricked. If the question is deliberately or accidentally ambiguous you might pick the ‘wrong’ side and because you haven’t clarified what you think you are being asked, will be marked down.  If you don’t state the relevant laws/principles on which you base your answer you live the examiner wondering if you even know them.

Once you have set the ‘playing field’ then you answer the question.  You use the information in the question as you defined it, the laws and principles that apply to the information in the question.

In this way, even if you have read the question incorrectly, your answer is correct in relation to how you read the question.

If you have answered the question and at the end, appreciate that it could be other wise, then you can add;

“That if the sister was the Grandmaster, and the Woman was not, the facts concerning the ability of Grand Masters of Chess still applies.”

This is how you ace a test.