Exam Preparation and Performance: Some Suggestions

Exam Preparation and Performance: Some Suggestions

As with most things you’ll encounter in university, exams require you to exercise careful time management. That is true both before and during exams. You have to budget your time wisely as you prepare for an exam and as you write one. In fact, one of the most common reasons students do poorly in an exam they ought to pass is that they don’t handle time well.

Preparation

Preparing for an exam means organizing your time and being sure to do what you need to do to answer the questions. Of course, the most important preparation you do is during the entire year as a whole; as we said at the beginning of the year, you need to keep up with your readings and viewings (that is, of films). If you have kept up, you should have no problem studying for the exam. If you have not, you will have trouble catching up during the last week or two before the exam.

Generally speaking, it isn’t a good idea to try reading texts you haven’t read already. However, if you do have time, give it a try, but be sure to make notes as you read to ensure you remember important details, such as character names and plot elements. You should have notes on the texts that you have read and seen all year long, highlighting various important details. The most important thing to keep in mind is how each text fits into the course’s themes as a whole. For our course, the themes are very clearly outlined: they are the titles of the lectures. Go over the syllabus, look at the titles and subjects of the lectures, and concentrate on what we’ve been talking about. Review how individual texts illustrate the things we have been talking about since September.

Write summaries of the characters, plots, themes, and connections between texts. Which characters are in which texts? What—in very general terms—happens in each text? What are they about? You should have done this all year long, but if you haven’t, skim the texts you’ve read and remind yourself of these details. (You may be surprised by how well you remember texts you’ve already read.) Writing down the details helps you remember them.

The basics are important: titles, authors or directors, main characters, main themes. You will lose far more marks getting something basic wrong than mistaking a plot detail. Also, review the notes you took in lecture and tutorial. In this course, we won’t be asking you about the scientific, historical, or other contexts; that was just background we provided so that you could understand the texts better. Focus on the important points we have made about the texts’ themes: the ideas they represent.

It is a good idea to form study groups. Get together with others in your tutorial group and ask each other questions. Test each other’s knowledge of basic details and themes. Having someone else push you to remember these points helps a lot. If you study better on your own, and feel uncomfortable in a group, then test yourself. Imagine you’re in the exam; what do you think you would need to know?

In order to do well during the exam, you will need to be sure that your body is prepared, too. That means ensuring that you have rested, meaning that you had a good night’s sleep, and that you have eaten, so that you have the energy needed to sit a three-hour exam. Memory is a function of concentration—if you concentrate on something, you will remember it better. Lack of sleep interferes with your ability to concentrate and therefore remember things. Similarly, being distracted by hunger pangs won’t help your concentration during the exam. Rest and food are essential to doing well on an exam.

On the day of the exam, bring your notes so that you can study them until the last minute, and be sure to bring equipment: extra pens and pencils, an eraser, and a watch. We don’t care whether you write using a pen or pencil; using a pencil will make it easier to correct errors, but be sure to have extras in case your pencil breaks. Some courses permit you to bring a dictionary to the exam (not ours)—ask your course director if that will be the case. Some exams allow the use of calculators and other electronic devices; check first.

The Exam

Again, the important thing to remember is time management. Students often ask about an essay question in an exam, “How long should the essay be?” The answer is not a word count but a time count. How much time in the exam do you have to answer the question? If a part of an exam is worth 20% of the total, spend 20% of your exam time on it. The biggest mistake students make (other than not knowing the material!) is spending half the exam time on a part that’s only worth one-quarter or one-third of the exam.

For our purposes, when it comes to the essays you’ll be writing, the answer to the question, “How long should the answer be?” is, “About an hour.” In our exam, there are two parts: A and B. Part A is worth 30%; Part B will have you do two essays for a total of 70%. In other words, Part A is worth about one-third of the exam, and so is each of the essays. Since the exam is three hours long, you should plan to spend one hour on Part A and one hour on each of the essays.

You may find that some answers are easier for you to tackle than others. You are under no obligation to answer the questions in order. If you get stuck on something, do the other answers first, then go back and try again. Don’t waste time trying to figure out what to do if you would be better off doing something else first.

Read the questions carefully and be sure you understand them. We will be available to answer any questions you have about the exam, but we will NOT answer the exam questions for you! Don’t ask us about text titles, character names, etc. We will give you plenty of choice, so spend a moment choosing which questions you wish to answer based on the texts you’re most comfortable with. Don’t spend too much time choosing, and waste time that you should be spending actually writing your answers. Look for key terms, like “discuss” and “compare.” If you’re asked to compare texts, be sure your answer actually compares them, and doesn’t just treat them as entirely separate topics.

Please follow Weiss’s Three Rules for Answering a Question:

1. Answer the question. Be sure to address the question we ask, ensuring you answer

what we ask in the exam. Going off on your own, ignoring the question, is a good

way to fail that question.

2. Get it right. Be sure you get the basics right: author/director, text title, character

names, and so on. Don’t put characters in the wrong texts. Spell names correctly.

3. Make it understandable. This means two things: first, write clearly so that we can

read your answer; second, write in English. That means using English grammar

and spelling, and not making up words. Please try to remember the things that

Grammar Man has taught you all year long. Also remember one of his most

important tips: a one-syllable word used correctly is better than a five-syllable

word used incorrectly.

It is important to prepare your answers before writing them. For example, in Part B, you will be writing two essays, but YOU MAY NOT USE A TEXT IN BOTH ANSWERS! That means that you will have to decide which texts to use for which answer. Figure out which texts you want to use (we’ll be asking you to discuss three texts in each) and ensure you don’t repeat them. If we find that the second essay uses a text already used in the first essay, that portion of your essay will receive a zero.

Before you write, engage in the usual pre-writing exercises you need to perform before writing anything. That means coming up with a thesis statement—an argument that will govern everything you say in your essay—and an outline. We will be reading and grading what you write on the right side of the booklet; on the left side, the blank page, scribble a thesis and an outline, and even some notes, such as details about the texts. Spend no more than a couple of minutes on this stage, but be sure you don’t forget to do it, as it can make the difference between a good answer and a weak one. A well prepared essay is as important in an exam as in your regular essay assignments, and that means ensuring you have a thesis and a proper outline and structure for your essay. In your outline, write down “Introduction” and “Conclusion” so that you don’t forget to include those vital parts of your essay. If you can recall any specific details that will strengthen your argument—scenes, lines from the texts, even passages of dialogue—write those down for later use.

Budget your time not only in the exam as a whole but also in each essay. That means that if you are discussing three texts, you give each text an equal amount of attention. It is easy to make a mistake like spending half the time on only one of the texts, but avoid doing it. Here’s a way to organize your writing of the exam:

15 seconds: Panic. You will likely do this; almost everybody does. When you look at the

exam, you will blank out—you will think that you never took the course, you won’t remember any of the texts, you will think that you are doomed. Indulge the feeling, and don’t worry about it. Forewarned is forearmed: in other words, knowing it’s going to happen will help you defend yourself against the experience. If you know that you’ll have a blank moment—and, again, it has happened to most if not all of us, at all levels of education—you won’t worry about it so much. Suddenly, facts will start to flow back into your mind. You’ll remember novels and short stories and films we studied, and you’ll come out the other side.

1 min.: Carefully read the question you’ve decided to answer and ensure you

understand it and know how to answer it. Think of the texts you want to use.

1 min.: Come up with a thesis statement and an outline for the essay. Decide what

order you want your points to be in.

2-3 min.: Write the introduction. As with the exam as a whole, you are under no

obligation to write things in order. The introduction, especially the opening line,

is often the hardest thing to come up with. If you’re stuck, leave it for the end.

If you need to, leave a space for the introduction on the page and get right into

the thesisstatement and then your arguments for the texts you’ve chosen to answer the question. Don’t start your introduction with something absurd like,

“Since the beginning of time, science fiction…” or “All science fiction…” SF has

not existed since the Big Bang, and you haven’t read all of science fiction. No one has.

10 min. or so: For each body paragraph. Again, be sure that each body paragraph is

about the same length as the others; don’t spend too much time on one text at

the expense of the others. Start each body paragraph with a transition so that

it will connect well with the previous one or with the thesis statement. “Another

point is” is weak; “Similarly” or “By contrast” is better. The point is to connect

the paragraphs so that they all form a single argument rather than three separate

little essays.

2-3 min.: Write your conclusion. Don’t just copy your introduction, and don’t end with

some grand statement you can’t justify.

2-4 min.: Leave yourself time at the end to look over your essay and correct any errors

you find, whether grammatical, spelling, or factual.

Once you are satisfied that you have answered a question to the best of your abilities, move on. Take the full exam time, and ensure you give it all that you’ve got.

We will ask no trick or unfair questions. We will focus on the texts you have read and watched, and on the themes we have been discussing all year long. If you come to the exam mentally and physically prepared, and manage your time wisely, you should have no problem doing well. We are there to help both before and during the exam to assist you. Take advantage of our time and expertise. We want you to do well.

Good luck!