Questions questions, easily found!

Getting stuck before an exam trying to figure out what to study? Being proactive is just the key that this strategy taught me to helping me study for an exam. Just anticipating test questions in the correct way is all it takes!! You can do it in several ways like, use syllabus information, note the professor’s questions asked, use study aid as study sheets/graphic organizers, create questions and validate with your professor, and finally, use previous exams to create your own questions. The two that I am going to go over my use of it is noting the professor’s questions, and use previous exams to create your own questions.

Noting the professor’s questions that they ask in class is such a good aid to make for studying and you don’t realize how simple it can be to do it! The idea of this is to take down all of the questions that the professor asks in class because most likely they will be or be related to exam questions. This strategy starts in class while you are taking notes or doing assignments in that course, so I suggest on top of what you are doing in class, just keep a loose-leaf piece of paper to your side. When you hear your professor ask YOU questions such as, “As velocity grows, what then drops?” immediately just jott that question down on the piece of paper you have to the side. Yes, you do have to do this during class, but it’s so simple to do and turns out being very helpful in the end when you finish class with an entire paper filled with questions. I would suggest then if you have time immediately after class answer those questions so that they are fresh in your mind, but if not, just take the time to answer them later. And wah-lah...you have your first study guide of test questions right there to begin reviewing!

Another way of anticipating questions was using a previous exam we had received back graded. You always get those exams back that you could’ve done better on so you review it, but what does reviewing it do? Show you what you did wrong yes, BUT in order to use that exam to HELPING you do better next time, use this to help! So after receiving back your exam, you can see what type of set up, questions, and outcome your professor is testing you on. But first start out by collecting what topics are going to be the key point of the exam, then you figure out where all the information will be to helping you create these question. And with the main topics, draw them in to a similar format that the questions were in on the exam received back. So for example, on my last EAR 117 exam, there were many of drawings, and one of the questions was draw a diagram and explain, so my professor was looking for the definitions. I took that and applied it to an important diagram that my professor had been stressing on in a class and made it into a question, having to draw the diagram, and define how each area is used. And continue to relate key ideas your learning about and put it into a question form that was used previously on the exam before. It’s awesome! This helped me practice drawing them out as well as helping me figure out what is going to be on the next exam a head of time.

Relating new information to previous experience (old exams) are keys to successful learning! As a visual learner I posted pictures of my examples that I actually used so you can see to help you understand them as a learner better! The materials I used were old exams, to help me make questions for future exams and my own notes taken during class on the professor’s questions and lectures. It was useful for me to use these particular strategies in these classes because I had received my exams back and graded. I was able to figure out what worked well and what didn’t by how many questions I got out of the professor for the first example I used. The second time I tried noting the professor’s questions, it didn’t work as well simply because there wasn’t much speaking by my professor in another one of my classes due to it being a discussion class. You just have to try it out in different classes and if it is able to work in that specific class, it is prime! You all the sudden have a study guide, and know what to study! Mid-terms are starting, so get started with this now!!