Don’t cram
Stick to what you already know when studying the night before an exam.
You’ll only make yourself nervous if you try to learn new information.
Review your notes or test yourself on key points.
Keep your cool
Don’t talk to other students about the exam before the exam.
It could confuse you or make you lose confidence in yourself.
The same goes for after the exam. Don’t hang around talking about what was on it or you’ll start to doubt yourself and stress out if you think you made a mistake.
Use your reading time
The way you use your reading time could make or break you in the exam.
Use it to plan your writing time and start thinking about some answers.
Read the instructions very carefully then scan the whole exam paper.
Be sure to check how many pages there are and how much each question is worth. Plan how much time to spend on each answer and the order in which you’ll answer them. Start with the questions you’re most confident with.
Break the questions down
A great tip for any exam is to break the questions down to make sure you really understand what you’re being asked.
If you don’t answer the question properly you won’t get full marks for it.
Look for the key parts in the question and these will give you clues on how to answer it. For example, for the question, “Explain the difference between study and revision.” You can split this question into four parts:
Explain – give reasons to show how or why something is the way it is
The difference – what are the distinguishing factors between study and revision?
Study – what is study?
Revision- what is revision?
Review your performance
While there is no use stressing out over an exam you’ve already done, it does help to look at what you can improve on. If you didn’t do as well on an exam as you would’ve liked, ask your teacher if you can go through it with them and find out what you did wrong. This obviously does not apply to the final exams.