In this case, reread your summary previously made during the blockade. Equipped with your course table of contents annotated with the key elements of the subject, you are sure to be effective: your lesson plan is your essential memorization tool.
If you have trouble finding your working method, the Student Academy organizes a free working method training . During this session, educational advisers create a tailor-made study schedule with you , so that you can fully understand your blockade, and teach you the most effective study techniques .
2/ Eat healthy and go to bed early
The day before the exam make yourself a good healthy meal and go to bed early so you can hold on during an exam.
Avoid sweets, sodas, crisps, and fatty foods, these foods have little or no nutritional value and will not help you think but will tend to keep you distracted. Distractions represent a considerable loss of time during a blockade , discover our article on how to improve your concentration in 1 exercise .
3/ Arrive at the exam in advance and isolate yourself from other students
Arriving late for an exam is an additional source of stress . Be sure to arrive on time and isolate yourself from others while staying close to the exam room. Indeed, it is much more beneficial to mentally review the points of the course that you have mastered before entering the exam, rather than letting yourself be disturbed by your friends who will drown you in information and make you panic.
4/ Listen to the teacher’s recommendations and read all the questions before answering them
When you receive the exam sheet, listen carefully to the teacher’s recommendations and then read all the questions before you start writing the answers. The teacher’s recommendations are often very helpful in understanding how to answer questions. Reading all the questions will allow you to assess the level of difficulty of the exam and will be an excellent indicator for managing your timing .
To discover advice on other ways of questioning, here is our article on special cases: pass an oral exam in 5 steps and how to pass a MCQ?
5/ Assign each question an answer timing
Start with the questions where you are sure you will score points. Managing your timing during the exam is paramount . Before you start answering, develop a strategy for scoring points. Analyze the weighting of each question, start with the questions where you feel comfortable, do not pass half the exam on a question that is too difficult.
6/ Make the teacher’s job easier by ensuring the readability of your copy.
Nobody likes to correct an illegible copy. This point is essential! Correcting 400 copies that look like hieroglyphs is inhuman work. If you turn in a grimy paper, the teacher will have a negative impression of your answers before they even start reading them.
So: clear writing , structured answers (introduction, body of the answer, conclusion), rich, precise and relevant vocabulary, correctly constructed sentences (preferably short), no grammar or spelling errors. For exams in math or science, circle your final answer clearly and avoid erasures.
7/ Pay attention to the content of your answers:
This point is also essential. The mistake most students make is to respond impulsively to a question without first thinking about how to structure it. Suddenly, they realize too late that they have put forward details instead of integrating the most important elements.
Mentally review all the content of your table of contents and proceed by elimination to be sure that you place the question in the right chapter of the course. When reading the exam question, ask yourself the following questions : What point(s) of the subject is the teacher referring to? Are there any sub-questions in this question? Given the weighting of the question, to what level of detail should I expand my answer? What are the elements that must imperatively appear in my answer? Is this question specific (does it refer to a specific point in the course) or transversal (does it refer to several points from several chapters)? Should I illustrate the answer with an example, if so, which one?
Once you have asked yourself all the questions, as seen above, use your draft sheet and write an outline of your answer . A response plan is an articulation of key words evoking the different points of the subject and the relationship between these different points. This outline will help you structure your answer.
8/ Schedule time for proofreading
Proofreading is an essential step for the success of an exam. In stress, you will sometimes forget to write certain words or formulas, or else, on the contrary, you will realize that you have written nonsense. With a proofreading , you are guaranteed to earn extra points .
9/ Breathe deeply, keep a positive mind and don’t panic.
During the exam, it is useless to tell you that you haven’t studied enough, that the others will certainly succeed but that you suck and that you will fail your year. The moment of assessment and questioning is when the results are handed over and not during the session. During the exam, keep a cool head to get the most out of your knowledge. When you leave an exam, forget about it and focus on passing the next one
