Strong Test-Taking Skills Last a Lifetime

Learning effective test-taking skills relieves anxiety and the pressure that students frequently place upon themselves. They may be very anxious to please the parents or mentors in their lives or compete with siblings’ successes. When you think about it, most of life is about taking tests – completing job applications, learning to operate machinery or electronics, knowing how one process relates to another, etc. Strong test-taking skills are relevant to real life.

Why It Matters

There are lifelong benefits.
Developing test-taking skills now can build confidence for tests that take place through high school, further education and training, and career. Your student will encounter tests all through life, whether it be a section test in the classroom, the ACT or SAT college entrance exam, or learning a new skill for a job.
Effective test-takers know how to follow step-by-step instructions.
Sequential steps occur in just about everything, regardless of the complexity involved. Building a strong foundation now will pay off in every facet of life, no matter what profession your student pursues.
Comprehension skills improve.
The ability to understand something is a lifelong skill. By breaking a concept into smaller chunks or steps and seeing how those steps build upon each other, the task becomes much more doable. To be a good test-taker, you need to be able to find the most important information in the material – but first, you need to understand the information.
Students learn to read faster and better.
The more you read, the more you read! Frequent reading, for work or pleasure, increases the speed at which you read and leads to increased comprehension of information.

What Your Student Can Do Now

Investigate test-taking strategies.
Your student can research various strategies and try them on for size, keeping in mind that different strategies are effective for different types of tests, material and learning styles. Strategies can be as simple as relaxing physically before starting a test, or they can be more involved with specific ways to learn, recall and present information.
Read all instructions and questions, every time.
Occasionally, a teacher may provide a test where the last instruction is to leave everything blank. Even if your student never encounters this, it’s a good strategy to read through the instructions and all the questions once, as time allows, before diving in. Seeing the questions about reading selections will allow your student to preview the selection and watch for the answers while reading, and knowing which questions can be answered quickly will help your student manage the time allotted for the test. Slowing down to read all of the answer choices can help students distinguish between ‘almost right’ and completely correct answers.
Review answers.
As time allows, your student should get in the habit of checking over answers before turning in a test. This is the time to re-read instructions, questions and answer choices to be sure everything was understood correctly the first time. Your student can also check for careless mistakes like skipping a question, missing an element of a writing prompt or calculation errors. However, your student should be cautious of second-guessing if he or she isn’t sure of the answer.

What Your Student Can Do Later

Establish foundations.
Help your student see that establishing the groundwork for taking tests now will apply to a future profession. It’s important to study early and often, eliminating the need for an “all-nighter.” Identify which types of study situations create stress, and then create a “stress calendar” to pinpoint ways to adjust study habits and avoid stressful situations. Developing coping strategies now will pay off later in life.
Review test results with the teacher.
If your student finds a particular topic difficult, this should be discussed before new material is introduced. It’s important to have topics and skills mastered before new ones are introduced.
Understand context.
Realize that skills build upon one another. For example, Spanish II won’t be at all successful without first passing Spanish I. Learning takes place when we are able to connect context and information in a meaningful way.

What You Can Do

Create a successful learning environment.
After discussing with your student, create the learning environment where successful studying can happen. Then make sure other family members are aware of and respect it.
Role play.
Your student becomes the teacher and is tasked with teaching you the concept! Be sure to ask relevant questions if something isn’t properly explained.

Next Steps

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