Follow these tips and don’t get nervous, and be ready to pass with flying colours!

The Night Before Christmas Your Exam
If you haven’t already, write up a final review sheet, put important points, mnemonics and formulas etc that you need to remember. Now keep re-writing it until you can re-produce it completely without looking. If you made audio notes, you could listen to them again too. Do you remember the virtualisation technique we looked at in part 5? Well, now would also be a good time to imagine yourself sitting in the exam room, feeling calm and bursting full of the knowledge that you will be tested on in your exam.

And finally, as if you haven’t heard it enough times before – get an early night! Have a nice dinner, watch some T.V or whatever you do to relax for an hour and then go to bed! Staying up cramming till the wee hours isn’t going to help you pass your exam, not that you will need to cram if you have read and worked with this mini-series of posts!

Brain Dump
You might not be allowed to take books and notes into your exam with you, but no rule was ever made that says you can’t reproduce your notes once the exam has started! So as soon as the words “You May Start” have been uttered, set about reproducing your review sheet, it should only take a few minutes and you can refer to it all through the exam. This is especially important if you are someone who tends to get a bit flustered if you can’t remember something – don’t panic and look back at your notes!

How To Get The Right Answer
If you have a choice about which question you answer, pick the one that is best covered by your brain dump, that way you have most of the answer written down anyway, you just need to organise it. Pace yourself – make time limits for each question or section of questions and stick to them. If you run out of time for a question leave it and go back to it at the end if you have time left over. When you read through a question (twice, to make sure you read what is there, not what you think is there!), see if you can identify which part of the syllabus it came from because you will have a better idea what the examiner will be looking for in an answer. If it helps, you could underline the key words and phrases in the question, this will help you focus on the important stuff.

Tricks for Written Responses
1. Target 5-10 key items per answer
2. Be concise and focus on the detail. 1 sentence per key idea…
3. Give examples where you can and put in as much detail as possible, examples could hold a fair proportion of the marks.
4. Focus on the facts, not on opinions. If the question asks you to agree or disagree, present the facts for both sides, and conclude with your opinion preferably with a strong argument. (BTW, very often it doesn’t matter which one you choose, the examiner is looking at your knowledge of the facts and your ability to present an argument).
5. The conclusion shouldn’t be too long, you have made your points in the main text, a quick conclusion is all that is needed.
6. You could help the examiner by underlining the key points in your text, that will show the examiner that you know what you are doing and he will appreciate the time he saves by reading your paper.

TASK: I’m not going to give you a task on this one, but instead, I’m going to tell you to trust in yourself. Believe that you are able to do great in this exam, even if your parents/friends/teacher says that you cant do it. If you put time and effort into something, then there is nothing you can’t do.

There is still one more part in this series to go, so make sure you read it – it’s about dealing with the wording of the exam question.

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