How to Ace an Examination

Don’t miss this window of opportunity! Exam season is upon us and if you’re a student trying to pass your Baccalaureat exam, get over 100 points on the TOEFL exam to get into a foreign university, get 750 points on the TOEIC in order to graduate, or succeed on a competitive exam so that you can get into an elite university…and the list goes on… you’re probably ready to hit the panic button. But don’t dismay. There may be a wide assortment of English tests , but not a thousand ways students should prepare for them. 

  Will Rogers, an American folk hero, used to say: “In order to succeed you have to know what you are doing, like what you are doing, and believe in what you are doing.” Preparing to take a competitive exam takes regular work (like preparing for a marathon) and there are no shortcuts. I’m always surprised by students who tell me the day of the exam that they had only spent a couple of weeks studying for it…! As if you can make up for years of not studying in 2 weeks! Learning a language just doesn’t work that way. Knowing English can create a “window of opportuity” and open many doors to the world that would otherwise be inaccessible…So what are you waiting for? Seize this window of opportunity in order to have as many choices as possible to excel in your chosen field!

 Below are a few tips on how to better study and train for your English tests.

Plan ahead: Give yourself enough time to develop the various skills that you will need for your chosen exam (listening and reading comprehension, and speaking and writing); start several months before and practice everyday! Performing on a language exam is like running a marathon…the longer and more difficult it is, the more time you will need to prepare.
Read, read, read: Read at least 1 book a week and as many articles and online texts that you can manage. For the TOEFL and/or a high level entrance exam, vary the subjects so that you can expand your vocabulary base (Literature, Politics, News, Digital Culture, General Culture, Science, Business, etc.) You need to build up a vocabulary of between 8,000 and 15,000 words to succeed on a competitive exam or an assessment exam such as the TOEFL. It’s good to keep in mind that an average 1st year American college student understands between 12,000 words and uses about 2,000 words* in their active vocabulary. You need to build up your vocabulary base to allow your brain to process the sounds that you hear.
Listen: Multitask by listening to English radio and doing something else at the same time. Listening comprehension is the most difficult “sensory cognitive skill” to acquire. You need to expose yourself to oral English regularly in order to allow your brain to perceive the sounds and process them in a intelligible way.
Speak: Seize every opportunity to speak. Remember… speaking and writing involve “motor” skills which take more time to develop like walking, running, or playing a musical instrument and you will need at least 2500 to 5000 hours of active study/practice time (according to recent studies) to be able to speak and write at an advanced level. Join an English club, find a “pen” friend, or take an English class in order to multiply your contact hours. Listening to English speakers will also multiply the number of times you hear the same words and expressions—in a normal conversation literally thousands of times–which is a great way to memorize words and expressions effortlessly! Remember…the more you listen, the easier it will be for you to speak. Our brains are like the hard drives of a computer. If we don’t feed it any data, we won’t be able to retrieve any words or information.                                                                  

Memorize poems, songs, speeches, or any other English text to exercise your brain’s active language center.
Practice daily: Expose yourself to English daily; start with 30 minutes a day and work progressively up to 2 to 3 hours a day varying your activities as much as possible during the week. Cramming a few weeks before the test will only help you retain a maximum of 60% of your knowledge base temporarily but will do nothing to improve your speaking and writing. A waste of time when you consider that you will lose 90 to 100% of this knowledge a few weeks after….
Learn difficult language points: Idioms (he was caught red-handed); Phrasal Verbs: (Let’s put off the meeting until tomorrow); Familiar Contractions (I’m gonna study tonight. Do you wanna come with me to the library?); Academic language (Today’s lecture is on…I’m majoring in Biology. Moreover, the subject deals with…);
Buy an exam book: familiarize yourself with the format of the exam you will be taking and the kind of language you will be tested on. This will help you diagnose early on your weak points: vocabulary, academic knowledge (for the TOEFL or GMAT for example), listening comprehension (TOEIC, TOEFL, IELTS), writing, grammar, etc. giving you enough time to improve them before actually taking the test. Remember…speaking and writing (2 “motor” skills) take months to acquire…so don’t waste time!
Understand the Scoring system: Most tests, such as the Cambridge IELTS, the ETS TOEFL, or French competitive entrance exams, judge a student’s:
 Primary Skills: Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking.
They also judge a student’s:
 Secondary Skills: Grammar usage, Vocabulary, Pronunciation, Spelling, Capitalization
On tests such as the IELTS and the TOEFL they also judge a student’s:
 Academic Skills: Skimming, Scanning, Synthesizing, Notetaking, Paraphrasing, and the use of the Keyboard (typing)
The mistake that many students make is to ignore some of the skills above as they are not “directly” tested. Don’t make that mistake!
Prepare for exam day: Put together your ID papers (passport or National ID card), exam registration forms, water, cereal energy bars, ear plugs (in case of noise in the exam center), cough drops, and tissue paper (in case you have to sneeze).The day before the test, relax and eat a good meal of pasta. Slow sugars or carbohydrates are a good choice to give your brain the fuel it requires to do well on the test. Go to bed at a reasonable time and remain Zen! Think positive! If you followed all of the above steps, there is no reason not to do well. So…break a leg!

If you’d like to read more about how to ace an exam or excel on an entrance exam, check out my internet site at: http://www.debbyscorner.com/exam_preparation.html. I will be continually putting new interactive exercises online to assure my students of a bright future!

*E.B. Zechmeister, A.M. Chronis, W.L. Cull, C.A. D’Anna and N.A. Healy, Growth of a functionally important lexicon, Journal of Reading Behavior, 1995