Ace That Test: Test preperation strategies

This week I am faced with a new enemy, MY FIRST RELIGION 101 EXAM!!! Thankfully, I learned 2 test taking strategies that can help me ace this exam. I learned about the source and topic outlines and anticipating test questions. My religion test is going to primarily be vocabulary based and my religion teacher went as far as to tell us the whole structure of the exam. I definately used this to my advantage when I began to complete my outlines. My topic outline was very long because of the fact that this is strictly a matching vocab exam. I am a visual learner and I like structure so I decided to do the outline the way I felt most comfortable. The way I went about doing that is that I took each definition and I actually made each one topics. The I broke down where these topics are located in either my notes, readings, or powerpoints. I also added DATES for the powerpoints and PAGE # so I could find my topic easily. This may have been longer than the original way, but in order to change my bad study habits I had to do them in a way that is best suited for me to understand.



Shortened topic outline

 Once I completed my topic outline, I started to do my source outline. My source outline consisted of the sources of my information and where each topic is located within that source. I went about organizing my source outline and came to many conclusions once I finished it. The conclusion that I made was that most of the vocabulary terms were imbalanced in terms of where they were located. That means one source had more material than the other. I highlighted my readings on Hinduism because most of the vocab words came from there and I should put a lot of time into that book.


Shortened source outline



My source outline was very helpful because it guided me to where most of the material could be found. I definately would not have been able to study all of these terms this efficiently. I also highlighted the terms that I most certain will be on the exam.



My last strategy that I decided to use was anticipating test questions. I felt that this strategy required me to actually take action and actually make and exam that would help me know these vocabulary words efficiently. This strategy was also helpful because my religion teacher told the class about how she is going to structure the exam. I felt that I should definately take advantage of that situation and use it along with this strategy to completely be successful in preparing for this test. I did not exactly anticipate questions, but instead I added my own little twist to this strategy. I used my perspective of anticipating how her test would be. I used snipping art to highlight and match the answers so every time I look at this blog it can be used as an answer sheet.

So far these strategies have been sucessfully helping me prepare for this vocabulary midterm that I have on Friday. Through these strategies I believed that at first I just thought that you have to use these strategies the way they are taught. I quickly realized that is not the case, these strategies can be manipulated to match your learning style and your taste when it comes to studying, and that is what I did. My evaluation will be the results of my test and the amount of information I was able to retain after studying.

Anticipating questions