Thursday, November 19, 2009

Easy CSET Test Strategies

By Dan Williams

I am not a big fan of test taking strategies but when you take the CSET there will be some questions you just do not know and so you will have to make an educated guess.

There are some guessing strategies that will give you a slight advantage if you know them.

These guessing pointers will work on any test you take.

How to Guess to Your Advantage - Secret Clues that Give Away the Right Answer

Respond to questions in a strategic order: first off respond to simple questions to institute self-confidence, rack up points, and mentally orient yourself to vocabulary, concepts, and your subject area. Then go to harder questions or those with the greatest point value with objective questions, first of all reject those answers you make out to be erroneous, or are in all likelihood wrong, don't appear to concur, or where two selections are so similar as to represent both as incorrect. Hunt for the correct answer in another question. It is very common to be able to find elsewhere on the test the information necessary to answer the question you are currently working on.

Resist the urge to leave as soon as you have completed all the items. Review your test to make sure that you have answered all questions, not mis-marked the answer sheet, or made some other simple mistake. Proofread your writing for spelling, grammar, punctuation, decimal points, etc.

Do not outguess yourself and modify your first reactions. Research has demonstrated that your first suspicion has a greater chance of being correct. You should only modify responses to questions if you originally misconstrued them or if you have ran across data elsewhere in the test that reveals with certainty that your first choice is false.

If two options are opposite each other on the multiple choice section, chances are one of them is correct.

If there are answers that have absolute words like never, always, or every substitute these words with a qualified term like sometimes, frequently, or typical and see if the sentence can now be eliminated as a possible choice.

Appear similar choices: in all likelihood one is right; pick out the better but get rid of options that mean basically the equivalent thing, and therefore invalidate one another. Rule out choices you know to be wrong. Call into question choices that grammatically do not correspond with the stem.

Wear a watch to the test. At the beginning of the test, check the time (or start a chronometer on your watch to count the minutes), and check the time after a few questions to make sure you are on schedule. It may be easier for you to monitor your pace based on how many minutes have been used, rather than how many minutes remain. If you find that you are falling behind time during the test, begin skipping difficult questions (unless you know it at a quick glance). Once you catch back up, you can continue working each problem. If you have time at the end, go back then and finish the questions that you left behind.

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