Choking in Exams (1 Viewer)

[nd_bluey]

I tend to think i am really good at maths, however there are a lot of factors which lead me down. I am really comfortable with all the THSC exams online from top selective schools for Ext 1 and 2 doing questions people at the top of my cohort cannot do (on my first attempt) however somehow there's ways I choke the exam. For my half yearly i did decently well relative to the cohort ranking 4th for 4u however I recently did a test which I feel i choked, Its mostly silly mistakes, for reference I don't do past papers under time conditions but I have gotten to the point where IF I see a question my brain processes the solution really quickly but my writing speed and due to the friction in my pen I dont go to the full speed as I want to as when im practicing on the ipad theres barely any resistance between the ipad and the pen meaning I can write without pain in my wrist or anything. But honestly I really need the solution for this because , unlike other people who say "I don't do well in tests" and stuff I really believe I can do well its just some small factors like finding a new pen that could make me write quicker to reduce resistance and reducing silly mistakes would take me way further. But Please if anyone has the solution could you please share. (Sorry if you feel that im being egotistical, its just because I feel a small portion is going to waste as I really feel I have the potential to do even better than what i am doing.)

 

[notsmartenough]

I thought u meant actual choking

 

[nd_bluey]

I thought u meant actual choking

No, but please do you have any solution to this?

 

[liamkk112]

I tend to think i am really good at maths, however there are a lot of factors which lead me down. I am really comfortable with all the THSC exams online from top selective schools for Ext 1 and 2 doing questions people at the top of my cohort cannot do (on my first attempt) however somehow there's ways I choke the exam. For my half yearly i did decently well relative to the cohort ranking 4th for 4u however I recently did a test which I feel i choked, Its mostly silly mistakes, for reference I don't do past papers under time conditions but I have gotten to the point where IF I see a question my brain processes the solution really quickly but my writing speed and due to the friction in my pen I dont go to the full speed as I want to as when im practicing on the ipad theres barely any resistance between the ipad and the pen meaning I can write without pain in my wrist or anything. But honestly I really need the solution for this because , unlike other people who say "I don't do well in tests" and stuff I really believe I can do well its just some small factors like finding a new pen that could make me write quicker to reduce resistance and reducing silly mistakes would take me way further. But Please if anyone has the solution could you please share. (Sorry if you feel that im being egotistical, its just because I feel a small portion is going to waste as I really feel I have the potential to do even better than what i am doing.)

one way to reduce silly mistakes is to slow down. ik u said u need to write faster but if you're like how i was before, when an exam would start (say it was one hour) i'd finish almost everything in 20 minutes and then spend maybe 10-15 minutes trying to get the harder questions and then phase out for the rest of the time. so for trials it was a 3 hr exam but i'd be done in an hour; but you really just need to slow down sometimes, by the time i got to hsc i managed to spread out my time so i had ~1hr remaining just to double check and/or tackle some really tough questions. you might think that's worse than when i did it in an hour because it's more time remaining but it really wasn't, since even for easy questions i double checked answers, did multiple methods, and really spent the time needed to ensure there was no mistake there. whereas, if you naively write down the solution quickly because it instantly comes to your head (which is a good thing by the way) chances are there will be some error just due to the speed that you are doing things. even for things like basic compelx number stuff for converting between forms, it's so easy to just mark down the wrong angle quadrant or put the wrong thing into your calculator. so try to slow down, this can be done somewhat easily by writing down more working out and/or double checking each line of work for every question (this should be done immediately after you do the question, then after you do other questions, because sometimes right when you do the question you catch the error because its fresh in your mind, or it's so fresh in your mind that u kinda delude yourself into thinking everything is right so u should come back later).

 

[nd_bluey]

one way to reduce silly mistakes is to slow down. ik u said u need to write faster but if you're like how i was before, when an exam would start (say it was one hour) i'd finish almost everything in 20 minutes and then spend maybe 10-15 minutes trying to get the harder questions and then phase out for the rest of the time. so for trials it was a 3 hr exam but i'd be done in an hour; but you really just need to slow down sometimes, by the time i got to hsc i managed to spread out my time so i had ~1hr remaining just to double check and/or tackle some really tough questions. you might think that's worse than when i did it in an hour because it's more time remaining but it really wasn't, since even for easy questions i double checked answers, did multiple methods, and really spent the time needed to ensure there was no mistake there. whereas, if you naively write down the solution quickly because it instantly comes to your head (which is a good thing by the way) chances are there will be some error just due to the speed that you are doing things. even for things like basic compelx number stuff for converting between forms, it's so easy to just mark down the wrong angle quadrant or put the wrong thing into your calculator. so try to slow down, this can be done somewhat easily by writing down more working out and/or double checking each line of work for every question (this should be done immediately after you do the question, then after you do other questions, because sometimes right when you do the question you catch the error because its fresh in your mind, or it's so fresh in your mind that u kinda delude yourself into thinking everything is right so u should come back later).

Yeah i was like how you were before, but I feel like the most annoying thing about ext is writing on another separate paper whereas when i have been doing tests on the same paper where there is allocated writing space do you reckon I should try practicing trial exams under exam conditions to identify the silly errors and stuff? Because i feel A LOT of the times when I see a question 99% of the time my brain knows how to do the solution but in there i make a few silly mistakes i feel if i do trial papers under exam conditions this would all be fixed?

 

[liamkk112]

Yeah i was like how you were before, but I feel like the most annoying thing about ext is writing on another separate paper whereas when i have been doing tests on the same paper where there is allocated writing space do you reckon I should try practicing trial exams under exam conditions to identify the silly errors and stuff? Because i feel A LOT of the times when I see a question 99% of the time my brain knows how to do the solution but in there i make a few silly mistakes i feel if i do trial papers under exam conditions this would all be fixed?

i mean it couild definetly help to do things under exam conditions (or at least decently fast) so you can see where the errors are being made, provided you take action and remember to not make the same errors again

 

[kkk579]

I have similar problems for the sciences(chem,phys) I do well in tutor exams but when it comes to school exams where it actually matters I dont do as well due to silly mistakes and the ppl i beat at tutor end up doing better than me at school.

 

[wollongong warrior]

Bro how are your wrists hurting from mx2 exams
Practising papers under exam conditions (ie timed, with pen and on separate writing paper) is the only solution to your problems

 

[nd_bluey]

Bro how are your wrists hurting from mx2 exams
Practising papers under exam conditions (ie timed, with pen and on separate writing paper) is the only solution to your problems
[/QUOTE
Nah my wrist doesnt hurt but I definitely feel resistance when I write as my brain thinks quickly but when i write its slow.

 

[idkkdi]

I tend to think i am really good at maths, however there are a lot of factors which lead me down. I am really comfortable with all the THSC exams online from top selective schools for Ext 1 and 2 doing questions people at the top of my cohort cannot do (on my first attempt) however somehow there's ways I choke the exam. For my half yearly i did decently well relative to the cohort ranking 4th for 4u however I recently did a test which I feel i choked, Its mostly silly mistakes, for reference I don't do past papers under time conditions but I have gotten to the point where IF I see a question my brain processes the solution really quickly but my writing speed and due to the friction in my pen I dont go to the full speed as I want to as when im practicing on the ipad theres barely any resistance between the ipad and the pen meaning I can write without pain in my wrist or anything. But honestly I really need the solution for this because , unlike other people who say "I don't do well in tests" and stuff I really believe I can do well its just some small factors like finding a new pen that could make me write quicker to reduce resistance and reducing silly mistakes would take me way further. But Please if anyone has the solution could you please share. (Sorry if you feel that im being egotistical, its just because I feel a small portion is going to waste as I really feel I have the potential to do even better than what i am doing.)

in hindsight it was literally just not doing any paper/exam under exam conditions. u need to be familiar with writing answers that are going to determine an actual mark, and with the checking process that u do in an actual exam

 

[vajayjay]

I choked on something once

 

[C_master]

I always choke on that one question in every exam

 

[lyounamu]

I think you are lacking exam techniques and as people mentioned earlier, the best way to improve that is doing the exam under timed condition. You may know how to do the question roughly in your head and some questions are not as simple as you think especially when it involves complicated calculations and it may even have twists that you haven't accounted for.

If you are genuinely good at maths and feel that 50% of the paper is simply a repetition of what you already know, spend 5 min cutting out the sections that you know how to do really well and time yourself doing the rest in half the time or even less time. But make sure to mark your papers thoroughly because that's when you actually learn a lot more.