Many of the students I teach are facing end-of-term exams next week.  And for my Y9 and Y10 students these are multiple choice papers which pose a different challenge to the more usual structured answer format.  So here is a quick PMG guide to help you score the highest mark you can on this kind of paper.  Good luck!

1) Don’t underestimate the opposition!

The biggest mistake students make with these exams is to be over-confident.  The reason GCSE exams no longer contain any multiple choice questions is because it was felt that this type of question is too difficult.  The examiner, by selecting four incorrect responses to every question, is trying to catch you out and the more plausible the incorrect responses, the better the question!  So your understanding needs to be really good to not be tricky by these underhand tactics…. Get revising!

2) Read the question carefully.

This skill is tested even more fully in a multiple choice exam. You spend less time writing answers (obviously), so this allows more time for reading and thinking.  Even with a “mark a minute” time frame, there is time for thinking and planning before deciding on a correct answer.  Write on the question paper, use it for rough work and planning.  And RTQ carefully – with many similar but incorrect answers on the page, it is so easy to decide too quickly what the correct response is and so miss out on marks you could obtain with a little more care.

3) Try to eliminate the obviously incorrect answers:  this will mean you are only focussing your thinking on the possibles.  It also means if you have to guess, you are maximising your odds of being lucky!  But be careful….. This strategy has an obvious flaw so be careful in what you eliminate.

4) Your best chance of getting a question right is the first time you answer it. So I suggest you leave blank any answers you are unsure of on your first go through the paper.  Don’t spend more than a minute on any question on this first pass through the paper.  You can come back to look at the harder questions at the end of the exam.  It is much harder in an exam to spot an error in a question you have already answered, so I would leave answers blank unless I am sure I am right….

5) Keep an eye on the time.  After 20 minutes of the exam, check that you are ahead of the time.  Most multiple choice exams are a “mark a minute” but I know that in our internal exams this isn’t always the case, so check.

6) Finally, make sure you answer every question.  There is only positive marking in these exams so you should always guess (see point 3 above).  The only way you can guarantee you won’t get a mark is if you leave the question blank!

Take a pencil and a rubber to these exams – both will be useful!  And good luck……..