Tips, during and after exams

by
Faridah Mohamad Saad
noniemsaad@yahoo.com
Institut Pendidikan Guru
Kampus Teknik
Bandar Tun Razak, Kuala Lumpur

THE THREE P'S OF SUCCESSFUL STUDYING ARE:

Planning, Preparation and a Positive attitude. Develop a positive attitude towards exams. Anxiety is just a part of the game; do not allow it control you. Face the exams with confidence. Look at exams as a means developed to help you reach your goal. It is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Do not compare your examination results to your self worth they are two different things. Have faith in yourself and maintain the "I CAN DO IT" attitude.

The year before

• Avoid cramming. Your revision should be completed well before your exams. Concentrate on the important topics, diagrams and formulae.

• Make revision a part of your strategy for success

• Go through the summary and notes you have made while revising

• Make a list of topics you have covered, arrange it in order of priority & follow this in order in your revision too.

• Writing an answer is the best way to revise. Write out likely questions and answer them

• Practice Mathematics one hour every day to overcome the fear and anxiety.

• Set up a study schedule so you can review everything well before the exams. Plan it so that everything can be covered in the time available.

• Practice old question papers. These give you a clear clue as to what examiners generally look for.

• Memorize essential facts and formulas.

• Make up questions that you think could be on the exam day and try to answer them.

• Avoid looking for reasons not to do work

Tip: When you are well prepared you experience less stress

Mock Examinations

The mock examinations allow you to discover:-

• Your weakness in a subject

• How effective your study skills are.

• What are your strengths and weakness when working under pressure?

Day before the Examinations

• Get a goodnight's rest before the exam. Be sure to wear comfortable clothing.

• Find out what kind of exam you are getting ready for (e.g. essay type or objective) and exactly what material will be on the test.

• Organize everything you need.

• Prepare yourself mentally by briefly reviewing the main points in your notes.

On the day of the examination

1. Begin the exam day with a good breakfast.

2. Ensure that you have completed the final revisions

3. Have a few notes to revise from.

4.Get the materials organized.

5.Make sure that you eat sensibly and drink plenty of water.

6.If tense – practice deep breathing

7.Engage in positive self-talk

During the Examination

1. Do not start writing as soon as you get the test

2.Organize the time in the examination, so you do not run out of time before completing the paper.

3.If you panic–Put their pens down and sit back for a few minutes

4.Practice deep breathing and focus on something positive

5.Do not leave the exam hall no matter how bad the anxiety feels, it will surely subside in a short span of time.

6.Go through the questions to make sure you have all the questions sheets.

7.Read the instructions carefully.

8. Hi-light key words like discuss, compare list...

9. Quickly estimate how much time you have to answer the questions

10.Answer easier question first to boost your confidence.

11.Read questions several times to be sure you understand exactly what is being asked.

12.Never rush through questions in a panic. Be calm and pace yourself.

13.Try to leave sometime before the test to review and correct errors.

14.If you run out of time on a certain question, leave some room to it later.

15.Sometimes the test gives away some of the answers.

16.Guess at answers only if there is no penalty for guessing.

17.Be on a look out for words that may provide a clue to the correct answer. Words like "seldom, generally, and tend to" often make a statement true: words like always never, and only are likely to make it false.

18.Before looking at the possible answers to a multiple-choice question, try to form the answer in your mind. Then look at the choices given.

19.Do not change an answer that comes to the mind first unless you are absolutely sure that it is wrong.

20.As far as possible limit your answer to the prescribed number of words. However, do not try to achieve this by counting the words written. Rather, count the number of lines you have written. At the very outset, you must have an idea as to how many words you usually manage to write in one line

After the Examinations

Do not indulge in the post-mortems and comparisons with others. Review what went well in your overall approach, before and during the examination including the way you handled anxiety. Aim to improve upon that in the next examination

In a Nutshell

1. Learn from your past mistakes

2. Be committed

3. Be persistent and consistent

4. Avoid looking for reasons not to do work n Plan your time effectively

Pointers

1. Remember to always encourage yourself for every effort you have made to better your grades.

2. Have faith & believe in yourself that you can achieve whatever you set your mind on.

3. Do not be discouraged by failure, immediately start working on your weak areas

4. Have a positive attitude towards your goal & be responsible for whatever you undertake

5. We become what our attitudes are. So change your attitude

Palestine: a Family's Story

By Rasul

Ramzy Baroud left Gaza when he was a young man.  He departed with mixed emotions, knowing full well he might never see his father or Gaza again.  Once he left, his activities and the nature of the Israeli control of that piece of land made those fears come true.  Since he left, he has become a chronicler of the struggle for a free Palestine and an advocate for a genuine and just solution to the ongoing conflict in his native land.

His most recent addition to the aforementioned chronicle is a beautifully wrought memoir of his family.  Titled My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, the book takes the reader into the life of a man who was driven from his birth village during the ethnic cleansing of parts of Palestine by Israeli Zionist forces  That man was Ramzy Baroud's father, Mohammed Baroud.  Along with his family and much of the rest of his village, the teenage Mohammed eventually found himself in the refugee camp called Nuseirat.  Despite several journeys out of that camp to fight and to trade, he would die there some fifty years later.  Not only would Baroud's father never see the village of his childhood--Beit Daras--again, but the fate of Palestine was more uncertain than it had been ever since the creation of Israel.

I have to be honest.  Whenever I read a description of the travails of the Palestinian people since 1947, my human emotions kick in.  Anger and sorrow are the most common.   The description can be a personal memoir or a reasonably objective piece of journalism.  It could be written by a sympathetic soul, an observer or a member of a group supporting the continued expansion of Israel.  It doesn't matter.  The decades of suffering mirrored by a similar number of years opposing Israeli occupation; the uncaring response of a world seemingly numb to the actualities of Tel Aviv's Orwellian newspeak describing the situation; and the  seeming inevitability of more death and daily suffering always results in the aforementioned emotional responses.

Ramzy Baroud's text operates on several different levels.  Of course, it is an unsparing look at the political Zionist program to carve a homeland out of Palestinian lands for likeminded Jewish people.  It is also a critical history of the relationship between the Palestinians and established Arab nations.  He recalls the brief period of secular Arab nationalism after World War Two led by Egypt's president Gamal Abdel Nasser.  While describing this bit of history, Baroud also relates the story of his father's enlistment into a unit of Nasser's army that defended Gaza.  This moment of his father's pride he describes is one that is both personal and political, like so many moments of a people struggling daily for their independence and against oppression. 

The author's ability to depict these types of moments is what makes this book such a worthwhile read.  Under Baroud's pen, history truly does become the story of a people.  Each individual whose story appears in My Father Was a Freedom Fighter embodies the story of the Palestinians.  The story stretches from the daily battle to feed one's family when there are no fields to harvest because the occupiers have destroyed those fields to meetings with leaders of the Intifada.  Ramzy Baroud tells a very personal tale in these pages underlined by an impeccably researched historical knowledge. 

In addition to depicting the relationship between Arab nations and the Palestinian movement, this text explores the nature of the Palestinian liberation movement itself.  Combining his father's political understanding and historical memory with his own knowledge, Baroud explores the reasons for the Palestine Liberation Organization's fall into seeming irrelevance in Gaza and its replacement by Hamas.  It is a story about organizing at the grassroots and corruption at the top.  It is also a story of one man's hopes in the organization he believed in being dashed.  Finally, it is also the all too familiar tale of a society striving yet failing to overcome the scourge of class, especially when those at the top are offered rewards for leaving their lesser-off brothers and sisters behind.

Perhaps the most emotionally difficult storyline that runs through Baroud's memoir is the story of his parents' love for each other.  Difficult, because it is a story like so many other love stories without hope for a happy ending.  When Ramzy's mother died of cancer at the age of 42, she was given a martyr's funeral.  This wasn't because she was a battlefield fighter or a guerrilla, but because she was a child, mother and sister of Palestine.  She died so young in part because Tel Aviv's brutal occupation refused her the treatment she needed.  Indeed, the incident that may well have exacerbated her illness was one where Israeli soldiers beat her while she pleaded with them not to break her sons' arms.  This practice was a common Israeli Defense Force tactic during the First Intifada.

My Father Was a Freedom Fighter is a perfectly nuanced combination of memoir and history.  Once again, Baroud has put the nature of the Israeli occupation of Palestine in human terms that describe not only the humiliation of the Palestinians as individuals and as a people, but also the struggle against that humiliation and the often brutal repression that accompanies it.