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Read through the entire exam to plan an overall strategy
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An old story has it that a prof got tired of giving this advice to students, so he made up a long and complex set of questions for a final exam. The first instruction was to read the entire test and follow the instructions on the last page. The last page had one instruction: Sign your name and turn in the test. Only one student followed the instructions and passed; the rest failed the test because they tried to answer all the questions.
Not many profs will go to these extremes, but reading through the entire test does help you plan your approach to the test.
- As you go through the exam, note which sections call for short answers, even single sentences, and which sections call for longer responses.
- Pay special attention to the items that give you choices; many students have found themselves out of time when they answer every question instead of reading carefully to see that the test called for one response in section A and one response in section B.
- If the test indicates how many points are attached to each question, plan to answer the heavily weighted questions first so that you have the most time to spend on those responses.
- If you blank out on what you know about a question, plan to tackle that one late in the test session because answering other questions may help you remember the material.
Describe
When we describe, we note physical and sometimes chronological details. Descriptions generally rely on sensory perceptions (compared to “analysis” that typically gets at mental abstractions). Because vision is usually our dominant sense, most of our descriptions rely heavily on visual details. For many essay questions, being asked to “describe” means writing about what you’ve seen.
Writing tip: Although our field of vision takes in lots of details, we organize those to help remember them. As writers, we need to make our organizational pattern obvious to readers. That’s why most descriptions follow a top-to-bottom, right-to-left, etc., consistent pattern of moving over a visual scene. Sometimes, the pattern is most-to-least important, and this pattern works especially well if your description is building to a particular point.
Analyze
Analyze in a test question usually means “take this concept apart and look at the relationships among parts.” Sometimes the analysis focuses on causes and effects, as, for example, if you were to write about media coverage and election turnout. Sometimes the analysis will focus on a time sequence, as it might in tracking the progress of a degenerative disease.
Writing tip: Because we can look at relationships among parts in several different ways, be sure to signal your reader how you’re “slicing the pie.” If you’re writing about cause-effect relationships among parts, use key transitional words and phrases such as “because” and “as a result” to show the causal relationship. If your analysis is based on a process, use transitions that indicate an appropriate time or developmental sequence. If your analysis looks at functional relationships, clearly indicate the functions and their interactions. In short, make clear not just the parts you’re looking at but why you’re looking at them the way you are in your response.
Compare
Compare is probably the easiest of the key terms to recognize and respond to. Fortunately, comparisons are also common on essay tests, so they’re easy to practice. Compare basically asks the writer to take two or more objects, theories, events, concepts, applications, or explanations and show the similarities between them. One warning, though: when teachers use compare on a test question, they also often mean contrast, so don’t forget to point out differences after you write out the similarities between items you’re comparing.
Writing tip: Depending on the length and complexity of your response, you may find it easier to write everything about item A first and then to use that same sequence to write about item B. If you’re not sure you can follow the same sequence in this block approach to comparison, then use a point-by-point method that allows you to make a point about A followed immediately by a point
Evaluate
Evaluation often gets misunderstood by students as compare. They’re not the same. Comparing just points out similarities and differences; evaluation requires a judgment about which theory, application, approach, etc., is superior and why. Students working under time pressure are most likely to forget to write out their criteria for making the judgment in the first place. This rationale is often crucial for understanding the overall judgment.
Writing tip: Especially when you’re pressed for time, keep the criteria obvious and straightforward. If one approach is cheaper and faster, and those are the two criteria anyone would use to evaluate the approaches in question, then talk about what makes one cheaper and faster. Don’t forget, though, to also show what makes the alternative approaches more expensive and slower. Thoroughness does count when writing out evaluations.
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