Examination Tips and Techniques (How to attempt paper)

Before Examination- Lack of practice and preparation is a major reason for students not doing well in examinations. Here, we highlight to you the major points that you should take note before any examination.

- It is important that you clarify all your doubts and questions about a particular topic with your tutor, teachers or peers before the exam.

- Practice past year and examination papers from other schools if possible. These resources may not always be available so you have to source for them.

- Always memorize all important formulas, principles, questions and even solutions. During examinations, they should be at your fingertips.

- Nobody knows what is going to come out during exams. But we should always pay attention to popular and important questions.

During Examination
Proper planning is a major key to score As during exams. A well designed exam paper should consist of

50% easy questions
40% moderate
10% difficult (specially designed so that your teacher can tell who the hardworking students are. =)

- Before you even write anything, always take at least 5 minutes to look through the whole paper and determine the difficulty level. Allocate sufficient time for each section too.

- Attempt easy questions first – This makes perfect sense since an average students should be able to attempt the 50% easy questions. Leaving the 10% questions blank will not cause you to fail miserably.

- Allocate appropriate time for each question. Very often, students spent too much time on something very difficult, and ended up not attempting the ones that they can do. A general guideline is to spend the amount of time according to how many marks the question carries. A 20 marks question probably deserves 1/5 of your time and attention.

- Always check for careless mistakes. We need not elaborate further. Careless mistakes should always be avoided at all cost since they are mostly likely the questions you can attempt.

After examination
It is always advisable to rest for 6 to 8 hours before preparing for the next subject again. After a Maths paper, your mind is probably full of equations and you will most likely not able to study anything else.


We hope this article can be useful to students preparing for examinations. If you feel too stressful about your coming examinations, do not hesitate to let us know.