10.0 Introduction
Learning Objectives
By the time you finish this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
- Outline the importance of memory when studying, and note some opportunities to strengthen memory.
- Discuss specific ways to increase the effectiveness of studying.
- Articulate test-taking strategies that minimize anxiety and maximize results.
- Identify resources that can help you take responsibility for developing your memory and test taking strategies
- Recognize how academic success connects to career success
Tested at every turn! Testing is a part of life. They alone are not good measurements about how smart or gifted you are—they show only how much you know or can do at that moment. We can learn from how we have performed, and we can think about how to apply what we have learned to do even better next time. We can have fun measuring our progress. Many of our daily activities are measurements of progress toward mastery of skills or knowledge. We welcome these opportunities as both work and fun. But when these opportunities are part of our academic life, we often dread them and rarely feel any sense of fun.
In reality, however, academic tests are similar to real-life tests in the following ways:
- They help us measure our progress toward mastery of a particular skill.
- They are not a representation of how smart, talented, or skilled we are but rather are a measurement only of what we know about a specific subject at a specific point in time.
- They are extraordinary learning opportunities.
Academic tests in college maybe different from those you took in other school settings. College professors expect to see much more of you in a text or exam: your thoughts, your interpretations, your thinking process, your conclusions. This is why you need to modify your study habits and your strategies for taking test in college.
“16 Tests” from A Guide for Successful Students by Irene Stewart and Aaron Maisonville is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
