THE MULTIPLE CHOICE EXAM Preparation 2012 - Bank Exam Guidance

THE MULTIPLE CHOICE EXAM:

Bank Exam Guidance 

Often students anticipate their first multiple choice exam to be simply a matter of recognizing true statements. However, experience with these exams shows students that they are often asked to do more than just recognize textbook material. Multiple choice questions, they learn, require fine distinctions between correct and nearly-correct statements. They learn that these distinctions are not only of Recognition, but are distinctions that involve the thinking for Synthesis,

Analysis, and Application. These higher-order thinking questions sometimes make the content of the questions unrecognizable. Besides not being fully prepared for these types of thinking questions, students often read the questions carelessly. Therefore, it is to the students' advantage to learn about the thinking required to answer multiple choice questions and to learn how to read the Preparing/study for multiple choice exams

1. Take a Learning Skills course to learn:– how to recognize the various levels of learning that are tested in multiple choice questioning;– how to use new strategies for learning, remembering, and thinking.

2. Join or form a study group to practise making and answering multiple choice questions of various levels.

3. Study old exams. Examine each question to determine:– the level or type of thinking required of you (recognition, synthesis,analysis, application);

the degree of difference between incorrect and correct alternatives.

4. When studying the material consider groups of facts or groups of ideas that are similar in meaning. While learning each group, pay special attention to the differences among the facts and ideas within each group.It may be effective to think of each fact or idea in terms of what each means or includes and what each does not mean or does not include. For a concept, consider what is necessary or sufficient to include. How do two similar concepts differ? Why is that difference important?