Many students find Chemistry difficult and score very low marks for their chemistry exam papers. Here are some exam tips that students can use to get better results for your next chemistry exam:
- Start revision early
It’s never too early to plan your revision. Many students think that they can finish their revision in 2 weeks or a few days before the examinations and when they realise they have a lot of content to memorise, they will start to panic and use poor studying techniques like spotting questions, just remembering the main points of each topic, or skipping entire chapters altogether.
Students also need to plan for unforeseen circumstances such as falling sick. It’ll be extremely stressful if students have an extremely short period of time to study and they fall sick. That would mean that they have no buffer time to catch up on their revision.
- Get plenty of sleep the day before the exam
You cannot store too much information just the day before your examinations. What students need is rest so their minds can function properly during the examinations. Sitting for an examination with only 3 hours of sleep is a sure way to lead to poor performance as the tired mind cannot focus and interpret questions properly.
- Read the questions carefully
Some students like to speed through the examinations for fear of being unable to complete the papers in time. Even though the concern is real, it is counter productive to rush through doing the questions and make careless mistakes along the way. Students will end up losing more marks. It is important to read the questions carefully before attempting them.
- Pace yourself properly
Some papers are a few hours long. It is very demanding to the brain and students who rush through the first part of the exam will find themselves very tired for the second half of the paper which affects how they interpret and answer the questions. Conversely, students who are too slow and cautious at the beginning will find it hard to complete the papers in time! Therefore it is important to pace yourself properly and set a time limit per question. For example if the paper is 2 hours long and you have 4 questions to attempt, then you need to target completing each question in around 25 minutes, with 5 minutes buffer time for reading the question and checking your answers.
- Be willing to give up when necessary
The objective of an examination is very simple – to get as many marks as possible. Sometimes students encounter a challenging question and spend too much time dwelling on that question which reduces the time to attempt other questions. If you find the question really beyond you, or if you feel the question is too time consuming, skip that question and attempt other easy questions first. The last thing you want is to end the exam with questions unanswered due to lack of time. Once your exam is over, you can go check the JNTUH Results online.
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Keeping these exam tips in mind will prepare yourself better for the next paper. However, good exam techniques are useless if your chemistry content is weak! If your foundation on chemistry concepts is not strong, you might want to seek addition chemistry classes from an experienced tutor to break down difficult topics for you.