Our Baseline:
We recently completed an entire practice (baseline) exam. In order to benefit the most from this process, it is important to analyze your performance on the multiple-choice questions. In addition to charting progress (number correct & number incorrect - this number is to remain private) we will record the kinds of questions you, personally, missed.
Your Assignment:
This assignment, if done correctly, will take several hours. Do not leave it until the last day!
1. Review the answers to the multiple choice section you recently completed. Just as we annotate in class, you will mark up your test in order to determine your performance breakdown. We are looking to identify the types of questions you, "tend to do well on" and those with which you, "tend to struggle." (You are looking for patterns.)
2. Read the M.C. section overview
3. Read the Question Types (1-8)
4. Read the Styles of Questioning (A- C)
5. Assess, from your performance on the multiple choice section, your strengths and weakness with the Question Types and Styles of Questioning listed on our blog. Once you have identified the patterns in your performance, read through "Strategies to Consider" at the bottom of the page. Identify your most critical strategies, as we move forward with the course.
Assignment Parameters:
- Your blog should refer to specific question types, styles and test taking strategies. In addition, unless you are the first to post, refer to an observation or future strategy discussed by one of your classmates.
- This is a meta-cognitive activity. Be specific about your understanding of yourself as a learner. Responses should be a minimum of 250 words. (Please do not make reference to your M.C. section score. )
- * Blog Response Due Date: Monday, September 19th
A.P. Literature and Composition – M.C. Section Overview:
I. INTRODUCTION
• 1 Hr. test
• 55 questions (about one minute per question, including reading time)
• Divide time per passage – be ruthless! About 15 minutes per passage.
• Four passages about 12-16 questions per passage
• Essential to practice at home
• Essential to analyze any wrong answers – spot trends and personal weaknesses, then fix them! Understand why a wrong answer is wrong, especially in practice.
• Lose 1/4 point on wrong answers
• Multiple choice = 45% Essays = 55%
• Typical: 2 prose/ 2 poems
• Test only uses literature from 1575—present (no Middle English or Old English)
• One passage will include a minority writer
• Expect 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th century passage
Question Types:
1. Situation
• who? to whom? (poetry)
• subject of 3rd Paragraph (prose)
2. Structure
• poetry: how stanzas relate
• what word in ______ relates back to ______
• what divisions represent its structure
• prose: how one paragraph relates to another
• progression of thought and overall structure
3. Theme
• whole and parts
4. Grammar and Word Meaning
• poetry: specific word choice definitions within context
• pronoun references/antecedents
• paraphrase word choice
• prose: subject of long sentence is…
5. Diction
• poetry: Use of _______ indicates
• poet’s idea of _________ is suggested by _______
• prose: choice of verbs in paragraph 4 suggests _______
• speaker’s anger is implied by ________
6. Images/ Figurative language/ Literary Technique
• which one? Where else in work?
• Purpose of a metaphor
• analogy in 2nd paragraph
7. Tone (perhaps metrics in poetry)
8. Rhetoric (mostly in prose)
• function of last sentence
• effect of shift in point of view
Styles of Questioning:
A. FACTUAL
• phrase presents example of…
• all are Figurative language except
• Man in line ___ is pictured mainly in his role as ___
• in line ___ the ___ is seen chiefly as …
• in line ___ the speaker regards himself as …
• beginning in ___ speaker does which …
• excerpt is written in …
• according to the speaker, …
• “they” in line ___ refers to …
• the object of “to” in line ___ is …
B. MAIN IDEA
• ______ hated ______ because _____
• parable of _______ serves to _______
• _______ believed human nature is ________
• which best describes ______ at the end
• tone
• which describes how ____ felt about …
• passage is concerned with …
• relation between line ____ and line ___ is best described as …
• main point about ___ is …
• line ___ speaker attempts to …
• style is characterized by …
• irony rests chiefly on ______
C. HIDDEN IDEA
• ____ interpreted to mean
• phrase evokes ______
• image of _______ refers to …
• ________ most likely represents ______
• can be inferred
• in line ___ the phrase “ ____” means _____
• line ___ suggests that …
• can be inferred speaker would agree with …
* REASONS ANSWERS ARE WRONG
1. Irrelevant to the question
2. Contradictory to the passage
3. Unreasonable (the “Huh?” choice)
4. Too general or too specific
5. Never addressed in the passage
6. Look for the SPECIFIC WORDS that make the answer wrong. Remember the difference between a right answer and the BEST (credited) answer. More than one can be right; look for the best. Avoid distractions!
Strategies to consider as we move forward w/ M.C. questions:
1. After reading the passage, students should read each question and anticipate what the answer might be before looking at the answer choices. Many students are nervous when taking the exam, and any strategies that help them focus and concentrate are good. When students get down to two answers, both of which seem correct, I advise them to choose the one that is most specific.
2. I also instruct the students to read actively rather than passively. I encourage them to underline words, phrases, or sentences in the passage that they think might be important. I show them how to look for patterns, motifs, repetition, and/or contrasts. What they underline is probably not as important as the process. I emphasize that reading actively increases focus and improves comprehension. I ask them how many times they have read a passage then looked up and did not remember a thing they just read. Reading actively helps to curb that wandering mind! Students cannot afford to waste time on the multiple-choice section with several readings.
3. I explain that the most difficult kinds of questions are the ones that ask students to find "all of the following except" or any questions that require students to reread a large portion of the text. They might want to leave them until later, as these questions consume an inordinate amount of time.
4. The multiple-choice section always presents a combination of easy, medium, and difficult questions for each passage. These questions generally follow the chronology of the passage rather than transition from easiest to hardest or vice versa. The most important factor, however, is that they all are worth the same point value. Therefore, a sound strategy for students is to make sure they get credit for all the easy and medium answers first. A student who spends too much time on a single, hard question may not get to answer two or three easy questions in a later part of the exam. Additionally, I advise students to do a quick check of the number of the question and the number on the Scantron forms every time they see a zero (10, 20, 30, and so on). This double-check can keep them from getting off track, having to go back to find their error, and wasting valuable time.
5. When the question refers to a part of the sentence and asks for the meaning of a word or phrase in context, what a word refers to, or how a word functions, it is best to go back to the beginning of the sentence or even to the previous sentence and read completely to the end of the sentence to comprehend the meaning. I have seen questions that ask the student what the antecedent of "this" is, and the answer is found in the preceding sentence. Students may also want to read the sentence that follows because the answer could be there.
6. If students find themselves running out of time, they can take the following approaches:
A. Scan the remaining questions and look for either the shortest questions or the questions that direct them to a specific line or lines. These questions take less time to answer.
B. Look for questions that contain the answer without requiring the student to refer to the text. For example, "The sea slid silently from the shore" is an example of (B) alliteration. The student would not have to go back to the passage to find the answer.
7. One way to ensure that students finish the entire multiple-choice section is to have them scan the number of questions and divide the number by two. For example, if there are 54 questions, and students have 60 minutes to complete the section, students should be around question 27 after 30 minutes. Another strategy is to divide the time by the number of passages. For example, if students have four passages to read and one hour to complete the exam, they should allot 15 minutes to each passage. The advantage of this method is that every passage has a number of easy and medium questions, and by moving steadily the students will receive the maximum number of points. Do not assume that there will be four passages; while four is often the number of sections in the multiple-choice section, I have seen as many as five. One year a student told me she did not even get to the last passage because she assumed there would be only four. Students must take responsibility for managing their time on the exam.
When it comes to testing, it is useful to realize what the strong and weak points of one are. We all have different strategies that we use to get the best scores we can, but there are always those questions that we can't get passed.
ReplyDeleteAnnotating my Lit and Comp multiple choice exam helped me realize that one type of question that i have the most trouble with is the Diction types of questions. Those questions that you have to interpret an idea and come up with a conclusion on what that idea suggests or indicates. To help myself improve on these types of questions, i can read the sentence before and after the sentence the question is about; this will help me understand the question better.
Another problem that i had was time management. I was not able to complete the entire exam causing me to lose points. One of the strategies that i am willing to try for the next exam is to divide my time for each passage so i can try to answer every question. I can also look over the questions and answer those that can be answered without reading the passage first.
Lastly, another problem i had was understanding some of the vocabulary used in some of the questions and answers. For this reason, i had to base my answers only on the words i did know. For next time, i can look for other clues that can help me understand the word. Another thing i can do is practice new vocabulary everyday to increase my "internal dictionary."
On the bright side, i did understand may of the questions that had a factual style. I consider these types of questions to be the less challenging for me because it is easier for me to find evidence in a passage to support my answer, than to interpret a certain idea.
Overall, i believe i am capable of improving my score if i apply some of these strategies not only on this test, but on any other test i have to take.
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ReplyDeleteAfter looking over my multiple choice exam I noticed that the types of questions I had trouble with was structure and diction. I’m not good at analyzing poetry which is why it was difficult for me to figure out what author was trying to imply or what their choice of words indicated. I think once I get better at knowing how to break a poem a part the better off I will be at answering these types of questions.
ReplyDeleteLike Angela I also had a problem with time management. I didn’t get to finish the exam which means I need to either read faster and or spend less time trying to figure out the answer to one question. With multiple choice questions I think the best tragedy to use is process of elimination. Take out two or three of the choices that I know for sure are not the answer and then take my best guess because at that point it should be a 50/50 shot.
For the styles of questioning I had a little trouble here and there with the main idea, and a lot of trouble with the hidden idea. I think that I can improve if I review the SAT vocabulary words again and keep studying them until I know most if not all by heart. It might also help if I would annotate like the teacher said =). But when I annotate I end up losing time which causes me not to finish the whole exam, which brings be back to having to know how to manage my time wisely. I believe with more practice I will be improve tremendously, anything can and will be better than the score I got this time.
And just like Angela one type of question I think I did okay on was factual. But there is always room for improvement.:D
After carefully reviewing my English Literature and Composition exam I realized that I had more than one problem while taking this exam. Like most of my classmates who posted before me, one of my problems was the diction type of question. The diction type of question requires you to take something the author has written and see what it indicates or is implied by. Similar to what Mr. Lone Wolf Royes said, you have to give it meaning. For me, giving something meaning is one of the hardest things to do. I can improve on the diction question types by re-reading the whole paragraph of the sentence I am supposed to be interpreting.
ReplyDeleteAnother problem I had with this exam was managing my time. In the beginning, I was taking my time and I wasn’t doing too badly with my questions. Once I realized how many articles there were, I felt like I needed to hurry up so I started rushing and I still didn’t get to finish. Once I got to the last few questions I was running out of time so I had to circle random answers. Just like Angela, I can also divide my time up per passage so I can get to read each article and answer at least some questions from each article.
Also, the last problem I had was that I did not underline or annotate the passages much while I was reading the passage. In the future, one strategy I can use is reading actively rather than passively. I can underline words that I think are important which will improve my comprehension.
Overall, I feel like the next time I take this test I will do better now that I now my own weak spots.
While I reviewed my multiple choice answers for my baseline test, I noticed several areas that I did not fully succeed in. The most dominant question type that I did poorly on was the grammar and word meaning section. I then remembered that while I was taking the test, when questions appeared that said “What does this word mean?” or “What is the subject of this phrase?”, I skimmed by those because of my lack of time management and when rushing and guessing through answers became a necessity. In order to improve this, I need to improve, like Angela and Saban said, my time management. I should determine the number of questions and/or passages and divide my time accordingly. As far as the almost laziness when it came to the grammar and word meaning questions, I need to gain the skills to have a high confidence in my ability to answer those correctly.
ReplyDeleteAnother problem that I noticed while reviewing is that I did not succeed fully in the rhetoric and theme questions. Those questions always seem to be troubling for me, so something that I should do to improve that is to read the entire passage where the sentence is contained and fully understand the passage before choosing an answer, but of course, within the time available for the question and/or question. Another technique I can use to help myself improve is to, like Saban said, to annotate more and underline in order to lessen my time skimming through the passage to find the phrase necessary.
Lastly, the styles of questions that really strained me were the hidden idea and the main idea. When thinking about when I took the exam, I remembered that I read the passages passively and afterwards I did not fully remember what I read, therefore lessening my chances of answers those styles of questions correctly. This situation brings in the need for annotation again. Another thing I can do is budget my time more wisely, and have more time to read and not rush through the necessary passages in order to have a full understanding and be able to read between the lines to answer the tougher questions.
Overall, this strategy in which I reviewed my questions and answers really helped because now I know my areas of weakness and where I can improve in order to help me succeed in future practice AP tests and the actual one in the spring!
I agree with angelita about its good to recognize our weak and strong areas of our test.
ReplyDeleteLike sabizzy and Brandon, i also had trouble with the diction type questions. This type of question suggests you to take the authors point of view of why he chose that phrase or word, and how it was implied. As a junior i need to master these types of questions because not only are diction type questions on the AP exam, But also on the SAT's. I notice the same thing during my SAT class, i have alot of trouble with diction and infrence type questions.
Like Kayyyyyy and Angelita... im horrible with time managment. i didnt get to finish the exam so in the last couple of pages i just filled in some random answers. i also think i took to much time reading, i like to take my time but in order to do well in time managment i need to read faster while understanding what im reading. Adding on to that, i get distracted way to easily. If there was a noise or someone drinking water or something, i would concentrate on them and not on the test. When im taking a test i want COMPLETE ssilence.
Like what shaban said, when i read i dont really annotate the text, resulting into a worse score. i highlight stuff that doesnt help me at all.
Like Mr.Wolf .. i think one of the most challenging questions where the structure type questions. i also had to reread the text couple of times just to understand what they are asking. this also affects my time management to.
Next time i need to stay focused and read quickly, understand what im reading, and this will result into a better grade hopefully.
SammyWammy and I have a number of the same problems with testing. Those are with time management, diction questions, and annotation. On the subject of time management however, I have the opposite issue. Whereas he and many others ran out of time, I found myself rushing ahead without care for how accurate my answers were. In addition to this, I can't bring myself to check my answers and end up sitting there for some time. I actually got lucky this time however, because I decided to casually check my answers, only to find that the second passage had two parts. My first time through I thought they were the same page printed twice, and skipped them. Unfortunately I realized this too late for anything more than randomly selecting answers. There's little I can say for diction questions, other than that I have difficulty seeing from another perspective, mainly because I don't know where to start. As for annotation, I really feel it wastes time, because I have taken test both with and without doing it, and found that it had no impact on my grades. Admittedly though it might force me to take my time answering if I really put effort into my annotations, so I might try it again.
ReplyDeleteI think my biggest problem with the test however was the poetry. The reason for my difficulty, I think, is simply that I really don't like it. I skimmed through the poetry portion, because it held very little interest to me. Subsequently, my answers were based on little content.
After looking over my exam I noticed that there were multiple problems, one of my most prevalent concerns was time management. While taking the exam I’ve noticed that I would run out of time at the last five minutes or so. Such as, I didn’t get to elaborate as much as I wanted too. At the same time the questions I answered I did well on. I found that another issue was that I did the same of what James and Sammy Wammy had done. I noticed that I limited done to two and might have chosen the right one by luck but had a just as tempting choice as the second option.
ReplyDeleteI think with a little better time management I might have been able to clear pick the right answer with out having to guess. Some of the other types of mistakes I made besides time management was hidden tyoes f questions. I know I had a problem with these types of questions because when reading quickly through a story I usually don’t pick up much of the undertones and unlinking story, or as they say reading between the lines.
Sincerely,
The Boss
It seems to me that many other students, like James and SammyWhammy, had problems with diction questions. Guess what? I had problems with them, too. Diction questions require that you, as the reader, analyze the passage and give the passage some meaning. This is something I'm not very good at.
ReplyDeleteAnd like James, I don't really like to read poetry. I didn't read the entire poem "The Albuquerque Graveyard." I'd rather read twelve novels than read one short poem though I surprisingly did a lot better on the poem than the other passages.
Now unlike Kay and Angela, I did not have a time management issue. I finished on time which was awesome. I'll get a higher score if we focus in class more on diction questions than other questions.
Then again, I think we should practice all types of questions in class!
I also had a problem with questions related to diction and hidden meaning. Like Kay I had a problem with time management. I felt rushed toward the end and got many questions wrong on the last passage. This was because I was trying to quickly read the passages and answer the questions fast. This caused me to make careless mistakes and guess on certain questions. There were about 3 question that my answer made no sense to at all. They have the "huh" type answers.
ReplyDeleteAfter looking back I understood why it was wrong and what was the right answer. I need better time management and not to rush as much. I also did not annotate any of the passages. Next time I will annotate and for diction type questions I will read the sentences before and after it. For the question having hidden meanings I will read them slowly and hopefully be able to decipher the correct hidden meaning. I did this originally but when I felt rushed I stopped. I also second guessed myself a lot when I got down to only two possible answers. My "gut feeling" was often right, but I would think that it was not and I would circle the other question. There were other times where I thought that the answer was to obvious so I crossed it off. I now know that if it seems like the right answer, then it probably is the right answer. Especially if only one other choice even remotely makes sense. Hopefully by using the new strategies and some practice I will be able to get the score that I was aiming for.
I agreed with a lot of what Sammy Wammy said about his multiple choice answers. I, too, find that I have a problem paying attention to my test when there are distractions around me like people tapping their pencils or moving around. This creates a time management issue for me, which then makes me panic and I then make careless mistakes. I also find that I have problems with diction questions as well as grammar and word meaning questions. I found that I could relate to James when he was talking about being unable to see things from another perspective because I find that my perspective is generally the most obscure and I am unsure how to change my perspective without someone there to point it out to me. I also agree with James’ argument on annotations, because I feel like I waste time and get little out of it. I also find that when I do annotate it’s because I don’t understand something, but during these types of exams I don’t have the privilege of asking someone for help, so the annotations are more of a frustration to me than helpful.
ReplyDeleteI think I could get better at some of these areas of weakness by seeking help from peers in areas that they feel confident about. For example, Angela and Kay seem to have some great ideas about how to answer questions when you don’t understand all the words in the question or answer choices. I, however, find I am stuck guessing and generally get questions wrong due to my lack of knowledge on obscure words. I find peer teaching to be a great tool because I find that students tend to trust other student more because they are aware that these techniques have been put to the test and are effective.
After reviewing the correct answers to the AP Lit Multiple Choice test, I can certainly see patterns emerging. What seems to be most prevalent in my case is over- or under -analyzing. In Grammar or Figurative Language type questions, I attempt to generalize the entire poem or short story into a single metaphor, resulting in an incorrect answer because the meaning isn’t strong enough. Or, I do the opposite: I look at a single sentence or phrase, which doesn’t capture the meaning of the work as a whole. In either case, I agree with Lawrence in that my gut feeling was often right. After choosing an answer, I over analyzed the question and then changed my answer because it fit too broadly or too narrowly. I also seem to have a problem with grammar and factual type questions, mainly in finding and interpreting specific words or meanings in the context of the poem. This might be because I simply have not had enough hands on experience with critically analyzing poetry and being able to interpret all the figurative language an author might use.
ReplyDeleteLike James, however, what I do not have a problem with is time management. Whether I get the question wrong or right, I can finish the test with time to spare. I can use this extra time, therefore, to read the passages more critically and annotate, since I have not done that on this exam. Annotation would both give me something to base my answers off of, and help me to get a more accurate measure of the context and meaning necessary in a particular piece. Since I am not that skilled at annotating, doing it would make me think much more critically about a piece and let me understand it better, hopefully enabling me to get a higher score.
The type of question I had the most trouble with was diction. I didn’t do too well with questions that asked what a certain phrase suggested about some other aspect of the piece. I think I managed my time fairly well overall, but I sometimes felt too short on time to really think about the diction questions. I probably did the best with the word meaning questions. I didn’t have a problem with identifying the meaning of a word or phrase. I think the problems I had on the diction questions were with relating the phrase to another idea. I also did well on the structure questions; I was able to correctly identify the structure of a poem. Another pattern I noticed in my results was that I tended to get the questions that started, “In the context of...” wrong. This could be similar to the problem I had with the diction questions, because these questions also required relating a phrase to another part of the piece. I found the questions that asked me to consider something in the context of the entire poem or passage to be difficult, but questions that asked about a word in the context of a sentence or paragraph were not as hard for me. I think some of my wrong answers were wrong because they weren’t specifically addressed in the passage because I had problems with the context questions. I had one problem that James also had. Like James, I skipped the page that repeated the second passage. I might have just skipped the page by accident, or somehow ended up thinking that I had already done that page. I ended up doing that page in a hurry at the end of the test. In general, I did better with questions that asked about the main idea than ones that asked about hidden meaning. Like Lawrence and many other people, I had the most trouble with diction and hidden meaning questions. I think after taking this practice test, I know what I have to work on.
ReplyDeleteLike most people here, I had a huge problem with diction. Like Kay, I'm not very good at analyzing poetry, and I'm far more used to looking at short stories and novels. I also lack in vocabulary, which makes these questions even more difficult and Angela and Kay suggested some good strategies as to how expand someone's dictionary.
ReplyDeleteAnother huge problem of mine was the rhetoric and theme-related questions. I felt like it was unnecessary to annotate with the amount of time we had, but my results contradicted this. Instead of merely skimming through the passages, I should take some time to analyze and annotate. I realized when you only quickly look through something, you get little to no information out of it. On the bright side, I was fairly good at factual questions, and it's good to know I had at least one strength.
Like Sammy Wammy, yet another problem I had was time-management, like most people. Near the end, I found myself rushing and making careless mistakes, my most careless ones being near the end, when we only had a few minutes left. Instead of spending too much time on a couple passages, I should make time frames for each passage and answer the easiest and most straight-forward questions first, like, for example, the one's that don't make me have to go back to the passage. Furthermore, I noticed I over-thought a huge amount of problems. I figured because it was an AP exam, none of the questions would have such simple/easy answers, but I'll make sure I won't make this mistake in the future by not overestimating/underestimating any questions.
Overall, I feel like I'm much more aware of my weaknesses, and I can improve them over the year. I've already begun to look at SAT vocab and the AP Lit. study guide. I feel like I can do much better on future practice tests and the real AP exam!
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ReplyDeleteAs with what seems to be the majority of the class, I also had trouble with diction problems and time management, as well as hidden ideas. It seems that I just do not "absorb" the text as I read it, as my mind tires of the subject at hand. It seems that a decent solution to this is to read actively, as Saban suggested. So, in the future,I will take short notes or underline things that seem important, keeping it small so that I don't waste too much time, but also retaining some amount of activity. This will hopefully increase my comprehension so the questions that pertain more to hidden ideas and diction will be more easily dealt with.
ReplyDeleteAs for time management, I believe I just need to give myself a continuous mental push, skipping problems that, upon reading, I feel the need to reread a large portion of the passage. Instead, I can select a reasonable answer, then return if I have time. It also seems that when I rush I elect a few "huh" answers, that are completely unreasonable, but didn't seem so at the time - Thus the reason I did extremely poorly
on the last section, relative to the others.
Additionally, there seems to be quite a few essential words that I don't have in my vocabulary. This is especially true in question 25, though it seems that this could just be my general lack of knowledge of poetry. I should find a word list to study from to increase my vocabulary, which should help me in various applications.
It has come to my attention that I am not the only one of my classmates struggling with diction typre questions. Those questions require the reader to not only interpret what the poem is trying to portray, but to portray it correctly. In many of those questions I struggled because I was stuck in between two choices. After analyzing my multiple choice test, along with the answers and my notes; I realized that my first "gut" answer was correct. But, then I doubted myself and changed it at the very last minute. Next time, I should follow my "gut" feeling and stick to my original answer. Like Angela, I also struggled through some of the vocab and believe that I should also start my "Inner Dictionary". Many of the words on that text were difficult. One thing I may do during the test in order to improve that is read the sentence before and after the passage. One thing I may do before the test is use the vocabulary in the back of our new AP book. Make about 10 flashcards a week with them, until I learn the because chances are most of that vocabulary will appear on the actual test.
ReplyDeleteI did struggle with time management, but it was in a different way from most of my classmates. Most of the weren't able to complete the test. I was able to complete the test but, it was because I rushed thorugh many of the questions. Had I taken my time on some of those questions. I know I would've improved my overall score. A strategy that I would use next time is to go thorugh the really easy questions and make sure I complete those. THEN, I can go back and finish the much harder questions.
As I was looking over my multiple choice question I noticed just like Angela that I was having trouble with the diction type of questions. The most popular from the diction type of question was prose. As I was thinking about strategies I noticed that I could read the sentence before and the sentence after to help me understand the content better. Hopefully by using this strategy I can get these types of questions correct next time I take this test.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I had a problem with getting my answers to make sense with what the question was asking. As I was reading the the passages I felt a little confused. A lot of the time I was reading really fast because I thought I would run out of time. While looking through Ms. O'Donnell strategies I noticed that reading actively instead of passively will help me with this problem that I have. If I annotated the story I would have helped me with going back into the passage and find the direct answers for the questions.
Just like many of my classmates I had a time management issues. For next time I would look for those questions that I don't really have to look in the passage. In addition I would look for the easier questions and get those correct then go to the harder ones.
Lastly, I thought that the question was trying to trick me so I would choice the answer that I thought was right but then it was wrong. Just like Michael I think that I was over thinking some of these questions and when I looked back my first choice was the right one. Hopefully by looking at over my problems and applying some of these strategies it will help my score increase.
I found that my main problem was time management. Just like Sammy Wammy and Morgan, I was very easily distracted and couldn't manage to get through all of the questions. In fact, the only problem I had that really stuck out was the time management. Looking through my test, there was a clear partition from where I was actually doing the test and when I started guessing when I ran out of time.
ReplyDeleteAnother big issue that really contributed to the time management, besides the distractions, was the lack of an organized thought process. My thinking was cluttered, which led to me scrambling to find the part of the passage that relates to the question. I feel like this could be helped by annotating, however, for me, annotating proposes a new problem, I over-analyze the passage and up with something more than I need. This generally doesn't make me choose a different answer, it just forces me to simplify my thought process, which wastes more time.
With mucho love,
Ahmed Ouda♥.
Like what most of my classmates have written on the blog, I realize that a lot of my problem is time management. However, unlike many of them, I do not necessarily feel rushed, but rather that my thoughts are all over the place throughout. I have never been very good at analyzing poetry, and trying to do so made my mind go “crazy”. Although I finished ten minutes before our time was supposed to be over, I was foolish enough not to review my answers to check for mistakes. Since the feeling of pressure of being timed wasn’t bothering me, I felt like I had taken a fair enough amount of time for each question and didn’t need to check again.
ReplyDeleteClearly, I was mistaken; about half my answers were wrong. As I was analyzing my mistakes to find what I could improve on – aside from time management – I noticed that I had had a lot of trouble on the Grammar and Word Meaning questions, as well as the Images/Figurative Language/Literary Technique questions. Like my classmate Kay, I have a hard time with finding the deeper meaning of poems and analyzing them. For those I should probably take my time and read slowly, in order to let every word sink in and give me time to gain an understanding of what everything means.
Before that, though, I should look over the questions so that I know what to be looking for as I read. By doing so, I will be able to come to the questions already having an idea of what the answers may be. And I shouldn’t just do this for the poems, but for every thing I read; this is a technique that could be helpful in any situation. Obviously, double checking my answers will also be a useful technique to use, since I may have a different idea for the answer to a question fifteen minutes later than I had at the time, which may likely be the correct answer as opposed to what I originally had put.