Test Skills – How Do I Study For An Essay Test?

By Stuart Ackerman

    Writing an ‘essay’ type of test is different that writing a multiple choice, or short answer test.  When writing an essay-type test, you have to know the content well because you are generally required to ‘retrieve’ the information rather than making a guess or getting lucky with one or two important facts.

     Here are some strategies you can use in order to be well prepared to write an essay-type test.

1.    You have to study.  There’s no way around it.  You must be familiar with the topic and concepts.  Find the best study method that works for you whether it’s studying with a friend, highlighting notes, or recording your own voice.

2.    Carefully read the questions!  This sounds simple enough, but you would be surprised at how many students incorrectly answer test questions because they don’t carefully read the instructions.

3.    Start answering the questions you know best.  You don’t necessarily have to follow the questions in numerical order.  Start off answering the questions you know most about.  This will get your brain working by retrieving information and it will help stimulate your memory to answer other questions.

4.    Look for key words in the questions such as: summarize, explain, compare, describe, and discuss.

5.    When writing answers for essay-type questions; make sure you support the main ideas with factual information and not opinion.  Make sure your answer is focused and answers the question.

6.    Remember to watch the clock.  Make sure you set enough time to answer all the questions.  If a question has more point value than another, make sure you spend the appropriate time on each.

7.    Check over your work because you may find that you remembered information later on in the test as well, you may have made some mistakes.

     Try to follow these suggestions when writing an essay-type of test and you will see better results.

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