8 Ways to Improve Your Answer-Writing Skills for Exams

If you are a student getting ready for the next examination or a teacher or a parent helping your learner to revise and prepare for the next exam, keep an eye on each of the 8 Steps to Improve Your Answer-Writing Skills for Exams that I am about to share here.

In the exam hall, students are expected to write the best set of answers to questions to help them pass but many students lack the answer-writing skills for exams. As a result of this, many students either write incomplete or half-baked answers, deviate from the expected answers or write answers that do not contain the needed information. This accounts for the poor performance of many students, apart from poor preparation, among other things.

What Are The 8 Ways To Improve Your Answer-Writing Skills for Exams?

Your answer-writing skills for exams can improve if you apply the following tips.

Step 1: Understand the question.

I am sure you have heard of the saying “Understanding of the question is part of the examination.”. This simply means that if you want to have a better chance of answering a question correctly, you must first know exactly what the question means and what it demands as answers. To achieve this, you must read the question with the intention to understand what is required of you.

Do well to read the question carefully and identify the key words in it. For instance, a question like this: “Give three differences between plant and animal cells.”

There are three key words in this question. These are differences between plant and animal cells. However, if you fail to know what “differences” means, you are likely to write the wrong answers.

Step 2: Brainstorm and plan before writing.

It is a bad examination practice for students to jump into answering questions without planning and brainstorming. During the brainstorming period, you are to think through the answers and how you are going to present the answers. In the case of the above, the best and easiest way to answer this question is to draw a table. You must quickly and carefully write out the potential answers on your question booklet during the brainstorming stage so that you do not forget them.

Step 3: Follow a clear structure when answering questions.

If the question is asking for differences, the best way to answer it is to use a table. If the question demands a one-sentence answer, be precise and straight to the point with the answers, but make sure the answer is rich with the needed information and not just a mere sentence that mentions the point.

If the question demands some additional explanation, then develop paragraphs. Ensure that each paragraph has a topic sentence followed by the explanation and an example, if any.

Finally, if you are required to write an essay, it must have an introduction, body, and conclusion that are all well written.

Step 4: Manage your time.

The examination is written within a given time. Ensure that you manage the time to enable you to answer the required number of questions. If the exam is an hour-long paper and you are to answer, say, three questions, ensure that you do not spend more than 15 minutes on one question.

Use the first ten minutes to brainstorm and plan the answers for the three questions; use 15 minutes to answer each question. After every fifteen minutes, move to the next question until you are done, then you can come back to the questions you did not answer well and deal with them. Use the remaining five minutes to read through your answers to help you correct the errors for a better score.

Step 5: Properly structure your answers and maintain good handwriting.

If you do not present your answers well, you can lose valuable marks, and poor handwriting can lead to failure. No matter the kind of handwriting you have, make sure it is easy to read. Neat and legible handwriting improves readability.

Step 6: Use keywords and technical terms. 

In writing the answers, do not forget to use the right keywords and technical terms that are related to the topic and the subject. By using the right terms and words to express the answer, you will have no issues with the examiner, especially if you also spell them well. This means you must learn  how to spell these key vocabularies during your study and not just how they are pronounced and used in sentences. Ensure that you know the keywords in each topic to be examined for each subject and use them when the need arises.

Step 7: Include examples. 

Answers with examples to support them are like soup with the right amount of salt, pepper, and other species. The examples confirm to the examiner that you really understand and know what you are writing. Sometimes, your explanation may not be so good but your accurate example can cover up the weak explanation to help you score more. In some instances, examiners award marks for the examples you give so do well to provide useful examples.

The examples can be real-life case studies, facts, or hypotheticals, and they help enrich and improve your answer.

Step 8: Review or read through

If you are one of those who do not read through your answers before submitting your scripts, you must end that poor exam-taking practice now. This post you are reading was reviewed at least twice before it was published and you can imagine the errors detected and how their presence in the post would have made reading difficult for you.

It is important that you read through your answers in the exam hall to find and correct errors, such as omitting keywords or terms or spelling, and grammatical errors.

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By reading through your answer, you can make sure you have actually answered every part of the question.

Now that you know the 8 Ways to Improve Your Answer-Writing Skills for Exams, do your very best to apply them as part of your revision so that it becomes a routine practice.