5.3.3 Using visualization The important thing is to find out which technique works for you, and to practise it before the exam, so that if the need arises you can switch into the technique during the exam itself. For a very small number of students with more persistent anxiety, medical advice can be very helpful. If this is the case, it is really important to talk to an advisor or tutor, to see what special exam arrangements are possible.
5.2.4 Taped material There are many useful tapes on relaxation. See Section 6 for full details.
5.1.1 Technique 1: Self-talk—turning negative statements into positive ones You can guide your thinking away from general worry and self-doubt by turning negative self-statements into positive ones. This strategy is useful in all aspects of life. Figure 5 relates to an unsuccessful job interview and illustrates the process. 5.1 Anxiety management techniques You may find that exams provoke levels of anxiety which are highly uncomfortable, and that you do not produce your best work under such pressure. If you tend to be a perfectionist, an exam can be particularly stressful because it has a set time limit which limits lengthy planning, rewriting and checking. Even revision can be difficult if you are constantly worrying about whether you will remember and understand your material when you are in the exam room. Anxiety management techniques w 4.3.1 Start writing Using the format of introduction, main body and conclusion outlined in Section 3, write up your answer to the question. 4.3 Plan your answers Using the ideas outlined in Section 3, mark the key words in the question to make sure you identify the topic correctly. Then mark the process words to help you to understand the instructions within the question. Jot down the main points you can recall which might be relevant, along with examples and evidence you can use. Work fast and uncritically 4.2.4 Plan your time When planning to use the time available, you should: make sure that you are answering the right number of questions divide your time according to the weighting of the questions write down the finishing time for each question try to allow for 10 minutes checking time at the end. Stick to your plan. Evidence indicates that two half-answered questions obtain more marks than one completed 3.8 Stage 6: Rehearsing answering exam questions Just like assignment questions, exam questions should be read carefully, because you need to demonstrate in your answer that you have understood the question. Examiners frequently complain that students lose vital marks through failing to read and interpret the questions properly. 3.6.4 Using a computer Besides other things, a computer offers the opportunity to organise, reorganise, and delete material, without having to write everything out every time you make a change. It also allows you to make notes as you go along, file them easily, and add and update them in your revision period. You may even find that one of your software packages supports a facility for making notes. You will certainly have a range of layout facilities and graphics to enhance your notes. 3.6.2 Making learning posters You may find that, rather than reducing notes to small summary cards, you prefer to produce large posters detailing key points on particular topics. Use pattern, colour, diagrams and drawings in your posters, and display them in parts of your home where you might have an opportunity to gaze at them for some time and absorb the information. One student we know put them around the bathroom! If you have a strong visual memory, then lively posters really help the remembering process. 3.2 Stage 1: Finding out about the exam paper As a first step, it is a good idea to find out as much as you can about the exam paper for your course. Find out how your exam paper is set out, the way the questions are organised, and what weight each question carries in terms of marks. Different papers adopt different formats. Some require multiple-choice answers. Others ask for essay or short paragraph answers. Some require technical or numerical answers. Reading the instructions on the exam paper is particularly important, as the followi Keep on learning   There are more than 800 courses on OpenLearn for you to 6.1 What is a ‘good’ reader? If you ever worry about: your rate of progress as you read how much you understand how much you will remember later then join the club. Here is one student offering support to another who expressed self-doubt in an online chat room:
5.2 Thinking for yourself These are the kinds of questions you need to ask in order to read critically. As a higher-level student, you don't read simply to ‘find out facts’. It is assumed that you will think for yourself and question what you read and hear. The ‘truth’ is taken to be uncertain, so you weigh up ideas and arguments as you read about them. According to Marton and Saljo (1997, p. 49) research shows that successful students read as if they are constantly asking themselves questions of the kind: ‘ 5.1.6 Are the conclusions justified? Though I was interested in the idea of treating high incomes as ‘pollution’, I did wonder whether taxing people to pay for the pollution caused by their rising incomes would work. In general though I was reasonably convinced by the conclusions Layard drew. On the other hand, if I was studying the subject more seriously, I might find that wider reading and further thought would make some of the conclusions seem less convincing. 5.1.3 Does the argument follow logically? As I was making sense of paragraph 3, I did pause to consider whether it was logically possible to say that on average richer people are happier, yet getting richer has not made us happier. Later, when I read that women in the US were less happy since their incomes had come closer to men's, it occurred to me that they would be unlikely to volunteer to revert to previous levels of inequality. This made me question what happiness really means, if it is not necessarily a state that a person woul 5.1.2 In what context was the text published? This amounts to asking, when was it written and for what audience. Academic texts are written to make a contribution to the debates going on within the field. To understand where an author is coming from and why arguments are being presented in a particular way, you need to be able to place the text in context. Layard's article was published in 2003 in the UK, and was drawn from a prestigious series of public lectures. So the context is a major statement by a prominent academic 5.1.1 How much trust can I put in this text? You would generally assume that any set texts for a are trustworthy. But when you find a text through your own research you need to run a few checks to assess the soundness of its content. Who is the publisher? If an article is from an academic journal, you can assume that its quality has been vetted by the journal's editors. Also if a book is published by a major academic publishing house, you would expect it to be ‘respectable’. And if it's a book from an academic ser 5.1 Critical questions As well as making sense of what you read, you have to think about whether or not you are convinced by the arguments being presented. At degree level, you don't simply accept what you read – you read ‘critically’, weighing up the strengths and weaknesses of the case the author makes. This means asking another set of questions, such as the ones discussed here. 4.1.1 Too much underlining and highlighting The challenge, especially when you are new to a subject, is to avoid underlining or highlighting everything. Everything seems important, so how do you know what to leave out?
If you make too many markings, you defea
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