Sagely advice with time

GoGoWolf

Hello 7Sage community!

I feel as though this is a pretty common issue people have when it comes to test, so I thought I'd seek out the community's advice on the matter.

I've always had a problem when it came to tests and being timed. I get anxious and basically skim through the question and answers, only to find that I've scored terribly low. And in turn, when I'm not timed and take my time reading and answering questions and answers, I find that I've scored pretty high.

So I ask anyone/everyone who reads this to please leave some advice as to how I can be less anxious and improve my score while being timed.

Thanks for reading.

help

Martianman

Don't worry about the time, just go at the pace which makes you comfortable with getting them correct. This will help you get the questions you do complete correct. Then you will get ~1/5 of your guesses correct.

Once you can do this you will see that even when timed, your results are better than rushing, making bad attempts, and missing easy questions you would not normally miss. It will encourage you to be accurate, and then the speed will come with increased practice and increased confidence from getting the questions you DO do correct.

Martianman

For what it's worth, I am doing my best to take my own advice, as I currently do not quite finish the LR section but I am close. I typically have 2-3 I guess on. I am not where I'd like to be and I postponed my test date since I think that I will improve, but it won't happen quickly.

learn2skipQs

I would love some advice as well. Same exact problem.

KnackPaddyWack

I stuggle with this too, but from what I have heard to get better with time requres lots of practice with actual test. I am personally sticking with the &sage core curriculum preset times. I am not adding more time for myself but my Blinf Review is always at my own pace.

Auntie2020

I agree with others!

1. Go on your own pace at first and focus on accuracy.
2. When you are comfortable with material, then practice timed conditions.

Cant Get Right

Time management strategy is a robust area of study. You can keep it as simple as a 10-in-10 style benchmark strategy, or you can get as complex as empirical analysis and game theory.

A few universal basics though:

1. Time management is not going fast. "Speed" is pretty far from the point. Skimming results in reading errors and bad outcomes. Of course it does. If you're not reading carefully, you should not expect to perform well on an exam testing precision understanding of linguistic, grammatical, and logical nuance. So start by reading carefully at a pace that is comfortable for you. Think about what you're reading; process what's going on.

2. The goal of time management is not to compress a blind review into 35 minutes. This is one of the biggest misconceptions I see, and it was something I was hung up on for a long time. You simply don't have time for such comprehensive articulation of every explanation. Sometimes, you'll have to be content with simply knowing that you could explain something but without actually doing it. I'm always asking myself if I can explain my reasoning for whatever it is I'm doing. If I can explain my reasoning, I don't. It's only when I can't that I find it's a valuable expenditure of time. Otherwise, I'm just going through the motions reciting an explanation, already knowing how the story ends. In that scenario there is nearly no chance of that time resulting in a different answer, so that time is providing very little return on investment. We don't have enough time to invest on such low returns. If you miss a question in this scenario, that's an error typically best dealt with in BR or post-BR analysis.

3. Your goal, under time, is not to get every question right. Your goal is to pick up as many points as possible for your level of skill and ability. So don't over-invest on the hardest questions. If you spend 5 minutes taking a shot at a really hard question and get it right, that's an absolute catastrophe. You've just spent 1/7th of your time on 1/25th of the possible points. The fact you got the question right is irrelevant from the perspective of time management strategy. Sometimes making the right decision may cause you to miss the question. Sometimes making the wrong decision may cause you to get the right answer. But you must be just as concerned with the inputs as the outcomes. As a rule, you shouldn't continue with a question if you don't know how to continue. You need to be productive for 35 minutes. Wishing you knew what to do on a question on which you're lost is not productive, and you need to move on. If there's time at the end, great, you can come back and explore. If there's not time at the end, then that means you got to something you wouldn't have gotten to had you sunk your time into that situation.

4. Your time management strategy and analysis should refine as you improve. In the above example, you may reach a level of ability where it may not necessarily be a mistake to spend 5 minutes, cumulatively, on a single question. After all, the hardest questions will generally take the most time, and that time is often disproportionate to the value of the question. So the point is that hard rules only take you so far. Ultimately what matters is the reasoning behind your timing decisions, not inflexible standards adhered to without reflection. Those standards are useful at first, but later may become overly restrictive where you have good, informed reasons for stretching the norms. If you make good timing decisions for 35 minutes, you'll maximize your potential for the section.