Test taking skills

sashasamraa-1-1-1-1

I am having a hard time working under the time given in the exam as well as focusing on the questions. I feel as if my score is only low because I am leaving a lot blank. Can anyone advise me on how I can focus and read faster?

Any tips please assist me, I know I can do better than the grade I am receiving.

DontPay4LawSchool

This is the biggest mistake I made during my studies. Yes, your problem is speed but why is that? Is it because you aren't focused or aren't reading quickly enough? No, it's because you're not familiar enough with the material. Learn to use your BR efficiently and review the questions you did get to thoroughly. Even when you are completing a section, don't speed through simply to complete the section. You should give each question your all and be fully confident in your answer choice before moving forward. This way, you build familiarity and learn how to get the questions right and not just complete them. After that, the speed will come naturally.

Cant Get Right

You’re asking a really insightful question, but framing it in terms of how to read faster is a big red flag. If you’re trying to manage the clock by racing against time, you’re never going to perform at your highest potential because speed comes at the expense of comprehension. And if you’re answering questions on compromised understanding, you will lose points. And you deserve to lose those points, right? Shouldn’t a well-designed test penalize testers choosing their answers based on diminished understanding? Of course it should.

So if speed isn’t the answer, what is? The simple version of sound time management strategy is to read carefully and be aggressive. You’ve got to start by understanding what you’re reading. That means slowing down and reading at a comfortable, natural pacing. That part is pretty plain and simple. The hard part is learning to disregard speed as your time management strategy. Rather than speed, the time management will come from moving on from each question at the right moment. On average for you, that’s going to be a lot sooner than it presently is. But that’s not to say do everything you’re doing now only faster. It means to stop doing a lot of what you’re doing. For a pretty obvious example, if you get to a point where you’re 90% confident you have the right answer and it’s going to take you 90 seconds to diagram the thing out to confirm, you need to refrain from the diagramming. Put that 90 seconds into your time bank and move on. If you’re wrong, miss that question. The willingness to miss questions is so important. I don’t know anyone who scores consistently well who’s 100% confident in all their answers. Timed sections are not BR’s compressed into 35 minutes, they are entirely different undertakings. You have to learn how to manage risk. You have to be able to pick answers on intuition. You have to learn how to give up. All of these are critical skills that top scorers understand how to utilize well. Without developing these skills, you’re going to be stuck with the speed versus accuracy dilemma. And that is always going to produce a pretty balanced trade off that’s going to keep your score hovering in a similar range.

All that said, testing strategy is all built on fundamentals. Without sound fundamentals, this is all a gimmick. Your BR score is the best assessment of your fundamentals. Testing strategy is the way to close the gap between your timed and BR scores.