What essay questions require

Exam questions can reach pretty far into the course materials, so you cannot hope to do well on them if you do not keep up with the readings and assignments from the beginning of the course. The most successful essay exam takers are prepared for anything reasonable, and they probably have some intelligent guesses about the content of the exam before they take it. How can you be a prepared exam taker? Try some of the following suggestions during the semester:

* Do the reading as the syllabus dictates; keeping up with the reading while the related concepts are being discussed in class saves you double the effort later.

* Go to lectures (and put away that crossword puzzle!).

* Take careful notes that you'll understand months later. If this is not your strong suit or the conventions for a particular discipline are different from what you are used to, ask your TA or the Learning Center for advice.

* Participate in your discussion sections; this will help you absorb the material better so you don't have to study as hard.

* Organize small study groups with classmates to explore and review course materials throughout the semester. Others will catch things you might miss even when paying attention. This is not cheating. As long as what you write on the essay is your own work, formulating ideas and sharing notes is okay. In fact, it is a big part of the learning process.

* As an exam approaches, find out what you can about the form it will take. This will help you forecast the questions that will be on the exam, and prepare for them.

These suggestions will save you lots of time and misery later. Remember that you can't cram weeks of information into a single day or night of study. So why put yourself in that position?

Now let's focus on studying for the exam. You'll notice the following suggestions are all based on organizing your study materials into manageable chunks of related material. If you have a plan of attack, you'll feel more confident and your answers will be more clear.

* Don't just memorize aimlessly; clarify the important issues of the course and use these issues to focus your understanding of specific facts and particular readings.

* Try to organize and prioritize the information into a thematic pattern. Look at what you've studied and find a way to put things into related groups. Find the fundamental ideas that have been emphasized throughout the course and organize your notes into broad categories. Think about how different categories relate to each other.

* Find out what you don't know, but need to know, by making up test questions and trying to answer them. Studying in groups helps as well.

taken from:www.unc.edu