Exam Technique In Maths, I

One thing that I see a lot of students do when studying maths and answering questions, at every level from age 5 to university level, is to copy everything.

Copy, copy, copy.

We`re taught that, in order to answer a question, we first do a bit of "manipulation" (maybe that`s combining two terms, cancelling something, multiplying out some brackets...) and then copy the rest around it.

Why?

This question has plagued me for a while. And there`s no satisfactory answer.

Why Not?

Copy error. When we copy, we don`t always copy correctly. Bright students, struggling students, engaged students and ones who don`t care: they all make this same mistake. For many bright students this is what holds them back from getting 100% — in an average exam paper, a student will probably copy something wrong. Oops, one mark gone, maybe more.

There`s more, though. It`s hard to follow your thought process. It`s hard to spot errors — for you, in the last 10 minutes between you finishing the paper and the exam ending, and also for your marker. They don`t have forever, and if they can`t spot your mistake and carry the error quickly it might cost you more than it ought to, especially at universities, which don`t have the huge resources and accountability to the student that the exam boards do.

The fix?

The only solution: don`t copy. Draw a line or a brace (a sideways "{" symbol) under or over your work and manipulate term-by-term. This means you`re putting the result close to its parent, so checking is easier, and you don`t even touch the terms you`re not changing.

This is the first in a series of short articles I`ll write on improving exam technique when studying maths. The goal is to get you to write like you think (i.e. don`t be stuck in some linear format) and think like you write (tie your thoughts into ideas, consequences and conclusions to build arguments from them that you can write).