The Lighthouse

You’ll often find exams have a similar format in previous semesters, but they do sometimes change so check with your paper coordinator if you are unsure what format the exam will take this semester.

Looking at past exams can aid your revision in at least two ways.

First, it can help you identify which topics are covered (and thus if they are likely to be covered again). Investing a little time early on in your revision to identify which topics you need to revise will save time in the long run as it’ll mean you don’t end up revising topics you don’t need to.

Second, when you are getting close to the exam date you can use previous exam questions to test your knowledge. Take a previous exam (or part of it) and try and answer the questions under exam conditions. Sitting a whole exam can be quite time consuming so you may only want to practice a couple of question. However, you can still use previous exams to test your knowledge without it taking several hours. One way is to note down a short answer or plan for the questions. For essay questions, writing out a thesis statement and an essay plan is a good way to test your knowledge and ability to answer questions. For short answer questions, try giving a direct answer to the question in one sentence. Doing this kind of writing practice will also help get your hand used to doing lots of writing and thus avoid cramp in the exam.

You can find previous exams at http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/research/library/help-and-instruction/catalogue-help/search-encore/exampapers.cfm

Also see:

• http://owll.massey.ac.nz/tests-and-exams/reviewing-past-exams.php
• http://owll.massey.ac.nz/main/tests-and-exams.php