Top 5 Tips for Acing Math Tests
If your math test scores could use a little help, use these top 5 tips for acing math tests to improve your math grades and performance on upcoming tests.
1. Prepare and Practice
More than any other subject, efficiency in math and on math tests takes preparation and tons of practice. Talk with your teacher about extra worksheets you can use to study at home, or try downloading worksheets off related math sites on the Internet.
To increase the value of your practice, do not look at answers before you begin to work on problems. Instead, make sure you have a solid basis of knowledge to begin solving the problems and then look at the answers as each one is completed. If an answer is wrong, immediately go back and break the problem down to figure out where the mistake was.
2. Tackle the Easiest Questions First
On a math test, always start with the easiest questions first. This will help your math scores in two ways:
- Answering easy questions at the beginning of the test will improve your confidence and reduce test anxiety.
- Quickly working through easy questions will ensure that you receive all of the points for the questions you are able to answer correctly (i.e. you won’t run out of time working on hard problems and miss out on questions you could have answered).
3. Sketch Out Story Problems
Math story problems tend to slow down a lot of test takers, but it helps to sketch out the problems as you read through them. As you draw an image of the problem, you can see more clearly what the question is asking and how to answer the question correctly with all of the info which is provided.
4. Try to Keep It Neat
Always try to keep your work on math tests, and any scratch paper, as neat as possible. Organized equations will help to decrease calculation mistakes and can even reduce the time it takes you to complete a problem. Plus, neat writing will ensure that you do not miss points on a question because the teacher could not read the answer; you may also receive partial credit for problems you began to work out but did not finish or did not complete correctly – but the grader has to be able to clearly read your equations to offer partial credit for them.
5. Study with the Help of a Tutor
Last but not least, if you continue to have difficulties with math tests do not hesitate to use the services of a professional tutor. New math concepts will come quickly during the year, and if you are struggling with other concepts you will quickly fall far behind. A tutor can pinpoint areas you may be missing in your education, offer different types of ways of looking at equations or solutions that may work out better for you and help you to catch up and get back on track.