All students need to plan their time well, attempt simpler questions first and make intelligent guesses, writes academic AK Bakhshi
BSE has introduced class X and XII exams in Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) format, which would be held in the months of November-December 2021 where 50% of the syllabus would be included. Though MCQS save evaluation time, they have some limitations as it is difficult to ascertain the logical, creative, analytical, and writing skills of the students. MCQs mainly focus on lower-order thinking skills such as remembering, understanding and applications. Carefully designed MCQs can, however, certainly help in discouraging the rote learning method and that is probably the reason why these have been made part of the CBSE examination.
To be successful in the MCQ pattern of the examination, the first and foremost requirement is to have an in-depth understanding of the subject as well as complete clarity of concepts with important formulas, equations and the values of important constants at your tips.
Plan your Time
Time management is one of the key success factors for any MCQ exams.
If you have 90 minutes for your MCQ exams divide that into three parts:
Devote the first 20 minutes for skimming the paper. Read all the questions carefully and as you go along, you will find some very easy-to-solve questions. Solve them instantly. This will give you the initial boost of confidence. Any question paper has a combination of easy, moderate and difficult questions.
Devote the next 50 minutes to going through the rest of the questions and try to solve them. If something is very hard, do not spend more than one minute on it. Tough questions will remain in your subconscious mind, so when you will re-visit them at the end, chances are that you will be able to solve them then.
The last 20 minutes must be devoted to tough questions. If there is no negative
Read all the questions carefully and as you along, you will find some very easy-to-solve questions. Solve them instantly. This will give you the initial boost of confidence. Any question paper has a combination of easy, moderate, and difficult questions.
Devote the next 50 minutes to going through the rest of the questions and try to solve them. If something is very hard, do not spend more than one minute on it. Tough questions will remain in your subconscious mind, so when you will re-visit them at the end, chances are that you will be able to solve them then.
The last 20 minutes must be devoted for tough questions. If there is no negative marking for the wrong answers or it is very low i.e. ((number of options) x (negative marking) is less than or equal to 1), then you can finally go ahead and make some smart guesses.
Tips for intelligent guessing
Eliminate the options: The general formula of solving any MCQ is to increase the probability of the right answer by removing all the possible wrong answers on logical grounds. So, start by removing the options which you feel are clearly wrong. Sometimes you may be lucky and may be left with only one option. The elimination mechanism always pays. Option with the longest statement: The option with the longest statement generally has the highest probability of being right because the question creator has to make sure that the right answer is indisputably right.
Avoid the footprint: It has also been noted that two successive questions rarely have the same correct option. For example, if you are solving Q 10 and find yourself clueless, then look at the answer to Q 9 or Q11 and don't select the same letters as the key. They have the least probability of being correct.
Golden options: Research has shown that if you don't know the answer at all for a particular MCQ and one of the options has either "All of the Above" or "None of the Above", you can always bet on these options. They have a very high probability of being correct.
Use clues from the question: Check units and dimensions-these sometimes can give you vital clues. If it is a calculation of volume, for example, rule out options that are not in cubic units even before you solve the question.
(The author is founding Vice-Chancellor of PDM University, Bahadurgarh and Chairman, Guru-Angad Teaching Learning Centre at SGTB Khalsa College, DU)
From - Times of India
Published on- 25 October 2021
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