Writing papers and exams

Writing term papers can be fun. The more of them you write and the better you get, the more you will enjoy the process. In university you will likely write more than you ever have or will again; your writing will vary in purpose and weight, and include short answer exams, essays exams, lab reports, term papers, theses. Here we shall consider term papers, though the points can be compacted or expanded for your other writing.

Term papers are meant to be organized and well developed, have an academic tone and follow a stipulated format; they needn't be dull. The overall purpose is to communicate information, whether reporting research findings, proposing research, arguing an issue, solving a problem, reviewing literature, or defending a position.

This AU Counselling Services instrument explains how to write a term paper. It is set out in sequence, though after you successfully write several papers, you will find the most comfortable method of writing for yourself. Many, for instance, prefer to write their conclusion or summary first, using it as a very abbreviated outline template. An abstract also can serve this function. Others make an outline from the written paper, checking for logical flow. Some continually self-edit. Still others, to work through writers' block, will write more objective parts, such as the Methods section of a research paper, first. With experience, you still may find the standard procedure is most comfortable for you.

First you need to determine what your assignment is and choose a topic, a thesis. To help you decide how much time you need, find out when the paper is due and what its weight is. Clearly, a paper due at the end of term and counting for all your course mark will require more planning, work, and time than one due next week that is worth five percent of your mark. Find out if there are size expectations or constraints. If your instructor has not said what format, e.g. APA, MLA, Chicago, is required, ask. Many differences are small, but some instructors will accept only one format.

Work out an action plan for the paper, allowing reasonable deadlines to reach each step, and steadily work to those deadlines. You have already completed the first step, having information about paper due date, weight, size, format, audience, purpose, and such. Now start thinking about the topic. Try brainstorming for five minutes to half an hour, writing down everything that comes to mind about your topic. Don't evaluate the ideas or correct your spelling, just jot the ideas down.

Now narrow the focus, prioritize the ideas, decide what is necessary or especially interesting for your purpose, in this case, the thesis of your paper. Make a general outline for your research; you might decide to use a list of topics and subtopics. Point form or key words will help guide you.

Once you have chosen a topic and subtopics, start researching. While you gather information from libraries, databases, journals, books, observation, informants or other means, make notes and keep track of your sources as you go. Take time to write the whole reference, so you will have it for your bibliography or reference list, citations, and for double-checking your information. Also, be kind to yourself - SAVE YOUR WORK REGULARLY, BACK IT UP AND MAKE AN EXTERNAL BACKUP. For major papers such as a thesis or dissertation, it is prudent to make more than one backup; computers and memory sticks are marvelous tools most of the time. Store your memory stick somewhere other than where you usually write, at a friend's house, at your office, in a fire-proof safe/cabinet and exchange the updated memory sticks regularly.

When you have gathered all your data, begin sorting it into categories. Assigning each category a letter or number, then lettering or numbering each note accordingly is useful in the early stages of organization. People use many devices to classify their data, so find one (or more) that works best for you. These categories are variations of some sort of outline, whether an outline as such, using file cards, mind-mapping software or any combination. Whichever you use, the point is to organize your information and determine the connections between and among the categories, resulting in the model for your paper's structure.

If you used another classifying method, now is the time to make an outline, and use it to write your first draft. Don't concern yourself with length, don't self-edit, just write. By the final draft you likely will need to develop some ideas further, and it is almost certain you will need to edit, to eliminate punctuation and words that weaken your paper.

In your first paragraph - often the most difficult - engage your reader's attention. Introduce the paper by telling what you are writing about, what your purpose or thesis is and why. Give the reader a reason to read the paper. Remember, this is a first draft; you can rewrite or move the paragraph later.

In the first paragraph and as you develop your paper, use transitions to link one sentence to another, one paragraph or section to another. The transitions might be single words, like but, however, similarly; or phrases or clauses. You might require a sentence to make the link explicit. In more extensive research papers these transitions may take the form of headings, e.g., Methods.

Following your outline - though not necessarily linearly - develop your paper according to your instructions. Use your categorized research notes to develop the points you want to make; use the

evidence you've collected, including quotations and examples, to support your discussion, explanation, defence, comparison, argument. Continue as you've begun and avoid self-editing at this point.

When you have said all you want to say about your topic, finish it. In your last paragraph or two pull the points you've made together, in either a conclusion or summary, reminding your reader what you have said and why. Now take a few minutes to spell check the paper and save it.

Difficult though it may be, put the paper away, out of sight for at least a couple of days, longer if you can afford the time. The idea is to look at it with as fresh a perspective as possible, as objectively as you can. We all fall in love with our own words, making objective editing difficult, but time increases our ability to do the necessary pruning.

After a break from your paper, begin editing it, saving it with a different name, e.g. Draft2. Re-read your assignment and your topic; to ensure you have dealt with them, bear both in mind as you review your paper.

Review your introduction and conclusion. Do they tell what you are going to say, and what you have said, respectively? Review the body of your paper. Have you developed your thesis thoroughly, using significant examples, citations, details, comparisons, etc.? Did you say everything you wanted to say and have you said it clearly?

To verify the logical order of your ideas and paragraphs, check your paper against your outline. Is the transition between ideas and paragraphs smooth? Use words, phrases and headings as needed and appropriate.

Now we come to the part many students find difficult to do honestly - pruning the paper. Eliminate words, phrases, clichés, whole paragraphs, anything that does not make the paper stronger. Make your language clear, without verbosity or pomposity; every word ought to have a purpose. Padding and fluff demean both reader and writer.

Check your references for completeness within themselves and against your reference list or bibliography.

Line edit for punctuation and missing words.

Spellcheck your paper. Be cautious though; a spellchecking program picks out incorrect spellings, not incorrect words. If you mean 'save', check to be sure you don't have 'wave'. Ensure that AutoCorrect or predictive text functions haven’t altered the meaning of your work. A further caution, especially for Canadian students: ensure your spelling is consistent. If you use 'honour', then 'neighbour'; if 'honor', then 'neighbour'.

Give it a rest for at least a day or two.

Before you edit what will be your third draft, read the paper aloud. If you're satisfied with how it sounds, ask a colleague or friend to read it and give you an honest response. Be prepared for criticism, and to answer any questions. Make justified amendments. Now repeat the editing steps for the second draft, saving with a different, related name, e.g. Draft3.

Print it. Skim it for obvious errors.

Submit it.

Breathe deeply, and treat yourself - you've earned it.

It is not uncommon for students to call AU's Counselling Services for help in learning how to write exams. Multiple-choice exams can pose difficulties for students who have otherwise studied diligently to learn their course material. Although exams give a student the opportunity to show that they have learned the course learning objectives, a weakness in test-taking skills can result in exam scores that are below the student's potential. In other words, "test-wiseness" can significantly affect your exam scores. Educational research has shown that by learning exam-taking skills students can often improve their test scores by 10-15 percentile points, and in some cases even more. So, the good news is that these academic skills can be learned. Let's look at some ways to improve your exam results.

First and foremost, there is no magic system for taking exams that is a substitute for studying and learning the course content. If you think your study skills could be strengthened for better learning and retention, here are some resources to assist you:

• Contact an AU counsellor for assistance in improving your study skills.
• The AU Library has a wide variety of study-related books and articles, as well as useful webinars that provide instruction on how to utilize library search tools.
• Explore our learning tools

Now, for your first quiz:

Resources for improving study skills are available

1. from the AU Support Services website
2. from the AU Library
3. by speaking with an AU advisor
4. ALL OF THE ABOVE

It makes sense that you should prepare yourself to write your exams. Appropriate preparation for your exams includes not only regular and thorough reviews of your course materials in order to ensure that you have covered the course learning objectives, but also:

• Familiarity with the expectations and university regulations governing exams, including ordering and paying for exams, unwritten exams, supplemental exams, and appealing exam results.
• Knowing when and where you will write your exam. Schedule your study time and course reviews to peak just before your exam. When students misjudge the timing of their studying and/or ordering of exams they can end up scrambling to coordinate their efforts in a way that increases their stress and anxiety, something that can be disruptive to a more appropriate exam-taking state of mind.
• Tackling exam anxiety early in the course rather than later or not at all. If you know that exam anxiety detracts from your ability to do your best on exams, then check out our tips for dealing with this or contact an AU advisor for guided assistance.
• Preparing yourself physically and emotionally to write your exam. These include the following things that seem more obvious but are overlooked with surprising frequency.
  • Get a good night's sleep before the exam rather than staying up late in order to cram.
  • Have an appropriate (for you) breakfast before a morning exam or lunch for an afternoon exam.
  • Arrive early enough to write so you can get yourself into your best exam-writing state of mind, but neither too early nor at the last second.
  • For more hints on how to prepare yourself to write your exams, see the third section of our exam anxiety resource.

Time for a quiz:

Proper preparation for writing exams should include:

1. familiarity with the university's regulations on exams
2. knowing the time and place for exam writing, and scheduling your final course study reviews to coordinate with this
3. starting early to master exam anxiety
4. physical and emotional preparations that are personally effective
5. ALL OF THE ABOVE

With a solid foundation of effective study skills and proper exam preparation under our belt, we're ready to look at some strategies of "test-wiseness".

a) Exam time management strategies

Running out of time because of spending too much time on a few questions and therefore missing the opportunity to earn easier marks on later questions happens unfortunately too often. Here are some ways to avoid that pitfall.

Take a few moments to get an overview of the exam, looking at each page to get a sense of the questions, seeing how many pages there are in the exam booklet, and what is the total number of questions. This overview allows you the perspective to plan your strategies for tackling the exam. Note whether every question is worth the same number of marks or not. If not, you will have to balance a strategy of doing the easy questions first and quickly versus spending more time on the harder, more valuable questions.

Divide the total number of minutes of the exam (e.g. a 2-hour exam = 120 minutes) by the total number of multiple-choice questions on the exam. This will give you an estimate of the average number of minutes you can take per question. Some questions will take less time, some will take more. Based on this number, make a mark beside the question number which you think you should have reached by the end of the first hour (and the second hour if you are allowed more than two hours). This will tell you whether you are on schedule to finish the exam on time, are ahead of time and can focus longer on more difficult questions, or behind time and must focus on the questions you can answer with quicker certainty. You should bring a watch or clock in order to regularly monitor the exam time remaining.

Generally, your strategy should be to read each question closely yet quickly, then answer the ones you are sure of, but place a mark beside questions that will take more thought, and then move on to the next question. Don't worry about the questions you don't answer at first because you will come back to them. Having read the harder question, your subconscious mind can be making connections and your memory can be stimulated by information in other questions you read as you move through the exam. Then, when you return to the unmarked questions, you will more likely be in a more primed state of mind to answer them.

Don't rush yourself into choosing your answer too soon. Even if one of the answers is the one you expected from the question, take time to read the other alternatives in case there is an even better answer such as "All of the above".

b) Question-reading strategies

Not taking enough time to read each question closely can cause you to miss key words and therefore choose a wrong response. Here are some guidelines for reading each question.

If the question uses confusing grammar such as double negatives, say the question to yourself in the positive.

Underline key words in the question so they stand out from other, possibly distracting, words and help you get clear on what is being asked.

Since 'distractors' may be intentionally inserted into the question to test your ability to sort the useful information from the useless, try to get a sense of what is relevant and what is not in the wording of the question.

If none of the alternatives fit the question, go back and re-read the question to emphasize more precisely what the question is asking for, and then re-read the alternative answers.

Note words in the question such as "not", "always", "never", "everyone", etc. These specific qualifiers should guide your choice of answer.

Note whether the question is asking for only one answer or whether several or all the answers could be correct.

c) Thinking strategies

A common study skills error is for a student to think they understand a piece of information when, in fact, they can only recognize it. While some multiple-choice questions are written to test the student's recognition memory, other questions demand higher-level thinking processes such that the question may not even be recognizable from the specific course content yet can be answered correctly by thinking about the course concepts in ways other than simple recognition. Exam preparation study methods and exam-writing strategies should both include these types of information processing in order to best answer questions that assess how well you have learned the material.

Recognition - Being able to recognize important facts is a necessary part of learning. Recognizing something is different, however, from producing it without any external cues. If your study method requires you to do the latter, then you will be better equipped for questions that go beyond simple recognition. For example, if you find that you consistently have difficulty distinguishing between two similar multiple-choice answers, then your studying may be focussed on recognition rather than conceptual understanding. Similarly, if you only memorize the words of a definition but don't emphasize the concept, then a test question may state the concept in new words. Will you be able to recognize the concept or just the words from the text?

Analysis - Assessing your understanding through these kinds of questions may involve separating out parts of theories or ideas, possibly requiring you to contrast several different parts in order to choose the right answer.

Integration - Questions of this type require you to make connections between different pieces of information. This may involve comparing similarities, perceiving a more theoretical linkage, or seeing the larger picture that encompasses the pieces of information provided in the question.

Transfer - A deeper level of learning can be assessed by questions that require you to apply the course information to new situations or in new ways that may have not been covered in the text. If you understand the ideas, then you will be able to choose answers that use the course concepts in different situations or different ways.

d) Selection strategies

Over the years students have evolved many different approaches to multiple-choice questions. Here are some of them.

After reading the question, cover the answers and try to predict the answer from your own knowledge. The various alternative answers can be distracting or confusing, so emphasize your own knowledge first. It's okay to take a few moments to recall pieces of information related to the question since this will assist your memory in linking to other relevant course content that will likely make your answer choice more obvious. Even if you are right, however, double check the other answers in case there is an even better response.

As you recognize alternatives that are false, scratch them out on the test booklet so there will be less to read if you must come back to the question later. Eliminating the less relevant ones also allows you to concentrate more effectively on distinguishing between the (remaining) more relevant ones in order to find the best choice.

Check the wording of the question. If it ends in "an", the answer most likely starts with a vowel. If not, then the answer should start with a consonant.

Be cautious with alternatives that you remember reading in the text. Some answers are correct by themselves but not as answers to the question.

For more difficult questions you should read the question stem together with each of the different alternative answers in turn. Repeatedly reading the question with each answer in this way will help you get a better feel for the answer that flows most smoothly from the question and is more likely to be the correct one. Also, you can eliminate alternatives that mesh with the question in a grammatically incorrect way.

If the question allows "All of the above" or "None of the above", check the answers for one that is false or one that is true, respectively. That way you can eliminate one or both choices.

If words such as "always", "never", "all", "every", or "none" are in the question, then the answer must be an absolute fact. If the answer involves any contrary instances, then that answer can be eliminated.

If you must guess at an answer, try to eliminate some of the other alternatives. That way you increase your probability of a successful guess.

Only guess if you are certain, you will not be penalized for wrong answers (e.g., right minus wrong).

Time for a quiz:

Test-wise strategies for writing multiple-choice exams include:

1. a. time management strategies
2. strategies for reading questions effectively
3. information processing strategies
4. answer selection strategies
5. ALL OF THE ABOVE

And now for your final exam:

To write multiple-choice exams more successfully students should:

1. learn and consistently apply proven study skills methods
2. acquire and apply knowledge about the exam process, and prepare themselves for writing exams
3. learn specific techniques and strategies of exam-taking skills
4. ALL OF THE ABOVE

While the above information covers important aspects of writing multiple-choice exams, further assistance in learning how to show what you know on exams can be accessed through your tutor and/or our learning support team.