In modern society passing educational examinations becomes an increasingly important and essential means to a better job and improved living standards.

The structure and nature of all examinations are things we cannot change to suit ourselves. Hence we need to find ways of dealing effectively with them - ways of making their systems and requirements actually work for us.

There are ways of doing this and following can be successfully used by anyone studying for any examinations because exams usually have certain key common elements.

Check Out The Syllabus As an examinee, you have to abide by certain rules and constraints. The time length of exam, how many question you have to answer, and so forth.

But examiners also have to abide by certain rules - and they cannot change them (at least not without adequate notice) any more than you can! They have to publish a syllabus for every examination and they can only ask questions on what is contained within that syllabus. Once you know syllabus, you know where starting and finishing lines are and how far you have to run

Moreover, all parts of syllabus are not equal: some parts of it are more equal than others. Some topics will hardly ever be questioned while others will come up every year. Highlight syllabus using two colours: red, say, for those areas that come up very frequently; green for those which rarely come up. Do this only after a systematic inspection of past exam papers, as next section will explain.

Then use a third colour to highlight those (hopefully very few) parts of syllabus which you have really serious difficulty with. Providing these parts are not numerous, and depending on how often they come up, it may be possible to leave them on one side. But do use sense and judgement in doing this!

Whatever You Are Studying, First Study The Exam Papers Studying past examination papers is almost as crucial as studying subject you have chosen!

Many people work hard studying various subjects to sit for examinations in them. Fine. Hard work is usually a necessary condition for passing exams. Unfortunately it does not follow that it is a sufficient condition! Exam technique can be almost equally as important. It can make all difference between success and failure or between poor grades and good grades.

As students, we often complain about examination system. That is usually because we feel pressure of an uncertain outcome. But like all systems we need to understand its mechanics in order to make it work for us.

What follows is largely concerned with exams needing written answers, rather than mathematically-based subjects.

Frustrating Examiners This section applies as much to writing course work as to examination answers

When you consider writing essays, also consider person who will have to read them. He/she has a psychology. Make it work for you, not against you. Most examiners do their job well and effectively but...

Exam assessors usually have a mountain of scripts to wade through. They like to get through them faster rather than slower, with relative ease rather than difficulty. When they find a script which facilitates two former objects, they are delighted and their disposition towards writer soars.

A great frustration is caused by having to into essay to discover whether or not student has given a correct or acceptable answer. Sometimes this job is very difficult. The examiner has to re and reread essay to discover what is actually being said. Sometimes an actual decision has to be made by examiner as to whether a correct answer has, in fact, been given, because composition is so obtuse.

Some method is needed which will avoid this situation and which will improve examiner's disposition towards writer.

Writing Effectively Writing effectively in exams is really not that difficult. There is a simple technique which can be used and adopted to virtually every type of question.

The technique is to divide your essay into three (unequal) parts: 1. An introduction 2. An expansion of 1; 3. A conslusion. Numbers 1 and 3 are quite short and basically say same thing except in rather different ways.

1. is critical and is a short version of answer. This lets examiner know immediately that you know what you are talking about. It require slight differences of emphases depending on actual wording of question.