Name _________________________________________________ Date ______________________ Period _______________
So You Want to Study for a Test
part the first:introduction
Congratulations! You’ve decided to study for a test! This is the first step towards success. Many
people have studied before you, and you’ve probably got a pretty good idea of what a person who is
studying looks like: head bowed in concentration, stacks of books surrounding him or her, probably late at
night, the person is disheveled and panicking…you get the idea. Is this how studying should work, though?
Do you have to wait ‘till the last minute? No, dear reader, you don’t.
Before we begin learning how to study, you need to know what you’re going to study. Not which
subject, but what kind of learning you’re going to do. Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking
that there is only one kind of learning, and that’s the boring kind. While that may be true, try to be open to
the fact that maybe, just maybe, some types of learning can be fun.
Back in the 1950s, a psychologist named Benjamin Bloom developed an idea about the different types
of learning that goes on in classrooms. He broke all learning down into three main domains:
1. Cognitive – These are things that you do that use your mental skills, like
solving a math problem.
2. Affective – These are tasks that help you grow emotionally, like helping out a
friend.
3. Psychomotor – These are tasks that that make you do something physical, like
building a birdhouse.
That means that all the things you will ever learn will fit into at least one of these domains, but
perhaps more. Most of the things that you would want to learn for a test, however, fit into the first group, the
cognitive domain. Bloom divided this domain into six smaller categories. They are:
1. Knowledge
2. Comprehension
3. Application
4. Analysis
5. Synthesis
6. Evaluation
We’re going to learn study skills that can help you learn things for each category. There are different
ways that you need to study for different ideas, and I hope that by taking a moment to think about what
you’re trying to learn, that you will be able to learn it much better.
Name _________________________________________________ Date ______________________ Period _______________
So You Want to Study for a Test
part two:knowledge
This first part will teach you about knowledge questions. A knowledge question is something that you
simply know or do not know. Some examples are below:
1. “What is the final electron acceptor in cellular respiration?”
2. “Who was the first president of the United States of America?”
3. “Where is the largest tree in the world located?”
You see, these questions are not things that you can figure out on scrap paper, or ones that you can
think about for a while and figure out; you really just have to have the knowledge in your head. Many times,
these questions begin with one of the question words (who, what, where, when, why or how), and they make
excellent multiple-choice questions. These are questions that you shouldn’t spend too much time on if
you’re confused, because if you don’t know it, you just don’t know it.
In order to study for these types of questions, drill and practice are necessary. While this type of
learning concerns mostly facts that you simply have to know, there are techniques that can help you
remember things better.
1. Make a list of main concepts in order of importance to help you remember. Often, when facts are put into
a context (such as rank-ordering), they are much easier to remember, because they’re not just a “bunch” of
facts, but a nice, neat list.
Example: President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, President Pro Tempore of the
Senate, Secretary of State.
2. Make flash cards with pictures on them. The pictures do not have to be related to the topic, but they have
to be something with which you may associate the topic.
Example: Put a picture of a cat on a card about caterpillars, to help you associate the ideas.
3. Make pictograms on paper or on flash cards. Clever little phrases or pictures can help you remember
what something is or what it does.
Example: A picture of a house and a burger with a purse can help you remember that the
House of Burgesses had the “power of the purse” in colonial America.
4. Make mnemonic devices. These are any rhymes or devices that are helpful to the memory.
Example: Make an acronym using the first letters of the major taxa to form a phrase like
“King Phillip Came Over For Grape Soda” (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species).
5. Write out each individual idea or word that you need to remember on a note card, then lay out the cards in
groups on the ground according to what they’re about. The groups will help you associate terms, and make
them easier to remember.
Example: Group together “ATP, mitochondrion, inner membrane, matrix and NADH” in
cluster of words about cellular respiration.
Name _________________________________________________ Date ______________________ Period _______________
So You Want to Study for a Test
part three:comprehension
This particular section will teach you about comprehension questions. A comprehension question is
designed to make sure that you understand the basis behind an idea, in addition to knowing what it is. It is
one step above a knowledge question. Some examples are below:
1. “Explain the purpose of voting in your own words.”
2. Why is smoking not a good idea?
3. What kind of person was Goldilocks?
Again, these are not questions that you could figure out on scrap paper, but they are a little more
complex than just knowing or not knowing something. To know what kind of person Goldilocks was, you
would need to understand what happened in the story and be able to explain it to someone else. These are
questions that you shouldn’t spend too much time trying to figure out, but they are often worth guessing on.
Chances are that you know something about the subject, and partial credit on tests can often be allowed.
These questions are best studied for with a partner or a group. This way, you can build off the ideas of
others, and find other ways to phrase difficult ideas.
1. Make a flow chart. This can help you put events or ideas in order, and separating ideas visually is a good
way to make them stick in your head. Remembering what happens before or after something else can often
help you figure out why or where it was happening.
Example: Make a flow chart of the events in Romeo and Juliet, so you know who died when.
Remembering the order of events can often make answering comprehension questions easier.
2. Write a précis. A précis is a short summary, much like an abstract, that gives just the bare facts of a
situation. The physical act of writing can help you remember facts more easily by involving another part of
your brain.
Example: Write one paragraph on human circulation. You can re-read it at any point to
refresh your memory, and it is a great way to keep the big picture in your mind, so you don’t get lost in the
details.
3. Make a Mad Lib®. By making a story with blanks in it, you can force yourself or others to remember
specific events or details. They’re fun, too!
Example: “One day, a _____________ was making some ATP, when his _________
membrane collapsed, and the protons could no longer form a ___________.”
4. Make a song, play or small skit with a group of friends. After you perform the skit or song, you will be
able to associate one of your friends with a concept or other character.
Example: Turn your room at home into a cell, assigning your little brother to be the
lysosome.
5. Make a landscape. A picture is worth a thousand words!
Example: Draw a landscape with monsters and heroes to represent the events in Beowulf.
Name _________________________________________________ Date ______________________ Period _______________
So You Want to Study for a Test
part four:application
This section will introduce you to application questions. Application questions are one step above
comprehension questions, but they really aren’t any harder. An application question simply asks you to use a
concept that you learned with one idea, and use it with another. Some examples are below:
1. “How are badgers like people?”
2. “How can you use soap to clean an elephant?”
3. “Why do birds sing in the morning?”
These types of questions require you to take knowledge or information that you know from one
situation, and then use them in another situation. For example, if you wanted to know how to wash an
elephant with soap, you would have to know how to use soap. You could probably figure out what to do,
even if you haven’t ever washed an elephant, because you know how to use soap to wash things.
These questions are usually worth spending a little time on, even if you’re not completely sure of the
answer. This is because you can at least put down what you know about the situation (washing), even if you
don’t know all of it (how to wash an elephant).
1. Play a pretend game. Pretend that you can no longer use a skill for what it is intended for, and instead,
try to figure out how else you can use it. This will give you practice in applying ideas from one situation to
another, new one.
Example: Pretend that you need to use English grammar in a made-up language. Where
would commas go? What about capital letters and quotation marks?
2. Make a chart. You can use a graph or Venn diagram to show the similarities and differences between two
sets of ideas.
Example: Make a chart, with one side showing how you can use elephant-washing skills on
an elephant, and with the other side showing how you might apply those skills to washing a car.
3.