Participation in rigorous high school courses such as Advanced Placement (AP[R]) Physics increases the likelihood of college success, especially for students who are traditionally underserved. Tackling difficult multiple-choice exams should be part of any AP program because well-constructed multiple-choice questions, such as those on AP exams and…

Terms to be familiar with before you start to solve the test: protein synthesis, ribosomes, amino acids, peptides, peptide bond, polypeptide chain, N- and C-terminus, hemoglobin, [alpha]- and [beta]-globin chains, radioactive labeling, [[to the third power]H] and [[to the fourteenth power]C]leucine, cytosol, differential centrifugation, density…

In this study we observed college students' behavior on two self-tailored, multiple-choice exams. Self-tailoring was defined as an option to omit up to five items from being scored on an exam. Participants, 80 undergraduate college students enrolled in two sections of an educational psychology course, statistically significantly improved their…

The main purpose of this study was to compare the strategies used by Chinese-speaking students when confronted with familiar versus unfamiliar topics in a multiple-choice format reading comprehension test. The focus was on describing what students do when they are taking reading comprehension tests by asking students to verbalize their thoughts.…

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the choice between three multiple-choice listening comprehension test formats results in any difference in listening comprehension test performance. The three formats entail (a) allowing test takers to preview both the question stem and answer options prior to listening; (b) allowing test takers to…

We examined test-expectancy as it applies to fill-in-the-blank tests. We randomly assigned 60 college students to take a fill-in-the-blank vocabulary test in one of three conditions. Two groups took the test with a word bank available; we told one group but not the other that they would have a word bank. The third group took the test with no word…

This study examined the effects of being taught the Mayfield's Four Questions multiple-choice test-taking strategy on the perceived self-efficacy and multiple-choice test scores of nursing students in a two-year associate degree program. Experimental and control groups were chosen by stratified random sampling. Subjects completed the 10-statement…

Although much is known about how students perform on standardized tests, little research exists concerning how students think and process while taking such tests. This mixed methods action research study was designed to investigate if a constructivist approach to test preparation could yield improved results for 37 English language arts freshmen…

This article explores the reasoning employed by high school students to answer a set of multiple-choice history questions. The questions come from New York State's Global History and Geography Regents exam. The Regents exams, together with a particularly well-regarded and ambitious set of content standards, are the cornerstone of the state's…

This study investigated the relative frequency of seven TW strategies among Iranian EFL students to find out probable relationship(s) between test-wiseness, proficiency and gender. To do so, out of 138 participants, a total number of 80 undergraduate EFL students from Shahid Chamran University were chosen and divided on the basis of their…

Judge-mediated examinations are defined as those for which expert evaluation (using rubrics) is required to determine correctness, completeness, and reasonability of test-taker responses. The use of multifaceted Rasch modeling has led to improvements in the reliability of scoring such examinations. The establishment of criterion-referenced…

This booklet is intended to help students do their best on the ACT. It summarizes general test-taking strategies, describes the content of each test, provides specific tips for each, and lets students know what they can expect on test day. Included in this booklet are complete practice tests--"retired" ACT questions that were administered to…

Students in an undergraduate human development course (N = 215) participated in a brief assessment of their reading (comprehension level, reading speed, comprehension rate) and multiple-choice test-taking skills on the second day of class. Students first read a one-page, 400-word passage unrelated to the course and then answered 10…

This study describes the reading and test-taking strategies that test takers used on the "Reading" section of the "LanguEdge Courseware" (2002) materials developed to familiarize prospective respondents with the new TOEFL. The investigation focused on strategies used to respond to more traditional "single selection"…