What are some tips for answering multiple choice questions?

Transcripts

Amanda Medders: Hi, I am Amanda Medders, owner and founder of Tri-Ed Tutoring. Today, we are talking about how to prepare for Finals. Right now we are going to talk about what to do on the day of the test.

Host: Host: What are some tips for answering multiple choice questions?

Amanda Medders: The first thing you want to do is read the question carefully and know what they are asking you. This is especially true if they have throw in questions like, 'All of the following are true except,' that would give you a different approach to the question. The next thing that you want to do is use the process of elimination. There is usually one obviously wrong answer choice and there is usually another that's a trick. They are looking to see if you have properly read the question and if you know what's being asked and if you don't, that answer is in there to fool you.

After you have eliminated those two, you generally only have two to three answers choices left and you have a much better chance of getting the answer correct. When you are trying a multiple choice question, there is two different ways that you can look at it depending on what content is covered. In some instances, you may not want to answer, look at the answer choices first. In another instance, that maybe a clue as to how to answer the question. I'll give you an example of each. One example of not wanting to look at the answer choices, maybe a vocabulary question. If you look at the answer choices it can be very easy to convince yourself that one vocabulary could fit in there just as easily as another.

So you may want cover the answer choices, read the sentence, try to think of a word that would fit in there that you already know or at least get an an idea of what the connotation of the word should be. Then look down at your answer choices and see if you have found one, either the exact word or a synonym of that word. If so, that's likely to be your answer choice. A way we are looking at the answer choices first might actually be helpful, would be on a math or science type question.

In this instance, say it was a physical science question the answers might be in a particular unit, say meters per second. If that's the case, you know that in your question you are looking for a rate. This may help you decide which formula would be best to use. The other way that answer choices can be helpful on a math problem is because you can use those answer choices to plug them back into the original problem and make sure that your answer is correct.