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Exam Skills for Arts Students

In the exam-room (arts/essay subjects):

• Choosing questions: take your time, an extra minute here may be time well spent. Look through the whole paper, and remember that 'easy' questions can be harder to write well on than more obviously challenging ones. Answer them in whatever order feels best to you.

• Addressing the question: does it have implications you want to draw out? is it resting on an assumption you want to interrogate? does it contain a phrase you want to organise your material around? Then, above all, KEEP RELEVANT. The further away the question is from what you want to write about, the longer you should spend establishing a real, thoughtful, not-just-token connection between the two. (This will feel scary, but read impressively.) Half-way through, and again five minutes before the end, look back at the question: are you still answering it? If you've drifted, work your way back into real connection. It is much better to struggle honourably with a challenging question than to unload a superb answer to a question that is not on the paper!

• Developing an argument: an argument is something more than the display of relevant information. It makes definite moves (paragraph by paragraph, perhaps): it has a plot. It is alert to counter-arguments, which it takes seriously; and/or it sets out a view that is complex and nuanced ('however …'; 'even so …'; 'on the other hand…') rather than bulldozing some thesis through all obstructions. It may make un-obvious connections between material; it may make discriminations between positions or phenomena that seem alike. It knows where it wants to land, and may keep back some strong new thought for the final stage of the essay.

• Showing knowledge: often, a good argument deals intensively with a narrowly focused range of material. At the same time, you want to show your wider (relevant) knowledge. So maybe think in terms of showing knowledge at two quite distinct levels: close analysis and brief mention. Point the torch mostly ahead down the path, on narrow beam, but occasionally swing it from side to side. Even these wider references should be tied to specifics where possible: big generalizations don't, by themselves, sound as knowledgeable as you hope. Support generalizations with specifics – or qualify them with problematic cases. And remember that you're expected to know something, not everything!

• Writing well: banish that fear that The Examiner Is Out To Get You, which can make people write in stiff and defensive examinese. Write as if you were writing to your favourite supervisor. It's not a bad thing to show that you're interested, to communicate engagement, to be intellectually adventurous. At the same time, don't bullshit: academics are experts at (spotting) bullshit, and nothing irritates an examiner more than a candidate pretending to a knowledge or a competence they evidently don't possess.

• Write ruthlessly to the clock: short work is heavily penalized. (But if you do run short of time on a question, it is better quickly to complete the whole argument in note form, so the examiner can see where you were going, rather than just to break off.)

CUSU provides confidential, free, non-judgemental support and information to individual students. Contact the CUSU Education Officer, Welfare Officer or Women's Officer by email, phone or by dropping into the office if you would like support or information on any topic.