When you're great at learning, but you're terrible at testing…

You are not alone: most of us are better learners than we are testers. Why? It's because doing well at testing requires "thinking like a test-taker." Here are a few tips to help you:

1. When you are reading a question on a test, ask yourself, "What are they asking me to do?" Then, rephrase the question in your own mind before you try to answer it. Chances are that the test question is written differently from how YOU would ask it. Thinking about the intention of a question and putting it in your own words can set you up for success.

2. Eliminate extra words in the prompt. Words and phrases like "best example of," "most closely resembles," and "nearly" can leave you comparing one answer to another on a multiple choice test. Just scratch those out. A standardized test only has ONE correct answer. You are not supposed to make value judgments. You are supposed to find the evidence to answer the question. There is only ONE correct answer, not one that's slightly better than the others.

3. READ. Building your vocabulary is the best way to help yourself as a test-taker. You don't have to read volumes of pages, but you should read a range of items about different topics. This will give you a chance to see words and ideas in a variety of forms and contexts. Just last week, I read a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and I learned a few new words, courtesy of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.