How to (Effectively!) Use Practice Tests

I get students all the time who come to me for a first lesson, and when I ask what, if any, preparation they’ve done, they proudly report that they’ve done 8 full practice tests. The tricky part is what happens next. I ask them what I think is a very simple, important, and pertinent question: “And what did you learn from those 8 practice tests?” Cue the blank stares, the head tilt, and the eventual shrug to indicate, “I dunno.”

Many students, with the best of intentions, seem to believe that simply completing the test is a productive effort towards their goal of preparation and improving their scores. I disagree. Almost anyone who has studied a musical instrument will have been told that “if you make mistakes when you practice, you end up practicing those mistakes.” I had a guitar teacher who would emphasise, “and you will probably get really good at making those particular mistakes again and again and again.”

What is the purpose, or are the purposes, of a practice test? What use can we derive from taking one? Take a moment and write down whatever you can think of. Ask yourself in what ways it would be useful to complete a practice test in preparing for an exam. I’ll wait.

See? I waited. I’m very patient.

There are several ways we can benefit from using practice tests, but I’d like to propose 3 baskets of concepts to consider.

1. Gaining experience with the exam

This is probably the most immediate benefit we can derive. As we take practice tests, we see questions that are written to mimic true exam questions, and thus our engagement with these questions can allow us to build familiarity with the style and content we hope to master. Certainly this is beneficial towards the beginning of our preparation, but I expect the additional benefit in this category declines pretty significantly after the first couple practice tests. And it is worth noting, that this building of experience is not something we have to consciously focus on as we are working. Like a buy-one-get-one-free supermarket coupon, when we do a practice test, we gain experience, no additional effort necessary.

2. Gauging progress / identifying room for improvement

This is perhaps the area that I find students tend to be the most interested in. They want their scores! And they want them to be high! It’s certainly a valuable function of a practice exam that they give us a window into how we’re currently doing, but in order to really gain that value we have to do more than simply look at the overall score. We must investigate. We must put on our head torches and climbing gear and descend bravely into the minutiae of the test and get a clear understanding of what is working and what isn’t. If I tell you that I have two students who have both scored 650 on an SAT English practice test, does this tell you anything about what either needs to work on to improve? No! Does it tell you that they should probably be working on the same exercises to improve? No! There might be no overlap at all between their areas for improvement. 

3. Applying and Experimenting with Skills, Techniques, Strategies, and Knowledge

Now, when I ask students “what is the purpose of taking a practice test”, this is the one area that really doesn’t get much of a mention at all. And I think that’s a shame. Because this last basket is, in my not particularly humble opinion, by far the most important, the most valuable in the pursuit of developing a student’s ability to perform on their exam. When we sit down to take a practice test, we have an opportunity to set out a plan for how we might like to do things differently from last time in order to work towards improvement. And once we have set out a new plan, we then have the opportunity to see if we are capable of putting that plan into action, or if we will revert to older, more established ways of thinking. Like a fighter, trying out a striking combination in a sparring session, we have to see if we can actually make it work.

So how do we best use practice tests?

Well for starters, have a plan. 

Have some reason why we’re taking this test. If it’s the very first one, then setting a baseline—a starting point—is a perfectly good reason, but beyond that first test, we should strive to set out a plan that takes into account whatever we’ve been working on since the last test. If we’ve been working on punctuation rules, we can use this as an opportunity to test our ability to apply them. If we’ve decided on a new strategy designed to improve our time management, this is similarly a great focus to bring to the practice test.

Since you have a plan, why not stick to the plan?

Let’s imagine we’ve been working on learning all of the rules around punctuation so you don’t have to answer those questions by “what sounds right” any more. We should be proud. Most people don’t know the rules, but now you do! So, you wouldn’t abandon the technical tools we’ve been developing in favor of your much more familiar “what sounds right” way of working, would you? Would you?! The truth is that if we are aiming to change something about the way we work, we will almost always have some degree of internal resistance to actually making that change when it comes to the critical moment. So we must, in that moment, choose. We have to choose how we want to proceed, and if we’ve made a plan, I’d highly recommend choosing to continue in that vein. That is, after all, the only way we can actually evaluate the merits of the plan we’ve generated—by following it through, and observing the true impact. 

Learn as much as you can from one practice test, before moving on to another.

After completing a test, it becomes an impressive diagnostic tool. Keep your notes, keep any math working you’ve done on paper, and treat this test as a precious resource from which we want to squeeze every last drop of understanding. Leave no mistake unexamined. Every question contains as much information as is required to answer it correctly, so stick with the hard ones. Wrestle with them. Use them to build up your skills and your knowledge of relevant concepts. Examine the format. And when you feel outraged at a question, and you’re pounding your fist on your desk and throwing your head up to the sky and crying out, “But it’s answer C! How can A be correct? It’s C!”, take a moment, wipe the foam from around your mouth, and ask yourself, “Why do the test writers think the answer is A? What would they point to in C to eliminate it?”

Practice tests are a wonderful tool, when used well. When used poorly, they serve as a false reassurance; they create the impression of an effort towards progress that appears to be more productive than it really is, and then when we find we are not progressing, we often fall to frustration, discouragement, or despair. But if we use them well, they will help us build towards our goals.