Write It Down – Time
When it comes to homework and in-school tests, the vast majority of our students don’t have to be reminded to show their work (at least, not more than once or twice). Getting credit in school isn’t usually about getting the right answer; it’s about demonstrating that you know how to get the right answer.
But when it comes to standardized tests, many of the same students, who painstakingly write out every line of algebra or underline every important line in their history textbook, won’t touch pencil to paper except to fill in a bubble. We’ve yet to see a student who can get away with doing it on every question of a test — it inevitably leads to careless mistakes.
And yet, sometimes a student, despite just having seen the results of those careless mistakes, continues to leave a blank workspace again and again while working through practice problems.
Why does this happen? There are likely many reasons, but we’ll address a few of the more likely causes in a series of posts, starting with:
Time. If I write out my work, I won’t be able to finish the whole test.
It’s true that writing out your work often takes more time than figuring out everything in your head. But it’s not always the case. Many problems on standardized tests are complicated enough to require several steps. What if you forget what you figured out in step 2 when it’s time to plug it in in step 4? If you didn’t write it down, you’ll have to do step 2 all over again. Or, what if you can’t remember the main idea of paragraph three after reading the rest of a Critical Reading passage and then reading half the questions? If you didn’t jot it down, you’ll have to read the paragraph all over again.
Much of the time, a few words or a few numbers written down can actually save you time.
Anyway, so what if it takes you extra time? How much time is it, really? Let’s say that over the course of a 30-minute, 30-question math section, you lose 2 minutes to “showing your work.” But let’s also say that writing down your steps saved you from making 4 careless mistakes. So you had to leave 2 questions blank, but you changed 4 wrong answers to right answers, which means you got 4 points back. If your test has a wrong-answer penalty, you also avoided the -1 penalty from getting 4 answers wrong. So you’re up 5 points from writing out your work, and down 2 because of time. That still leaves you +3 for the section, which can make a big difference in your score.