I Test Poorly

“I test poorly.”  How many times have I heard a student tell me that?  I almost know what the next line will be.  If we are talking about an academic subject, it will be, “I study hard, but I just keep getting bad grades.”  If we are talking about SAT exams, it will be, “I get good grades in school, but I got a low score.”

In the first situation, my response is to ask the student to describe how s/he studies for a test.  Almost always, I hear something like, “I read over my notes and then look at the text.”  My response is not quite as blunt as, “You’re not preparing for the test.  All you are doing is re-reading and becoming familiar with the material.  Let’s talk about how to memorize.”  Nevertheless, that is the gist of the message I convey.  This student is fooling him/herself.  Reading notes a couple of times is not learning; only some of the material will be retained.  Learning – memorizing – is really hard work.  The reason this student has been doing poorly on tests is because s/he does not know how to learn.  Very few teachers actually teach how to memorize.  Schools behave as if students inherited a genetic package called How To Learn.  That’s not the way it works.  Some of us may be better at learning than others, just as some of us are better at sports, but we all need to be taught how to learn, just we all need to learn how to improve in a sport.  Teachers assume that the students walking into their classrooms in September have learned study skills in some earlier class.  In fairness to teachers, they are asked to do so much that teaching how to study is usually more than they can handle.  They just don’t have the time. 

Tutors teach students the missing skills.  If the students are willing to do the hard work that is required, they learn new behaviors, and their school work starts to improve.   I never get tired of looking at those smiles when everything starts to click for a child.

The second situation is different.  Students who do poorly on the SATs often do not know how to approach SAT questions.  This exam is not like any school test, and to do well, the student needs to know, practice, and internalize test-taking strategies that are unique to the SAT.  I tell students that it is not that they do not test well but, rather, that they do not know how to take the test.  Again, tutors can help. 

I also see another factor that influences a student’s poor score.  I have worked with individual students who were weak in math or who had a poor working knowledge of grammar and punctuation, and I work on remediating those areas.  But virtually all of my students have weak vocabularies.  Clearly, these students will not perform successfully in the vocabulary section, but they also will suffer in the reading comprehension sections.  The ETS loves to ask questions like, “In line 7, another word for xyz is….”  How can a student with a poor vocabulary answer this type of question?  I have observed these students incorrectly answering as many as 2/3 of the vocabulary-based question.  We’re not talking about obtuse, rarely used words.  These students are unfamiliar with words like satire, ironic, prejudicial, adhesive, or tempestuous.  No amount of SAT-prep course work or tutoring will help a student if they do not know what a question is asking.  The message is clear: start building your vocabulary now, and learn and practice those strategies.