Exams and Revision

A noticeable feature of many Asia n education system is the dominance of multiple – choice exams at all levels. Asian students gain a great deal of experience of exam competition in their school days and their undergraduate courses.

Much of this training, however, is directed towards memorizing information and recognizing items on the test paper. These skills may not transfer very usefully to, say, the Australia n and British system. In these systems, with the exception of some Science courses, most exams require short or extended answer.

A common pattern for a three hour end – of –year exam in a Social Science course would be a paper requiring students to answer three out of six essay type questions. Here is an example of one question from an Accounting exam.

What are the major differences between a perpetual inventory system and a periodic inventory system? What general conditions lead to the use of one or other of the two systems by a company?

And here is a question from a Po litical Science exam:

The view is often taken that legislatures have declined in importance. Do you agree with this view in relation to the Australian parliament?

In some exams, such as Law, students may be permitted to bring all weir textbooks and notes into the exam room with them. Exams of this kind - called `open book exams' - test students' capacities to so Ive problems by applying the principles they have studied, rather than simply testing memory. In some courses there are no formal exams but students take home the exam paper for the weekend and work on it independently, handing their answers in to their lecturer three days later. So the variety of styles of examining may be.