by Vijay Garg
Board examinations and various other state board examinations are about to begin all over the country in a month. While hard work and preparation are the keys to excelling in the board examination, it is equally important that how you act in the examination hall and write your examination.
Students appearing for the Board Examination must be aware of some common mistakes they tend to make in the examination hall. It is often observed that many students, though unknowingly, make some common mistakes while writing the examination due to which sometimes they lack good scores irrespective of having worked hard to prepare for the examination.
Here are some common mistakes, which students should avoid in the examination hall to get their hard work paid off and achieve good marks.
Not reading the question paper properly
This one comes at the top of the list of common mistakes made by students while taking the examination. Board gives its students an extra 15 minutes time to read the question paper. But most of the students, due to stress and panic, fail to utilise this grace time efficiently due to which they end up choosing the wrong question out of the given choices and then regret it later. Therefore, this is the time that students should use to organise their thoughts and manage their time during the examination.
Writing unplanned answers
Generally, students answer the questions without planning the order of points that is they tend to write the least important points first and infuse the keywords in the last lines. Later, when they realize it, they try to correct their answer by cutting the initial points and writing them again in a planned manner. This not only causes a waste of time but makes the answer sheet look messy, which will make a bad impression on the examiner.
Time mismanagement
This should be considered the most important task while writing the examination. This is the most crucial thing for facing any board examination like of board examination. But most of the students start writing the paper without taking care of proper time management and when the time gets over, they are left with no other option than to quit the un-attempted questions due to which they lose those precious marks. Therefore, while writing the paper, a student should plan in advance how much time he will dedicate to each question and should stick to the same.
Beating around the bush
Most of the students instead of writing an apt explanation to a question keep on beating around the bush, which is in no way going to help them get good marks, but will destroy their time management strategy. Thus, write only if you know the facts. Else, just write up to what you know and leave the rest. Because an annoyed bunch of words is capable enough of reducing your marks from the rest of the good answers.
Not knowing when to give up
This is another stupid mistake students make while writing an answer. When came across a question, which students find difficult to answer, they keep on making speculations and guesses to find the right answer due to which they end up losing a large time and then they are left with too little time to write even those answers, which they knew correctly. So, it’s a suggestion not to sit on a single question wasting your time. Better, attend the ones which you know well and will fetch you good marks.
Copying incorrect data
Sometimes out of a hurry, many students copy the data given in the question paper incorrectly due to which they get a wrong answer after the whole calculation. Students should take extra care as it might save a couple of marks in the examination.
Collapsed writing
Be it the result of a panicking situation or the hurry to complete the paper in time, students often ignore their handwriting. This makes their paper look like a sheet full of messy and collapsed writing with many cuts and crosses. The examiner will not take any extra effort to decipher your answer script and will ultimately reduce your marks. So, it’s your own duty to take some extra effort to make your answers look clean and readable enough to please the examiner to get you good marks in the CBSE, UP or any other state board examination.
Handing over the sheet
After completing the paper or when the time gets over, students just hand over their answer script to the examiner without even checking it, which they miss checking if they have written their roll number, or other asked information correctly or not. Also, they lose the opportunity to rectify any spelling or grammatical mistakes if there are in the paper and save their marks from being deducted. So, it’s very important for a student to spare some time for the end so that he/ she can check the answer script properly before submitting it to the examiner.
Thus, these are the few mistakes that a student must take care of in the Board examination to get his hard work reflected in his result.
(Vijay Garg, MSc, Bed has been a Punjab Education Service (PES) officer who retired as a Principal. He has authored a number of textbooks. He lives in Malout Punjab.)
