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Oregon daily _ _
emerald
Tuesday, January 2b, iy«j
tugene, uregon
volume o4. Number ob
How to play the test-taking game
By Joan Herman
Of th« Emerald
University students A)
adore essay exams, B)
love multiple-choice
tests, C) perform impec
cably on problem-solving tests, D) all
of the above, E) some of the above or
E) none of the above
Although most students have dif
ficulty with tests, the above question
is easy to answer. None of the above.
They universally despise tests, pro
bably because they often don’t per
form well on them.
Yet getting an "A" is not just
dependent on how well a student
knows the answers to test questions.
Success on tests means knowing the
game of test-taking, according to
Dave Hubin, director of the learning
resources center.
One of the biggest problems
students have with tests is knowing
how to study for them, he says Many
students put a lot of energy into
tasks that get mental wheels spin
ning, memorizing names, dates, and
places — without understanding the
significance of those facts.
Even good students sometimes do
not work out an analytical approach
to test taking, which Hubin says is
one of the first steps towards
success.
“They don't think about what ideas
are subordinate to what, what is be
ing stressed in the course, what are
the important themes,” he says.
"Instead, they'll treat each idea as
being relatively even in importance
and think, ‘I've got 200 ideas to
know,' instead of thinking 'I've got
five general themes that are il
lustrated by subordinate detail."
Students may view studying as a
game of roulette, hoping they'll
review just what the professor asks
on a test, but Hubin says students
should realize professors organize
courses and write tests around
themes.
If students are attentive in class
and review their notes, they will see
emphasis put on several major ideas
repeated throughout the course.
Most students Hubin advises have
more problems taking essay exams
than objective tests with multiple
choice or problem-solving questions.
"I think there's a feeling among
students that there's more latitude to
go wrong (on essay exams), and
there's more possibility of being ab
solutely shot out of the water," he
says.
“A problem encountered by people
who are not experienced in writing
essay exams is that they have all this
material in their heads, and it just
comes spewing out. Focus is in
credibly important. Take five minutes
to direct your ideas on a track.”
Test essays don’t need the
elegance of a term essay In fact,
spending time striving for elegance
can be counterproductive. A good
essay exam starts immediately on
Graphic by Shawn Bird
‘ With a multiple-choice question,
there are only five options, and a
computer doesn’t say ‘you idiot,' but
a professor can tell if a student has
not even read the text.”
After the first paragraph or two of a
student's essay answer, English pro
fessor Richard Stevenson says he
can tell if a student has adequately
read the text.
“You can write a very good essay
in limited time, but in order to do that,
you have to be extremely selective
about what’s significant,” he says.
“You need to zero in on the topic and
use that as your selector, ruling out
extraneous material that may be
fascinating but irrelevant.
topic, often with some interesting
generalizations, and then supports
those generalizations in specific
ways, usually with direct evidence
from the text, Stevenson says.
“When I read an essay exam that
begins, elegantly or not, with an over
view of Western civilization, I Know
that the student is in trouble,
because there’s no time for an over
view of Western civilization and
besides, that’s not what I’m going to
be looking for.”
In a compare-and-contrast ques
tion, Hubin says professors want
students to analyze differences and
similarities of two ideas
simultaneously, not compare one
ancLthen the other, as with an outline
students because multiple-choice
questions tend to test only surface
knowledge of a subject.
Biology professor Michael
Menaker says the more a student
knows about a subject, the more
frustrating multiple-choice questions
can be, because they are
oversimplified.
“If you know a great deal about a
subject,” Menaker says, “you know
why all the answers are wrong.”
Yet in a class of 275 students,
Menaker says professors have no
choice but to give objective tests.
Although multiple-choice questions
do test factual knowledge, Menaker
says this level of comprehension is
not the most important one, and it's
possible for a student to get an “A’ in
a course without really understan
ding “the meat of it.’
For study techniques, Menaker
suggests students devise questions
for themselves, placing emphasis on
not just knowing facts but under
standing their relationships to one
another.
When students are taking a
multiple-choice exam, Hubin sug
gests they read the stem of the ques
tion, paying close attention to nega
tions or pivotal phrases like “In every
case.”
Another common test, especially
in math, accounting and statistics
classes is the problem-solving exam.
Occassionally students ma,
“blank out” on a test, even though
they may have known and
understood the material before they
sat down. Don’t panic, Hubin says.
“When you start to awfulize, you’ll
never come up with the answer,” he
says. “Once you start to feel anxious,
the hardest thing to do but the best
thing to do is put your pencil down,
stop for a moment, take a deep
breath and say ‘I’ve studied this.’ ”
Ithough students general
ly find essay exams more
difficult, objective tests
pose unique problems for
Photo by Bob Baker
Assistant law school dean Peggy Nagae is helping
overturn a World War II conviction of a Japanese
American who violate curfew more than 40 years
ago.
Law dean to help Japanese
By Frank Shaw
Of Dm Emerald
A University taw school assistant dean is one of
the attorneys involved in an attempt to clear a
Japanese American convicted of curfew violation
during World War II.
Peggy Nagae, assistant dean of academic af
fairs at the law school, is one of the attorneys
representing Minoru Yasui, a law school graduate.
Yasui was one of the Japanese Americans con
victed of violating curfews and refusing to report to
assembly areas during World War II.
Yasui graduated from the University law school
in 1939 and was Oregon’s first Japanese-American
lawyer. He was a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army
Reserves and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
On March 28, I942, Yasui walked through the
streets of downtown Portland, twice telephoning the
FBI that a Japanese was wandering after hours in
violation of an order issued by the Western Defense
Command.
He eventually walked into the central police sta
tion and requested his own arrest.
Yasui deliberately defied the order to test its
constitutionality.
U.S. Attorney Carl Donaugh then issued an order
charging Yasui with violating a curfew based on
Public Law 503, passed by Congress the week
before.
That charge set off a series of legal contests in
which Yasui contended that as an American citizen
he was not subject to the curfew.
The final outcome was a U.S. Supreme Court
decison that allowed the United States to detain or
evacuate a portion of the population as a matter of
military necessity.
Yasui served nine months in solitary confine
ment in a Multnomah County Jail.
A writ of error corum nobis, which attempts to
nullify a conviction due to an error during the trial,
was filed in the Federal District Court in San Fran
cisco on behalf of Fred Korematsu earlier this year. A
similar writ on behalf of Yasui will be filed in Portland
on Feb. 1.
Some documents, disclosed recently under the
Freedom of Information Act, cite newly discovered
evidence that shows high government officals and
lawyers suppressed, altered and destroyed key
evidence to influence the case’s verdict.
Nagae streses the petition is not an appeal and
does not request monetary damages. Instead, the
remedy requested is a reversal of his criminal
conviction.