/karen/

To kill a Moore College Exam

Sunday, 04 December, 2005

1. Pick your topics early. You could probably even do it throughout the whole year. It's a good idea to study roughly double the number of questions you will have to answer in the exam. Big exams (3 hr ones: NT1, OT1, HCM/CH1, Doctrine) will have 5 questions; small exams (2 hr ones: MF, BT, WRAG, PHIL1) will have 3. Choose the ones you are the most interested in or the ones that you feel that you will get the most out of studying. Choosing ones that slightly overlap is also useful. Remember college isn't about learning everything (because that's impossible) but learning some things;
2. Take note of the bibliographies on your lecture outlines (if there are any). While no one ever does the recommended reading, make sure you go to the library way before study time and photocopy them so they're on hand when you do come to study. Don't photocopy masses and masses of articles because you won't have time to read them all. Just photocopy key articles—especially the ones that lecturers say are particularly helpful for getting your head around the topic (if they don't say, ask). Do this particularly for HCM because you won't find a lot of the material for HCM easily—you'll have to dig;
3. If you're like me and ran out of time before the exams, photocopy dictionary articles. Baker's Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology is awesome. If you have spare cash lying around (or have a birthday coming up), invest in The Essential IVP Reference Collection. Despite the hefty price tag, it is so worth it because you get a stack of really useful reference books (like Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels) on one CD which means you don't even have to visit the library for these. The only annoying thing is that if you want to print out any of the articles (and you'll want to), you'll have to cut and paste them into word because the CD doesn't have a “Print Just This Article” feature;
4. Write summaries of your topics, condensing everything you need to know onto a couple of A4 double-sided pages. Put past exam questions relating to the topic at the beginning, making sure to mark what year they came up in. (There's this myth that the previous year's exam questions will not appear on the present year's examination paper but I don't think that's necessarily true.) Take note of key Bible verses. For doctrine, Richard Gibson likes to use a grid of I. Bible (Old Testament, Gospels, Epistles); II. History (Early Church, e.g. Augustine; Reformation, e.g. Luther or Calvin; Articles and Confessions); and III. Modern Debates (Objections to the teaching; Alternative beliefs [amongst Christians]; Recent controversy). You don't really need to be that detailed for the Doctrine 1 exam, though it might score you extra brownie points towards an A+. For Church History 1 Richard Gibson uses PRIDE: People (who were the key figures?); Region (what area did this affect?); Issues at stake (why did the players believe what they did?); Documents (what texts or documents do we rely on for info?); Events (what were the defining events? What was going on in the Empire?);
5. Use mnemonics to remember your points if they work for you, e.g. acronyms (e.g. PRIDE see above) or songs or rhymes or kinesthetic movement. (Having a good memory is really useful for college!)
6. Learn some key Bible verses for each exam. It is occasionally useful to be able to quote something in full. Thankfully in Bible college exams you don't have to cite chapter and verse but you can just get away with chapter.

Current:

Blinks:

Feeds

• Full posts
• Full posts and del.icio.us feed
• Excerpts only
• del.icio.us feed only
• All comments

Social media

• Flickr
• Last FM
• LibraryThing
• Listal
• Ravelry
• Twitter