Nowhere does it say you must answer the questions in numerical order.
In fact, there are four very good reasons why you should forget the order and answer the easier questions first.
1: It calms you down.
Reading through the whole paper (Tip 18) means you’re bound to see some questions which look more daunting.
This, in turn, could make you stressed.
By getting your teeth stuck into an easier question or two, you’re focussing on something you can do.
This takes your mind off the difficult questions for a moment and reduces your stress level.
This is a very good thing.
2: It gives you confidence.
Once you’ve done the easy questions which, being easy, would have taken you less time to do, you can see you’ve only used up say 20% of the time but you’ve got 40% of the marks.
That’s a reassuring situation to be in.
This helps reduce stress even more and increases your confidence.
3: It gets you more time.
If you’ve done a bit of time management, you’ll have worked out approximately how many minutes you can spend on each question.
All being well, you won’t have needed that time for the easier questions.
So that time saved is now extra time you can spend on the more challenging questions.
4: It increases your grade.
In case you do run out of time, it’s much better to have answered the easier questions first and got those marks under your belt than to have left them till the end and then not have had time to answer them.
Is this something you do already?
Are you making a habit out of answering the easy questions first?
Or do you usually answer them in order because that’s the way you’ve always done it?
If you use this tip in your exam, you’ll be calmer, feel more confident, have more time and be more likely to get better marks than if you started banging your head against the harder questions straight away.
Tip 20: Do the easier questions first.