To check or not to check? That is the question...

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Do you check your tests/exams over after you have written them? What works for you better - checking or not checking?

I have found lately that when I go back to check my answers on the test/exam, whenever I end up correcting my answers after having written them, I end up turning right answers into wrong answers. Perhaps no longer being in the mindset of the question makes the checking efforts counterproductive. Or perhaps it is just an attentional issue.

However, all of the overachievers I know do check their tests/exams and don't seem to have had problems with it.

To check or not to check?

I check to make sure I didn't skip any questions, but don't check the answers I did get. I find it too boring, haha

When I was in school I would check to make sure that I had answered everything, and to make sure that I had made the right kind of mark if it was those circles you have to fill in because sometimes I would do a really bad job on that. I never had a problem with not checking my answers, it felt very painful to me to have to review all of them because if I knew it, then I knew it, if not, staring at it longer was not going to make a more correct answer appear.

Okay, that sounds sensible. It's not the kind of checking I've always thought other people do.

Perhaps the best plan would be to check to see if I've missed answering any questions or any parts of the question and not correct anything ex tempore unless something explicitly jumps out at me as being incorrect.

I also always check whether I filled in the multiple choice properly. That's the only kind of checking I do every time.

I check, but I used to not check. It matters far, far less than studying early and often. I do not study the night before a test. This allows by brain the time it needs to forget all the wrong answers that I've accumulated during my studying.

Agreed. Studying ahead is EXTREMELY important. However, I still review all the material the night before, just so that I could pull all of the information I've learned over time together into a coherent whole.

IMO, although this may not apply to you: I find that checking only works a substantial period of time after doing the question the first time round, after I've forgotten what the question is about. This enables me to essentially re-do the question when I check, because if I check immediately after, my mind may simply go down the same road and commit the same mistake without my knowing it.

When it comes to be a multiple choice question, chacking mostly made me modify a right answer.

But I have noticed that, specially for Math, checking made me correct many mistakes. Actually, on these tests I only check the calculations, not the entire thought.

Sometimes I realize that I have forgotten to finish the solution, like showing the result that answers the question, but for me this is a little rare. Simple checking is useful for these cases.

In general, I don't change the way I think when I check. I just change minor details that might make the teacher think that my answer is wrong.

If you think you might have gotten something wrong, but you aren't sure, don't change it. Go with what your first thought was, and you're more likely to get it right. Mildly uneasy (yet unspecific) feelings that you may have got it wrong are more likely nervousness than a problem with your answer.

Sometimes you'll do something wrong, and then catch it and know for sure it's wrong. Go ahead and fix it, you're probably right about being wrong.

I never check any answers until I'm completely done with the test, but then I check more or less everything. Some things are tedious calculations or would take as long to check as they would to solve initially, I tend not to check these, unless there's tons of time and I'm not quite sure I got it right. Sometimes finding the right answer is much harder than checking that it's right, and I'll definitely check all of these if I have time.

I don't turn it in unless I've got a warm fuzzy feeling about every problem, or I know that I probably messed that one up, but that I definitely can't fix it with the knowledge in my head. (Or if time runs out.)

Sometimes there will be a hard problem that I don't think I can do (or finish), but I'll keep trying unless I'm absolutely sure I just plain don't know it. Mostly, I'd rather spend more time on trying to get a hard problem done than checking the rest of it, since the rest is probably fine, and chances are probably better that I'll get somewhere on the really hard one than that I made a mistake on an easy one that I'll end up catching and fixing correctly.

Never leave a question blank unless you run out of time or you absolutely have no clue whatsoever. If you show that you know some stuff, but not enough to solve it, you'll still probably get partial credit.

I usually don't check. Most of the time I am correct or should be correct. But I also check sometimes if I have enough energy to do so. Doing a lot of work then doing a crazy word problem then going back to trying to do theorems is not fun.

I don't like to look over every answer again. I'll probably end up changing more right answers to wrong ones than wrong answers to right ones. I do, however, check to make sure I've answered every question a couple of times over.

I check to see if I left something blank (because I always do) and to complete half-answered questions, but if it's already written... alea iacta est. In any case, if I'm not sure to begin with, I leave it blank at first, so if it's filled, it's right.

I noticed that in math, my son sometimes only gets problems wrong that he has skipped. So, I encourage him to check and recheck. The one way to assure he hasn't skipped a question is to go back and check.

He'll be taking the state's standards test for the second time this spring and we're really working with him on going back and checking.