I used to really struggle with this too. I am far from your level of giftedness but I had horrible time with these at first. I did not take my first MC test until I was a Junior in high school (as an exchange student in the US). Until then I grew up with open ended questions, test questions that simply asked for the right answer and either you knew it or not, and essay type of questions. When I first started taking MC tests it was horrible. I felt like I had a ton of reasons to find almost every option a possibility under certain conditions. The more I thought about the answers, the deeper I got into it and simply ended up lost! I still remember failing my first MC test (American History) because I just couldn't find the right answers! If the test had directly asked "what year did ... happen?" or "who fought at ...?" I would had been able to spit out the answer right away! But seeing multiple choices just made me think that ALL of them were possible!
Then I found my own strategy. I took advantage of the type of testing I grew up with where we simply had to know all the topics covered at school in and out and figured that this should be EASY! I KNOW the answers! I don't need the choices! I learned to NOT look at the choices. I read the question and without looking at the answers in my mind I fill in the blank / answer and only then I look at the choices to see if my answer is one of them. Usually it is. When it's not than I need to think about the choices. But even then you can just dismiss the most ridiculous ones and think about the ones that are left. These days when I need to take MC tests, I know that unless the question is worded poorly (which unfortunately happens quite a lot!) I will get the correct answer without having to think twice.
Last edited by Mk13; 05/12/13 02:43 PM.
