A Study Technique for Promotional Exams

“Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.”
–Abigail Adams

Taking tests is a way of life in the fire service. From competitive entrance exams to proficiency tests throughout apprenticeships, firefighters realize early in their careers that demonstrating knowledge through test taking is essential. When the time comes in a firefighter’s career to advance in responsibilities and pay, years have passed since their last competitive exam and many are unsure where or how to best focus their time and energy. Virtually all who have succeeded know that it requires discipline, concentration and time away from friends, family and other personal pursuits. After all, if you’re going to make this commitment, common sense dictates the time spent studying must be as productive as possible.

But wanting to do it and being able to do it are two different things. In this article, I’ll take a look at some of the challenges promotional tests can present to firefighters looking to advance their careers, and provide a valuable study aide that can make the difference between frustration and success

Challenges to Adult Learning
Before choosing to enter the fire service, a firefighter’s learning is generally not focused on direct competition with others. In high school or college, the goal of learning is typically to get a grade and make progress toward earning a diploma. The teacher or professor does not necessarily rank individuals. If the entire class earns an “A,” then so be it–they all get As.

Yet in careers such as the fire service, where promotion is based on not only passing exams but also getting a higher score than everyone else, learning takes on a different dimension.

Finding time to study as adults is different than studying while in school. A lot has been written about adult learning theory and the competing demands that impact adult learning. Stephen Lieb (1991) summarizes the difference by stating, “Unlike children and teenagers, adults have many responsibilities that they must balance against the demands of learning. Because of these responsibilities, adults have barriers against participating in learning. Some of these barriers include lack of time, money, confidence, or interest; lack of information about opportunities to learn; scheduling problems; ‘red tape’; and problems with child care and transportation.”

For those in the fire service who desire to test for advancement but have these competing demands, finding time and knowing how to study efficiently become important factors in being prepared the day of the test.

Besides competing demands, many adult learners often view a learning situation with fear and apprehension. This can be due to either a long history of difficulty with retaining information or having forgotten or never utilized effective methods for studying vast amounts of material. For these adult learners, it takes a great deal of courage to admit their fears and ask for assistance. Put simply: The anxiety associated with how to learn and how to study is enough to spell disaster for many.

So Now What?
If you have read this far, you are likely somebody who’s willing to make the personal commitment to successfully promoting. You can’t outguess the test writers and you can’t simply highlight and pick out just the information they’re going to ask. But does that mean you need to read, highlight, then reread all of the material over and over? Absolutely not.

The remainder of this article will provide committed learners with successful techniques using a multi-sensory approach to help you study only the information you don’t already know. Using this system, you’re not wasting your time studying or reviewing information you already know; efficiency and hard work are the keys to your success.

If you use this method, you’ll walk into any exam with the confidence that you know the material, and you will leave the exam unsure of only a handful of questions. You will also leave the exam as one of the top performers.

The C3R Study Skill Technique
Study skills provide a framework for learning how to study. The most important factor is to use techniques that will get results. Simply put, study skills are “specific techniques and devices to help a person acquire, retain, and express knowledge” (Mercer and Mercer, 2007).

The C3R method–chunk, read, (w)rite, and review–combines four study techniques into a system that allows you to acquire, retain and articulate information with confidence. As you systematically work through study materials using these techniques, you will see familiar topics that you will not have to review just to get to the information you need to focus on. Once you have this study skill down, you will be on your way to learning vast amounts of information with a very high retention rate.

Ennis and Woodrow (Adult Learning and Literacy, 2001) state, “[Adult] learning is fostered by moving from the known to the unknown; from the concrete to the abstract.” How does the C3R method help you move from the known to the unknown and the concrete to the abstract? To begin, you need to chunk study material into doable amounts of information that you can retain. This means you read the information once. However, as you read, it’s necessary to essentially translate the material into abbreviated test questions.

You (w)rite your own study guide that you will become very familiar with. This study guide lists all possible test questions you could glean from the material on the left-hand side of a college-ruled spiral binder and the answers on the right-hand side of the paper.

Once you complete your study guide, you most likely will never return to the original text because you have already written every possible test question on the material in your personal study guide. What you have essentially created are study materials in the form of test questions that you can now use to review and focus your precious time.

Step-by-Step
Specifically, the steps of the C3R study skill are as follows:

1. Begin with a college-ruled spiral notebook. Divide each page in half vertically by making a slight fold.
2. Start by reading the first paragraph of the study material and pulling out as many possible test questions as you can. You should get at least one question per paragraph. However, you may get as many as three or four.
3. Write the questions in as abbreviated a form as possible on the left-hand side. It is not necessary to try to make the questions into perfect sentences. Just write the pertinent information so you can understand it. Most questions can be written on one or two lines on the left-hand side.
4. If the question requires more than one line, draw a solid line down the left margin line indicating that this is a single question, or break up the question into two or more.
5. Make a dash sign to the right of the question near the fold. This dash will separate the questions from the answers. These dashes do not all have to be in a perfect line, it is just a soft separation.
6. On the right-hand side of the dashed line, write the answer, also in an abbreviated form.
7. Continue with this process until you have filled a single page.
8. When this first page is completed, return to the top of this page and begin the review.
9. Covering your answers with your right hand, read and ask yourself the abbreviated question you have written down on the left hand side of the page.
10. If you get the question correct do nothing further and move onto the next one.
11. When you get to a question that you do not know the answer to, make a minus sign immediately to the left of the red margin line and continue down the page.
12. Once you have completed this for the first page, return to the original material and complete a second page of the study guide in the same format as the first.
13. Upon completion of the second page, review it just as you did the first page, but first return to the previous questions that you’ve indicated that you do not know (indicated by the minus signs) and ask yourself those questions again. It is not necessary to review the questions that you have not marked because you know the information.
14. If you get these questions wrong again turn the minus into a plus sign.
15. Continue this process while you read the remainder of the material. You always start at the first of the study guide and review only what you don’t know.
16. Every time you return to questions you did not know, and you still cannot recall the answer, you will continue to indicate this by turning the mark in the left margin into a different sign.
17. The next indicator if you still cannot answer the question is a circle around the plus sign. With the next attempt, if you still need to study a topic, you simply fill in the circle, making it appear as a large dot.  
18. Continue with this process, adding no more than one handwritten page of information to your study guide at a time. When you review previous questions, again only review those that you have indicated through your marking system that you still do not know. Ultimately, you will only be reviewing questions marked with the dots. For all of the other information, it can be assumed that you have learned the content and don’t need to waste your time reviewing it.
19. Once you have completed the study guide and reviewed questions using the “minus, plus, circle, dot” process for all of the pages, you begin to review the information again. As you go through the material, you will have several black dots per page. This time when you try to recall the information and can’t, you start the process once again by making a minus to the left side of the first black dot.
20. Depending on the amount of material and difficulty in retaining certain concepts, you may have several questions with multiple dots. These can then be joined by making a rectangle around the dots and filling it in. These are the only questions that you will focus on in the last few days before the exam.

Tip: If some test answers are a long list of information, consider developing acronyms that will help you remember them. Also, it has been shown that memorization success is better if completed in the hours immediately following a sleep period.

Tackling the Most Difficult Questions
After you have completed transposing all of your study material into study guides, you now have memorized most of the information well enough for various types of evaluations. You have now chunked material into a workable study guide of the material you have not yet retained–less than 5 percent of all the material. At this point you can focus your efforts on the material you’re still having difficulty recalling without having to sift through all the information that you do know. The efforts you’ve made up to this point have transferred vast amounts of information into your long-term memory.

You will no doubt still have questions for which you cannot recall the answers. At this point, additional auditory, visual, tactile and olfactory study techniques can be added to the reading, (w)riting and reviewing of the information. Different people have different styles for learning. Some learn more easily if they can see or touch what is to be learned, while others may have to listen to or re-read information to learn it. For the most challenging questions on your study guide, consider using the following strategies to increase your retention:

1. Read the questions and answer them out loud. Hearing the information gives you additional sensory input to help you recall it.
2. Try playing “Jeopardy” with some of the hardest questions by reading the answer while covering the question.
3. Create a drawing for the answer only. The drawing does not need to be detailed or precise but rather something that will help you remember.
4. Associate a smell with the information. The olfactory sense is also a very powerful mind jogger. Simple smells or tastes bring back memories for nearly everyone. Try adding a consistent smell when you study and then again when you take the evaluation–for example, a common snack or drink, such as coffee. Although there is minimal scientific basis for this strategy, it has worked for many people.

The Final Weeks
During the final weeks before the exam, focus on the small percentage of those questions you still have not mastered. You can now devote your limited time towards retaining and expressing your knowledge around those questions.

Adult learners often do better with immediate feedback and positive reinforcement. To help you relax and build your confidence, return to the entire study guide every couple of weeks to review each and every question. By doing this, you put the out-of-context questions back into the context they were originally in when you first chunked the information. You also increase your confidence by showing yourself that you already know and can recall most of the information. This review also helps you understand the information as you have moved from the concrete to the abstract. You need this confidence as the once dreaded but now anticipated test date rolls around.

If you take to time to learn and follow this simple, proven study skill methodology and then work tirelessly in using it, you will most likely score in the top 5 percent of the exam takers.

At this point, your success is not dependent on the luck of a good or bad promotion list or on guessing what the test writer may have found important. If you’ve worked hard following this process, you’ll be at the top of your class!

Author’s Note: Special thanks to Randy Schelbe, who assisted me in the writing of this article. Randy is a doctor of education who works and presents at many universities in Utah.