Testing Strategies for CompTIA Exams

Certification bodies includes both multiple choice and performance-based questions on their exams to make them more practical and keep up with trends in certification testing. Knowing what to expect and how to approach these question types is key to your success in passing the exams. If you are reading my blog, you are likely taking a CompTIA exam.  But these tips really apply to all certification exams. Let me fill you in on some facts about the exams.

Exam facts:

There are several different types of questions you may see in certification exam:

• Multiple choice – the standard question, choose the right answer
• Multiple response – choose all answers that apply with more than one correct answer
• Fill in the blank – fill in the answer to the question
• Drag-and-drop – image or question where you drag answers to match the image or text
• Exhibits – answer questions relating to an attached picture or diagram (variation to multiple choice)
• Performance-based – detailed question, open dialog boxes or other configuration windows and configure as needed

CompTIA and other certifying bodies also use drag-and-drop and performance-based questions to their exam pool. You may get as few as 2-3 or as many as 10-12 of these type of questions depending on which exam you are taking. The more of these questions you get, the fewer of the traditional multiple choice, multiple response or exhibit-type questions you will have, depending on the difficulty of the performance-based questions you get.

How new question types are graded:

Two important pieces of information about the new drag-and-drop and performance-based questions that you need to know:

• Partial credit – Scoring credit may be offered if a candidate answers only part of a question correctly.
• Negative credit – A candidate should be aware if the certification body uses negative credit. When certification bodies do not use negative credit, you should answer every exam question, even on the ones where they are not sure of the answer. CompTIA does not employ negative scoring on exam questions, so you won’t lose points for incorrect answers.

Testing strategies:

The question types, like drag-and-drop and performance-based questions, show up at the beginning of the exams. If your exam has these types of questions, read up on how they are presented, and be prepared.  These questions can be more complex and take longer to answer than traditional multiple-choice questions. DON’T GET BOGGED DOWN WITH THE PERFORMANCE-BASED QUESTIONS. If the certification body allows you to skip questions and come back and answer them at the end, work through the questions that you are confident in answering, and come back to more difficult questions. Here are some strategies to use when taking the exams:

• Know how the questions will be presented and how many to expect.
• Skip the performance-based questions and come back at the end to answer them so you aren’t bogged down and run out of time.
• Count the performance-based questions as you skip them so you know how many you have to do when you come back to them at the end.
• Read over all the performance-based questions and answer the ones you are most comfortable with first; leave the ones you are less confident about until the end.
• If you are not sure about some of the steps in the performance-based or drag-and-drop questions, give it your best guess, you may receive partial credit.

CompTIA provides information that may be helpful in preparing for the performance based questions at the following links – Click here to review

Talk to you next week,
Mike

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