If you want to do your best on your firefighter promotional exam, you must put the work into your firefighter promotional exam prep. One of the best ways to do that is to act as if you were a teacher and explain things and create exams for yourself.
Make Yourself Quizzes
One way you can act as a teacher to help your studies is to make yourself quizzes. Instead of just making a more traditional study guide or highlighting your textbooks, take the extra time and make yourself actual quizzes. All you have to do is come up with questions you think might be on the exam and write them out or type them up and create your own quizzes for yourself. Then of course you will want to take the quizzes yourself. Be sure to give yourself some time before taking them though as you likely just saw the answers when you made it. When you take them, take them seriously. Do not cheat and look in your books or notes. Then grade yourself and figure out what you know and what you need to keep working on. Save these quizzes to review again as your firefighter promotional exam day gets closer, even if you have already aced them all.
Talk To Yourself
The next way for you to study as if you were a teacher is to be vocal and talk as if you had a class full of people you are teaching. Read your textbooks out loud to yourself and ask yourself questions about the text out loud. Reading your textbooks out loud is a more active way of learning which helps the information become a long-term memory faster than if you were to just read to yourself silently. That is because “When we add an active measure or a production element to a word, that word becomes more distinct in long-term memory, and hence more memorable.” Reading aloud is one of the easiest ways to make your learning active to help increase your memory.
You will also want to ask yourself questions as you read out loud. Not just at the end of the chapter. Do it at the end of each section or even paragraph. Here are some examples:
Why is this important?
How does this relate to what I read previously?
What keywords do you see?
Asking yourself questions as you read allows you to make connections you may have otherwise missed and doing it aloud will get what you are learning into your brain's long-term storage faster than if you did it silently. Lastly, you should summarize what you are reading out loud at the end of each chapter or section. Doing all of this will add very little time to your study session but gives you more opportunities for this information to be retained. Bonus, take those quizzes you made for yourself out loud.
Actually Teach Someone
The final step to studying like a teacher is to teach someone. You can do this with your study group, a friend or even a stuffed animal. Get someone (or something if you need) to sit down in front of you so you can share with them what you have learned. Even go so far as to give them the opportunity to ask questions. Not only will teaching someone else motivate you to learn the material, no one wants to seem unprepared especially if your friend is taking the time to help you out, but you will get all the added benefits mentioned above of learning out loud such as improved long-term memory. Teaching someone else your firefighter promotional exam material will also help improve your confidence, another necessary component if you want to ace your exam.
The Takeaway
Make yourself quizzes, talk to yourself, although maybe not if you are studying in public, and teach your friends what you are learning. It may seem silly to pretend you are a teacher as a part of your study sessions for your firefighter promotional exam, but give it a try, it may be the perfect study method for you.