The Practice Exams

I m glad you chose option four. I ve taught chemistry for over 30 years. I ve put together in this book, what I believe are the most up-to-date type of questions that you will experience on the AP Chemistry Exam. Each question is thoroughly explained, and the format of each practice exam is exactly what you will see when you take the actual exam. With other AP exams to study for and other time commitments, you need a quick set of practice exams that will cover everything you need to know. With CliffsAP Chemistry, 3rd Edition to help you cover in more detail the topics covered in the practice exams, you will be absolutely prepared. 

You will be given five practice AP Chemistry Exams. Each practice exam is formatted exactly to the actual AP exams. Time limits are included. Each multiple-choice question and free-response (essay) question is thoroughly explained. 

This book is not a textbook. The last thing you need to study right now is your AP Chemistry textbook. It s too large and doesn t provide you with the type of exam you will be seeing shortly. By taking the five practice exams in this book and reviewing your mistakes, you will ace the AP Chemistry Exam. 

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To use your study time most efficiently, you should find out what skills the department you want to apply to will be testing. (Chapter 3 shows you how.) Then you can concentrate on the practice exams in this book that correspond to those skills. At the beginning of each exam, you will find a description of the skills tested. 

Take one of the practice exams in either Chapter 13 or 14. Use your score to help you decide where to concentrate your efforts this month. Go back to the relevant chapters and use the additional resources listed there, or get the help of a friend or teacher. Review the practice exams. See how much you have learned in the past months. Concentrate on what you have done well and resolve to do your best in any areas where you still feel uncertain. 

Review the practice exams. See how much you have learned in the past months. Concentrate on what you have done well, and resolve to do your best in areas where you still feel uncertain. 

Review the practice exams, concentrating on the areas where a little work can help the most. 

Read the material in Chapters 10-12 and work through the exercises. Take one of the practice exams in either Chapter 13 or 14. 

Review the practice exams. Make sure you understand the answer explanations. Relax. Do something unrelated to the exam and firefighting. Eat a good meal and go to bed at your usual time. 

Steps 4,5, and 6 of the LearningExpress Test Preparation System put you in charge of your exam by showing you test-taking strategies that work. Practice these strategies as you take the practice exams in this book, and then you will be ready to use them on test day. 

First, you will take control of your time on the exam. The first step in achieving this control is to find out the format of the exam you are going to take. Some firefighter exams have different sections that are each timed separately. If this is true of the exam you will be taking, you will want to practice using your time wisely on the practice exams and try to avoid mistakes while working quickly. Other types of exams don t have separately timed sections. If this is the case, just practice pacing yourself on the practice exams so you don t spend too much time on difficult questions. 

If you don t like these marks, devise your own system. Just make sure you do it long before test day— while you are working through the practice exams in this book—so you won t have to worry about it during the test. 

The practice exam that follows is another type of test often used to see if firefighter candidates have what it takes to do the job. A test like this mostly tries to assess whether you have what it takes to learn the job it tests some of the basic skills you need to be able to do well in your firefighter training program. This practice exam includes five areas reading comprehension, verbal expression, logical reasoning, mathematics, and mechanical aptitude. 

Get to know the test directions. If you are familiar with the directions ahead of time, you won t have to waste valuable test time reading them and trying to understand them. The format and directions used in the practice exams in this book are modeled on the ones you ll see on the actual SAT Chemistry exam. 

Day 29 Review the chapters that contained the topics that you were weak on during the Practice Exams. 

You may be allowed to take your laboratory reports and other texts into the practical exam. Don t assume that this is a soft option, or that revision is unnecessary you will not have time to read large sections of your reports or to familiarize yourself with basic principles etc. The main advantage of open-book exams is that you can check specific details of methodology, reducing your reliance on memory, provided you know your way around your practical manual. In all other respects, your revision and preparation for such exams should be similar to theory exams. Make sure you are familiar with all of the practical exercises, including any work carried out in class by your partner (since exams are assessed on individual performance). Check with the teaching staff to see whether you can be given access to the laboratory, to complete any exercises that you have missed. 

On the CD-ROM you ll find four sample exams. You should test your knowledge by taking both the Core Hardware and Operating System Technologies practice exams when you have completed the book and feel you are ready for the A+ exams. Take these practice exams just as if you were actually taking the A+ exams (i.e., without any reference material). When you have finished the practice exams, move onto the two bonus exams to solidify your test-taking skills. If you get more than 90 percent of the answers correct, you re ready to go ahead and take the real exam. 

J The practical exam will contain some quantitative work, probably a titration or an enthalpy change experiment. 

The practical exam will be broadly qualitative in its approach. 

Please note that in addition to the practical exam, the recertification process must ... 

The practice exam instrument used in our study utihzes 50 multiple choice items, including 6 items specifically keyed to materials science and/or nanoscience. After each exam item, a mental effort item was inserted into the exam format that asked students to introspect on the degree of menial effort expended on the previous question answered (Figure 1). We used a 5-point Likert scale consistent with the nttmber of available multiple choice options foimd on a typical scantron answer key. 

Figure 1. Example of mental effort item inserted into the practice exam format.

Two nanoscience items in the sub-categories of spectroscopy and band theory, as well as two materials items in the sub-categories of intermolecular forces (IMF) and Lewis stmctures, were inserted into the practice exam to serve as paired items to non-nanoscience/materials items on the exam in the same subcategories. 

Cognitive efficiency analysis, as described in our previons work (14) allowed ns to probe differential performance and mental effort effects for all items on the practice exam, including the nanoscience and materials science items for the two different types of general chemistry courses (Figures 2 3). 

The second component of analysis for determining the cognitive load effects of nanoscience and materials science contexts on exam items for the two different chemistiy courses, involved a paired item analysis. Two nanoscience items in the sub-categories of spectroscopy and band theory, as well as two materials items in the sub-categories of intermolecular forces (IMF) and Lewis stmctures, were inserted into the practice exam to serve as paired items in these same sub-categories. The first comparison we analyzed was both groups of students differential performance on non-nanoscience and materials exam items versus nanoscience and materials items (Figures 4 5). 

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