The main thing to remember when answering these types of questions is to isolate your main points and stick to them. The best way to learn to do this, though it gets boring, is to outline them for a while. The process of this allows you to work through the organizational process and helps you to weed out the unnecessary information. You might try doing this on your own time, outside of a test situation, with some comprehension questions.

It’s also important to have a balanced outlook on these – it can be hard to answer when you feel there are gaps in your knowledge, but the purpose of the question is to evaluate what your knowledge is at the time. When you have to take one of these tests, put yourself in a mindset for a short time that what you know is the complete answer. It will give you more confidence and help with any stress that may affect your answer, and it will help you to write more confidently. How your answer comes across can affect your grade.

When you’re in a test situation, you can do a quick “key word” outline in the margin or on scratch paper, if you’re allowed to have it. Just make a quick outline structure – points 1, 2, 3 – and list a few key words to get your thoughts organized. You don’t have to use full sentences for these, just enough to keep you on track.

It can be difficult to answer completely and concisely, and it takes practice. You may not be happy with your first few tries – this is normal – but keep with it. You’ll find it getting easier as you work with it.

You might want to check out materials from IEW – there are some great essay writing programs that are designed to help you with everything from persuasive and SAT essays to answering test questions. I’ve found them to be really good to work with, and my son says they make more sense than anything else we’ve found. Here’s the website:

http://www.writing-edu.com/

Just look into the high school essay materials.

Hope that helps!

The thing about explaining your answers in detail is that first of all you have to actually understand what you are talking about, or it becomes obvious that you don’t.

My advise on that point is that you need to make sure that you really understand all the words related to that subject. This really helps with your understanding of the subject as a whole, and also stops you going to sleep when you are trying to study.

And then you will have no problem expressing yourself on paper.