Under time pressure you don’t lose marks on the new topic: you lose them rebuilding from scratch things that should come out automatically. That is a different problem from not knowing the maths, and that is why it is trained differently — not with more exercises, but with a routine that really simulates the time limit.
What follows holds for any year, from the first two years of high school up to the maturità (Italy’s school-leaving exam): three methods to do on your own, with a sheet of paper, a pen and a stopwatch.
Method 1 — The real-time mock test
Simulate the conditions of the real test exactly, not “the same exercises, more calmly”. Non-negotiable rules: the same duration as the real test (if it lasts 60 minutes, the timer says 60, not 45 “because it’s only practice”), a single sitting with no breaks, phone off and out of the room, book closed, stopwatch in view — not in your pocket.
The most useful piece of data in the whole practice session is the easiest to lose: write in the margin the time you start, for each exercise, before beginning. Without that number, at the end you only know whether you finished or not — you don’t know where the time went.
The time per exercise is decided before you start, not by feel. First set aside 15% of the total time for the final reread, then divide the rest by the number of exercises. On a 60-minute test with 6 exercises: 9 minutes of rereading, 51 minutes left, that is 8.5 minutes per exercise — not the “by eye” 10 you would get by dividing without setting anything aside.
At the end don’t mark it straight away: just look at how many exercises you finished, which one cost you more time than the others, and at exactly which point the time went — a calculation redone three times, a doubt about a formula, an endless rereading of the question.
Method 2 — Cold-eyed marking
While you are still hot, you reread what you meant to write, not what you actually wrote: the brain fills in the missing steps by itself because it already knows where you were going. A day later, that sheet is almost someone else’s — and you read it for what is written, not for what you meant.
Mark with a pen of a different colour, one that jumps out from a distance. Don’t cross anything out: the wrong step stays, the right one is written beside it, not over it. A mistake that is crossed out is a mistake you stop seeing, and in a real test it comes back identical three months later.
For each mistake, classify it into one of four categories, because each has a different cure:
- Distraction — right procedure, sign or digit copied wrongly. It is prevented with a fixed check at the end of each exercise.
- Rule — you didn’t know a formula, or remembered it wrongly. You study it, going back to the formula sheet, not to the exercise.
- Method — the formula was there, but the route chosen was wrong. You redo it with someone who explains why that route leads nowhere: on your own you tend to repeat the same approach.
- Time — you knew how to do it, but didn’t get there by the end. It is trained with Method 1: it is exactly what that routine measures.
Method 3 — Rereading the rough-work sheet
Take the rough-work sheet of a test you have already done — even one that is months old. Without redoing a single calculation, rewrite the solution in five lines: only the steps that matter, as if you had to explain it to a classmate with one minute to spare.
If you can’t do it without redoing the calculations from scratch, it means one of two things: the right reasoning was not on that sheet, or it was there but you didn’t recognise it among the rest. To recognise it, look for the point where you changed route — a crossing-out, an arrow, a “no, wait” — and ask yourself what made you change: it is that question, not the calculation that follows, that is the reasoning that really matters.
In a test, keep your rough work in a column and labelled per exercise, one block for each with the number written above it — not scattered all over the sheet. Finding your way around a messy rough-work sheet costs real time, and it is exactly what eats up the last ten minutes.
What to train first
If the blank comes in the very first minutes, even before reading the exercise, the problem is not time but test anxiety, and the cure is different: I wrote about it in how to manage test anxiety in maths and physics. If instead there is no blank and the problem is only that time is never enough, the three methods above are the place to start — and a timed Year 3 test or Year 4 test is the right place for Method 1.
The routine only holds inside a calendar: blocks, revision at 1-3-7 days and self-testing are in how to build a real study plan, and the everyday habits that support it are in studying maths without stress. If the cold-eyed marking always shows you the same kind of mistake, start from the five maths mistakes that look right; if instead you can’t decipher the teacher’s comment on your test, the teacher’s translations lists them. If you have a failed subject to make up, the calendar of the weeks is in making up a failed maths subject.
If you want to train this routine together, on your real maths tests and not on generic exercises, write to me: we look together at where the time really goes.
