My nephew is 10 years old, he does not read the exam questions properly which leads to many mistakes although he knows the answer, what can I do?

Question

My nephew is 10 years old, he does not read the exam questions properly which leads to many mistakes although he knows the answer, what can I do ?

Answer 1

In primary school, there's three major things kids are learning:

1. Key underlying concepts/ways of thinking that will make learning more "adult" concepts possible later.
2. Study/work habits.
3. Social behavior

It sounds like your nephew is okay on 1., but is deficient in 2., study/work habits. Assuming you're in position to help him here (I don't know your relationship with him/the parents/etc.), things you can do to help:

• Practice reading the question fully. A good way to do this is with "trick questions" - if for example this is for math, there's lots of examples online of trick math questions (as some people find them fun!).
• Work with him on more complex questions. Maybe he finds the work boring? Then consider doing some logic type questions that do require really reading the question to understand the answer.
• If he finishes the exam early, get him in the habit of going back over it, instead of handing it in early. Maybe he feels time pressure! Answer all the questions in one pass, then with no time pressure look them each over again to see if he got them right.
• If he is someone affected by external rewards - set up a reward system.
• Practice reading the exam questions. Do an exam at home where you read the questions out loud before he does the exam. Do an exam at home where he has to read all of the questions out loud.

Finally, two suggestions:

• Talk to the teacher and get suggestions there. The teacher probably is aware that he knows the material.
• Talk to you nephew and see what he thinks will help. He's 10 - that's old enough to have some ideas here! He may appreciate the consideration.

I've worked with quite a few kids who have this issue - both of mine, for one, but I also work with math-interested kids in an after school program, and plenty of them make these kinds of mistakes. Focusing on checking work and on carefully reading the questions is a really valuable thing for later in life - I can't tell you the difference between an employee who reads the instructions carefully and one who skims over them and assumes they know the answer!

Answer 2

Get him tested for ADHD/ADS

Yes I know "everyone has it" these days and what not but what you describe (skimming over questions) fits in 100%.

Oh and even if he's an otherwise rather quiet kid that "doesn't show any other symptoms": That's very easily possible as well, the clichés don't hold all-around and even 10 year old kids can be quite skilled at masking the more negatively-received obvious symptoms.

A negative test would land you back here but would at least rule out this possible necessity for different treatment. And a positive diagnosis would open up a completely new field of advice, tipps and strategies to help him deal with the issues he's facing.

Answer 3

Test for dyslexia

It's often found in people with ADHD, but it can be in anyone. He may not be reading the question properly in the first place.

If you do ADHD testing, they probably also do dyslexia testing. It's worth having it looked at.

Answer 4

Kids have multiple ways of learning (visual, auditory, kinetic) and multiple ways of expressing (same.) Some kids for any number of reasons do better in s non traditional test taking situation. Some do better having the question read to them and giving on oral answer. Talk or have his patents to the teacher and discuss strengths and relative weaknesses in his style of learning. It could be something classic like ADHD or it could be something else that just requires more skills such as answer contributor one addressed. Don't hesitate going up the ladder tho. Teacher to principal to district if u need to. School districts have psychologists who can also test for neurodivergent types if learning. If a child is seen by a private educational psychologist the school can still utilize the evaluation outcome.

Answer 5

Teach the kid exactly the skill you want the kid to have - namely, spotting errors of understanding.

Don't give the kid questions on problem X. Give the kid questions and answers, where the answer misunderstood the question, and get the kid to find the mistake.

Similarly, give the kid a pile of questions that they know are misleading and have them find the trick.

Naturally you start with modeling before you get them to work on it - give them questions and answers that misunderstand and someone pointing out the misunderstanding. Give them misleading questions, with someone pointing out how they are misleading. This step is easy to think you can skip, but it really does make the problem easier.

Don't ask the kid "did you check for misunderstandings?" - make the kid good at spotting misunderstandings, and then the kid will do it themselves because the effort will be much lower and the habit will be built in.

For mathematics in particular, one of the points of mathematics isn't figuring out what the answer is but proving that is the answer to the person reading it, so that the reader doesn't have to know the answer is right to be convinced.

A lot of mathematics education doesn't stress this nearly enough in my opinion. "Show your work" isn't about convincing the teacher that the kid isn't cheating, it is providing the evidence that the answer is right by showing the path to get there. And if you are showing your work in a mathematics answer, you are going to be referring back to the question in the answer in order to show that the answer actually answers the question. A misunderstood question should show up like a bright flag.

Reframing math answers as: "You are trying to convince some reader who doesn't now how to do the math what the answer is. They can follow along an check each tiny steps, but they can't do any leaps." might provide motivation.

Answer 6

As if you don't have enough to think about... if some of the other suggestions don't seem to help, please consider if it is possible your nephew has a reading difficulty that might be more apparent in the stress or haste of reading exam questions. Reading is an amazingly complex skill of muscle and brain coordination even though it seems simple. Many subtle problems can develop, just as they do in speech (or gymnastics, etc.) and most can be corrected once they are detected. At least in the US, you can't rely on the customary school vision tests - they only detect a small fraction of vision/reading problems.

Answer 7

TL;DR The test is testing something different than your nephew (and you?) think it does.

Tests are not just testing the knowledge of the covered material, they are also testing meta-knowledge about testing itself. For example:

1. Can this person follow detailed instruction?
2. Can this person clearly communicate to another human being through the medium of writing that they have knowledge of the material being covered?
3. (For the cynical) Can this person "tune" their ingestion of the material for easily digestible compartmentalized chunks of information that are likely to show up on a test by virtue of being easy to test for?

This is possibly a good part of why even though ability in a specific subject might vary (e.g. good at Language Arts, bad at Math or vice-versa) for a given student their grades tend to be well-correlated across subjects.

If your nephew (or you) believe that testing is about whether or not he understands the subject matter...well, you're not wrong per se but there is more to it than that.