The True Cost of Free Exam Prep Questions (Part 2)

Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager, author and consultant who works for PMI as a subject matter expert. Before joining PMI, Mike consulted and managed innovation and technology projects throughout Europe, North and South America for 30+ years. He was co-lead for the PMBOK Guide—Seventh Edition, lead for the Agile Practice Guide, and contributor to the PMI-ACP and PMP exam content outlines. Outside of PMI, Mike maintains the websites www.LeadingAnswers.com about leading teams and www.PMillustrated.com, which teaches project management for visual learners.

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In Part 1 of this article, we examined how many free exam simulators can actually be poor value for money. When it is your own precious study time you are investing, free exams are bad value if they waste your time or mislead you on your readiness for taking the exam of your choice. We also examined the anatomy of a good question and learned how situational questions aim to test application of knowledge rather than simple recall of information.

In this article, we will continue exploring how to spot poorly written test questions to avoid wasting your study time—and also provide some tips for answering situational questions more effectively.

As we take more and more sample tests, our ability to answer these types of questions increases, but so too does our ability to spot the right answers amongst poorly written distractors and score higher than we really should do on low-quality, poorly written sample tests. So, unfortunately, your increasing performance may not all be attributed to a sponge-like brain for project management knowledge; some might be due to an ability to quickly spot weak wrong answers. In the exam-writing world, this is called “testwiseness.”

Testwise Signs of Poorly Written Questions

1. Clanging
A word or phrase in the question also appears in the correct answer: “A Release Map is commonly used to…”

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