The Electrician’s Skip-it System™

During the time that I was the Master Electrician Examiner, I also monitored the electricians’ progress while they were writing their exam. So, if an electrician needed any help in understanding the rationale or intent of any of the test questions, I was right there and could easily answer any question for clarification.

It was not uncommon to see an electrician spending too much time on a single question. This was very frustrating for the electrician writing the exam and frustrating for me, as well. It is no fun watching one of our electricians get caught up in the moment. I discovered, while proctoring an exam room full of electricians writing the Masters Exam, that we electricians were all in need of a system or template to answer questions. That is, a system that would allow for successfully answering a sequence of multiple choice questions. This template would be used consistently and constantly for a period of hours that would lead to successful exam writing.

Ask three electricians how to do a job and you will get five answers.!

The Electrician’s Skip-it System™ ROUND 1: 30 SECONDS PER QUESTION – 25% OF EXAM TIME – 45 minutes If you can’t answer the question within 30 seconds, skip-it and go to the next question ROUND 2: 60 SECONDS PER QUESTION – 30% OF EXAM TIME – 54 MINUTES If you can’t answer the question within 60 seconds, skip-it and go to the next question ROUND 3: 120 SECONDS PER QUESTION – 30% OF EXAM TIME – 54 MINUTES If you can’t answer the question within 120 seconds, skip- it and go to the next question ROUND 4: # SECONDS PER QUESTION – 15% OF EXAM TIME – 27 MINUTES Time for an educated guess using the process of elimination—never leave any question unanswered

What this basically means is that if I don't know the answer to a question or I encounter a question that I am not sure about the question itself- I Skip-it. And I will skip the next question, and the next question as well as I might even skip the next question on my first pass through the entire exam, which I call Round 1. This means to me, on Round 1, I catch the low hanging fruit, that is, the easy questions that I know about and know that I am going to get the right answer!

Then, on to the harder questions- the questions that take more time in Round 2. It is a process, a system, a template to be used for Round 3 and Round 4 - over and over again for any electrical exam- only the percentages of exam time will change based on the particular exam your writing.

The point of all of this, is to pass the exam without rushing- answering the question methodically and without pressure, using the Skip-it system.

Marvin Rosenberg is an authority and creator of electrical exam preparation. He is a Red Seal Endorsed Master Electrician who has worked for more than 30 years in the electrical trade in the residential, industrial, commercial and institutional sectors.

The experience of working as an Electrical Service Inspector as well as a Master Electrician Examiner led Marvin to start teaching journeypersons and apprentices exam preparation. He is the electrical course developer and advisor in the Centre for Continuous Learning and teaches in the Electrical Apprenticeship and Skilled Trades program at George Brown College in Toronto.

Marvin continues to enjoy teaching Pre-exam courses for Construction and Maintenance Electrician, Domestic and Rural Electrician, as well as Master Electrician.