Learning Your Theory
How to prepare for your Theory Test
- Buy the Highway Code and read it through. Buy a notebook, and write down anything you know you don’t know.
- Buy the Focus CD Theory and Hazard Perception. Try either a mock test or a practice session.
- Write down the questions and answers you get wrong.
- Repeat, first reading carefully through your notebook. If you get a question wrong again, write the answer down again. You will read it more often!
- Only delete anything from your notebook if you are sure you know it.
- If you need anything explained, or you are really having trouble, ask me to help you in your driving lesson.
- If you can pass on the computer, you should be able to pass the real test.
- On test day:
- Answer all the easy questions quickly, and mark the others to come back to.
- Go back, and think about each question. Most questions have a right answer, a plausible-but-wrong answer, a clearly-wrong answer and a really-silly answer. If you are able to work out the answer fairly quickly, good. Otherwise, mark it again and move on.
- Use the rest of the time to find a "best guess" answer to the remaining questions. Don’t choose the clearly-wrong answer or the really-silly answer. You have a 50% chance of guessing right.
How to prepare for your Hazard Perception Test
- You will see fourteen film clips, but fifteen scoring hazards - so one of the clips has two. And there will be other developing hazards that are not scored. It does not matter if you click on the "wrong" hazard, but if you click too much the computer will think you are guessing (it says cheating!) and you will get no marks for that clip.
- There are five marks per scoreable hazard. The sooner you spot it, the more marks you get, so look well ahead and click as soon as you see a possible hazard. You have to average just under three to pass.
- However, remember that although the Highway Code says a hazard is "anything that may cause you to change speed or direction", the test is about "developing hazards". That (apparently) means picking out the moments when somebody else may do something which causes you to take action - so road signs, bends, "empty" side roads, etc., don’t count. Pedestrians, vehicles that may move unexpectedly, vehicles approaching in side roads, etc., do count.
This is basically a matter of practice. Try the specimen tests on your CD. If you have problems, ask me to help you in a driving lesson. Once you know what to look for, more practice will do it.
Help from me takes two forms: working with the CD on my laptop, and looking for real hazards as you drive on the real road.