Mental Arithmetic Questions

The first 12 questions of the numeracy skills test are mental arithmetic questions. These questions are obviously in the audio format. They work by repeating the question twice before giving you 18 seconds to then answer the question after the second repeat has finished. Many candidates struggle with the timing aspect of this first section and this is  for a number of reasons listed below:

1. Mathematical Methods: Many people use ineffective methods to multiply, work out percentages and other calculations which costs them valuable time in the exam.
2. Practice: Practice makes perfect as the cliché goes and it certainly applies to the numeracy skills test. We appreciate that the government tests alone don’t provide enough material on their own which is why we have developed 21 practice numeracy skills tests.
3. Question Types: Everyone has certain questions they do not like, whether that be proportion questions or percentages. The best thing to do with these question types is to tackle them head on. Practising a specific question type one after the other is helpful which is why we have created topic revision tests.
4. knowledge: For many taking the numeracy skills test, you may not have covered maths since your GCSE’s and even when you covered it then you possibly didn’t enjoy it. Maths is certainly a marmite subject with people either enjoying it or hating it. If you struggled with your GCSE’s and didn’t get the best support during that time you have forgotten the knowledge you require to help you overcome the timing aspect of the numeracy skills test. Without the necessary knowledge, trying to work through the mental arithmetic questions under the time constraints of the numeracy skills test becomes almost impossible.

Whatever the reason for your difficulty with the mental arithmetic questions, QTS Maths Tutor can help in two ways. Firstly we have exceptional resources in the form of practice numeracy skills tests and secondly we have expert QTS Maths tutors who provide the very best tuition to help you prepare for your professional numeracy skills test.

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QTS Maths Tutor Team

We help thousands of students each year with revision, courses and online exams.