We have the flexibility to choose when and where we study for the FAA written test. So why do some students struggle to understand FAA practice test questions, while others don’t?
An FAA written exam or written test is officially known as an FAA Airman Knowledge Test. The FAA uses multiple choice questions on the test. They can be a direct question with several answers, an incomplete sentence followed by several answers that complete the sentence, or a stated problem with several answers based on a provided image. Only one answer can be correct, and the others are referred to as distractors.
One thing that aspiring pilots like you have in common is a desire to pass the FAA written test.
As Atul Gawande shares in his book The Checklist Manifesto:
It is common to misconceive how checklists function in complex lines of work. They are not comprehensive how-to guides, whether for building a skyscraper or getting a plan out of trouble. They are quick and simple tools aimed to buttress the skills of expert professionals.
The difference is how we approach our skills. Understanding how to use a checklist is a skill that will help you in your aviation journey.
Here is a mental checklist to build confidence with practice questions while preparing for your FAA knowledge test.
1. What are they really asking about?
Our checklist begins with simplifying a question to the key ideas. You’ll do this by prioritizing what is important and setting aside extra details. At first, it will seem like everything is important. Plus, the process may seem slow. Trust the process. Your speed will improve over time.
Let’s start with the following practice question.
At the discretion of the PIC and considering their effects on other aircraft in the area, what aircraft lights should normally be illuminated when taxiing on or across any runway to increase the conspicuousness of the aircraft?
– All exterior lights.
– All interior lights.
– Only the position lights and the rotating beacon.
We can use the following steps to help us understand what they are really asking about.
1) Read the question.
2) Identify the key ideas.
3) Create your version.
4) Verify it makes sense.
First, read the practice question above. Build the discipline to read a question so you can minimize silly mistakes like this:
“The worst part is there are questions that I know I missed that I NEED to know and are so simple to review.”
Second, identify the key ideas. Here’s what that could look like with the bold text below:
At the discretion of the PIC and considering their effects on other aircraft in the area, what aircraft lights should normally be illuminated when taxiing on or across any runway to increase the conspicuousness of the aircraft?
Third, create your version. Paraphrasing will reinforce that you are on the right track. Here’s a possible before and after:
At the discretion of the PIC and considering their effects on other aircraft in the area, what aircraft lights should normally be illuminated when taxiing on or across any runway to increase the conspicuousness of the aircraft?
↓
What lights should the pilot in command turn on when taxiing on a runway to help make their aircraft more visible?
Now you have an easier to understand question.
Fourth, verify it makes sense. A way to quickly do that is to verbalize. That means read your question out loud. If you get stuck, try to connect the key ideas from the question to the real world using a scenario. In other words, think about the question behind the question.
If we distill the original practice question to an underlying theme, we discover it’s about safety.
Next, let’s move closer to finding the best answer by tapping into our existing knowledge.
2. How does this relate to what I already know?
Instead of starting from scratch, we can lean into our memories to steer us in the right direction. These include skills you’ve developed, knowledge you’ve acquired, challenges you’ve overcome, your unique experiences, and more.
In Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel’s book Make It Stick, they talk about how learning affects us:
Learning always builds on a store of prior knowledge. We interpret and remember events by building connections to what we already know.
Let’s bring back our practice question. As a reminder, here’s the original alongside the paraphrased version:
At the discretion of the PIC and considering their effects on other aircraft in the area, what aircraft lights should normally be illuminated when taxiing on or across any runway to increase the conspicuousness of the aircraft?
↓
What lights should the pilot in command turn on when taxiing on a runway to help make their aircraft more visible?
Take 30 seconds to think of the ways that you can connect the question above to your knowledge. Here are some examples:
– You saw an airliner taking off while waiting at the gate for a recent flight.
– You spotted a Cessna 172 taxiing in a video while studying your online ground school.
– You noticed a flight instructor do something while getting ready to enter a runway during your discovery flight.
– You thought about how this scenario could apply to your car.
– You read something about this in the Aeronautical Information Manual.
At this point, you may feel nudged with a correct answer in mind. And if not, that is okay.
Let’s talk about what the next steps look like.
3. What are my next steps?
So far we’ve gone through the steps to understand the question and connect it to something we already know. If there are additional materials like a figure, chart, or diagram, then use it to continue towards your answer. If there are no supplementary materials, then we can begin working through our answer choices.
Let’s bring back our original practice test question.
At the discretion of the PIC and considering their effects on other aircraft in the area, what aircraft lights should normally be illuminated when taxiing on or across any runway to increase the conspicuousness of the aircraft?
– All exterior lights.
– All interior lights.
– Only the position lights and the rotating beacon.
Based on our earlier steps, we know they are asking about what aircraft lights a pilot should turn on while taxiing on a runway. Our intuition may say this is about safety. Our experiences may have us remember a specific moment from our past.
We’re now ready to work through the answer choices. I recommend starting from the top and working your way through the list. The exception is a calculation question where you have an answer that is an exact match or really close to one of the choices.
Here’s our practice question one more time with feedback in the brackets.
At the discretion of the PIC and considering their effects on other aircraft in the area, what aircraft lights should normally be illuminated when taxiing on or across any runway to increase the conspicuousness of the aircraft?
– All exterior lights. [Correct answer. If we want to make our aircraft more visible, then turning on all exterior lights is the best option.]
– All interior lights. [Distractor. Does turning on the interior lights make the aircraft more visible?]
– Only the position lights and the rotating beacon. [Distractor. What aircraft lights are required for VFR flight? Plus, the question asks how to increase the visibility of the aircraft.]
Let’s talk about how this approach helps you succeed. Check out the comments below:
– “1/3 of the questions I’ve either never seen were in the test, or the questions and answers were worded very differently.”
– “I did not do good on my PPL exam. Got a bunch of questions I’ve never seen before.”
– “Once the exam started I quickly noticed all the questions I were getting were only somewhat familiar, extremely wordy, or just way too similar of answer choices.”
What do you notice about the feedback?
The FAA does not release live airman knowledge test questions. Start early and build the discipline to read each question and state it in your own words. This approach helps you develop a process to handle a question that you may not have seen before.
Malcolm Gladwell describes how we can learn faster by asking experts for help in his book Blink:
And everyone knows that it’s better to have an expert show you — and not just tell you — how to play tennis or golf or a musical instrument. We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction.
Here is a video walkthrough of how to approach FAA practice test questions.
Walkthrough of a direct question
If you found value in the video above, then I have more to share. Let me know where I can send more videos:
Three keys for approaching FAA practice test questions are:
– What are they really asking about?
– How does this relate to what I already know?
– What are my next steps?
Whether you’ve just started preparing for the FAA written test, fallen off track and are restarting your studying again, or you have your FAA knowledge test coming up in a couple of weeks, remember you can learn the skill of how to approach FAA test questions.
When you think about your FAA knowledge test, how does that make you feel?
