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It is important to avoid rushing through any question on the test. Try to spend at least one minute but no more than three minutes on each multiple choice or gridded-answer open response question. This way, you will not make any careless mistakes and you will not get bogged down on a tough question. Remember, for all intents and purposes, a TAKS test is not timed. While the expectation is that you will be able to complete each TAKS test in a few hours, you may work at it all day. In fact, you can even continue working on it past the end of the scheduled school day -- and even into the night! -- as long as you stop work at some point during the day on which the test is scheduled.

But just because you can take all day does not mean you should or that doing so will help you. If you linger over a tough question, it means you really do not know the answer. So why waste time and mental energy on a question you are unlikely to answer correctly? If you don't know the answer to a multiple choice question, just guess; you are not penalized for guessing. Stewing over a difficult question will only cause you anxiety and emotional distress. Such stress is very fatiguing and is likely to cause you to answer some of the other questions on the test that you do know incorrectly. Therefore, if you find yourself stumped, it is usually best to move on to other questions to which you are much more likely to be able to provide the correct answer, thus boosting your score.

It is nearly as bad to breeze through a question without careful effort. The people who write the questions take advantage of the fact that it is natural for you to work quickly in an effort to answer as many questions as you can in the limited time provided. So, in the multiple choice questions, they try to trick you by including wrong answers you might carelessly choose if you are rushing.

In short, never hurry through a question that appears easy and never waste time lingering over a question that seems difficult or confusing.