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9 Answers

student failed PPL written

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Private Pilot

Hi all - well this is a first - a student of mine failed his PPL (airplane) Knowledge Exam today.  Rather spectacularly.

What troubles me is that looking at the learning codes (PLT008 or similar) it seems like kinda an even spread across the board, suggesting a lack of depth.  He made a 53%, or almost half wrong.

His study habits were (in my estimation) good, and he felt confident, and was making 85's in his practice tests (ASA, King, etc).   

So my question now is, since we have the codes - is there any way to correlate those now to some questions that are tied to each specific code?  I feel like if we can get (for example) a question or two that triggers the PLT008 code, then it will help me to see where any specific misunderstandings are.

Now, this is the internet, and I knew the risks, but I hope no one misconstrues this as as looking for any sort of question/answer bank.  Just wanting to know if there is a way to get some specific examples to help us focus.  Otherwise its basically just saying "go back and study it all and try again" which would be demoralizing.  But we will if we have to :-)

I guess its possible he just had a bad day or got all the trick questions.

thanks!

adam

 

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9 Answers



  1. Rkon on Oct 18, 2019

    Probably this can help: https://www.faa.gov/training_testing/testing/test_questions/media/parsampleexam.pdf

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  2. Rkon on Oct 18, 2019

    Sorry, my previous answer was wrong, it wont help.
    After short investigation I can say that:
    1. Code of mistakes doesn’t point particular question but area of knowledge. For instance PLT008 means “Calculate a/c performance- landing distance”. So I suspect that code is prompt to DPE about area of knowledge which student should being quizzed on oral.
    2. Dauntless soft from checkride.com is able to help you what particular code means.

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  3. KDS on Oct 19, 2019

    The knowledge test (written test) used to have four possible answers. Now, it’s only three, but the 70% passing grade hasn’t changed. So, when you realize that a person could get a 33% just by random guessing, a 53% is a serious red flag.

    My first guess would be some kind of test-nervousness if they were getting 85% on practice tests. The countermeasure for that would be to make his practice tests as much like the real thing as humanly possible. Make the setting and procedures similar to the testing facility. That way, when he takes the test, it is closer to what has been done before.

    Another possibility is overconfidence. I spent years teaching an instrument test prep for a formal night school. I knew the material backwards and forwards. Then, when I would take a test on our computer system, I would be surprised by how many questions I missed. When I went back and looked at the missed questions, I could easily see why I missed them. I had only read half of the question, my mind jumped to an answer for a different question, and I would pick the wrong answer. The solution to that is what I had seen my instructor write on the board before many of the tests. That is “RTFQ”. The GP rated version of that is “Read the Full Question”, however we were in a setting where the R rated version was the real message. At any rate, possibly drilling into your student to RTFQ would help. Otherwise, knowing the material “too well” can work against a person.

    Lastly, I would not be satisfied sending a student in to take a knowledge test with an 85% average. The standard I used for an endorsement was three practice tests in a row with a 90% or above on all three of them. I think bumping his standard up before sending him back for a retest might be in order.

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  4. KDS on Oct 19, 2019

    One more thought. Is the material he is using for the practice tests current? One of the questions to ask him is if there were questions he didn’t recognize.

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  5. ayavner on Oct 19, 2019

    Thanks guys – some very good points… We’ll shoot for 90% going forward and yes I think RTFQ is probably a big part of the problem. I am not sure 90 vs 85 would have helped in this case – another 5% still would have been a fail… so yes this throws a serious red flag up on my process.

    One thing I’ve found with the younger students is they just want to fly… and short of following them home, trying to get a handle on their study habits is like trying to nail a fried egg to the wall.

    I did find something that does exactly what I was hoping for – it looks like some legacy material on an old AOPA site. https://www.aopa.org/-/media/Files/AOPA/Home/News/All-News/2009/Cust-(40)/tst_pp.pdf.

    using this i can do a ctl-F on the code, then cycle through the different questions related to it. Yes it is out of date, but should help get a handle on the types of things that are tripping him up.

    I have actually looked into this dauntless App and I think I am going to give it a try – we are meeting on Sunday afternoon and I think now he may be a little more willing to take my study suggestions to heart.. Stay tuned and thanks again for the help!

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  6. Best Answer


    Dauntless Aviation www.dauntless-soft.com on Oct 29, 2019

    Adam,

    You’re on a website – Ask A CFI, sponsored by Dauntless Aviation, makers of the best FAA written test prep out there. Yes, students who study using our competitors will increasingly fail because the FAA is increasingly introducing unpublished and variant questions. Generally speaking, this is to discourage memorization. Likewise, the PLT (and ACS) codes that the FAA now issues are deliberately vague (and they often shift questions between various classifications) because the FAA wants you not just to review the specific question that the student got wrong, but to spend some time reviewing the overall learning area where the student was deficient.

    Please support this site, support your student, and support the making of smarter pilots: please direct your student to our test prep material at http://www.FAATest.com. Our apps feature, by far, the best learning content in the business. We take pride in deep, illustrated explanations and plenty of immediately accessible supplementary material such as the integrated glossary of aviation terms (built from over 50 separate data sources!) that we’ve also integrated into this AskACFI site. Our apps are available for essentially all FAA tests, are regularly updated, and include free lifetime updates. They are reasonably priced and are available for PC, Mac, iOS, and Android.

    http://www.FAATest.com
    http://www.Dauntless-Soft.com/Products/GroundSchool

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  7. ayavner on Oct 29, 2019

    Thanks, Dauntless! Yup, if you notice my last post, I ended by saying that I would be trying the dauntless app – I’ve looked it over and I think it has some pretty powerful features. And again my purpose for wanting some sort of correlation to specific questions was not to aid in memorization but to help me assess which areas of a specific task were tripping him up… so sounds like we are in violent agreement here and I’ll let you know how it goes! I can tell you that failing the test seems to have increased his focus, so that is good! 😀

    thanks!!
    adam

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  8. Dauntless Aviation www.dauntless-soft.com on Oct 29, 2019

    Thank you! Indeed, please let us know how it goes (via our online helpdesk http://www.dauntless-soft.com/helpdesk) as we’re always keen on feedback. It seems that the lightbulb has finally gone off at the FAA and they are trying to make the tests actually correlate to the aviation stuff that the student knows. As you said, hopefully this experience will turn your student on to smarter study.

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  9. Pilot82 on Nov 19, 2019

    If you can get access to Gleims online PPL test prep, their questions include the PLT codes that correlate to which practice question. It helps me a lot when reviewing missed questions with my students.

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