Why One Full Mock Exam Before PD2 or PD3 Helps — and What Research Says About Exam Nerves

The most common way to prepare in the last week is to re-read: notes, phrase lists, old answers. It feels productive, and that feeling is the trap. In a well-known experiment, students who re-read a text felt more confident than students who tested themselves on it, yet a week later they remembered less. Testing yourself is the thing that works, and it rarely feels as good as it is.

There's a second reason to test yourself before Prøve i Dansk, and it's the one people ask about most: nerves. Across 24 studies, practice tests lowered test anxiety on average. They don't make it disappear, and the research has real limits, which this post is honest about. But it's a good case for doing one thing in the week before the written exam: sit one full mock exam, under the exam's own conditions, once.

The setup: what exam day actually asks of you

Most of your practice has been one task at a time. The exam isn't. On the written day you sit reading and then writing in one go, each on its own clock. In PD3, reading is 25 minutes for delprøve 1, collected, then 65 minutes for the rest, and writing is 2½ hours. PD2 has its own timings, set out in the PD2 exam guide.

For the November sitting, the PD3 written exam is on 10 November. The PD2 written exam is on 11 November. The oral comes later, on its own day.

None of that is hard to know. What's hard is knowing how it feels: where your focus drops in the second hour, how fast the reading time goes, whether you leave yourself minutes to check your writing. That's what one mock run tells you, and nothing else does.

1. Testing beats re-reading, and it doesn't feel like it

In Roediger and Karpicke's 2006 study, students either re-read short texts or practised recalling them. After five minutes, re-reading looked slightly better. After two days and after a week, the students who had tested themselves remembered more. The re-readers predicted they would do better, and they were wrong.

That isn't a one-off lab result. A 2021 analysis of 222 classroom studies, with over 48,000 students, found that quizzing raised achievement by a medium amount on average. One factor that mattered was whether the quiz matched the format of the real test. Practice in the exam's own format, not a loose version of it.

2. Practice tests lower exam nerves on average

This is the finding that matters most for exam week. A 2023 review pooled 24 studies (3,374 participants) that measured test anxiety after practice testing. On average, practice tests reduced anxiety by a medium amount, and 22 of the 25 effects pointed the same way.

A large school survey points the same direction, though it is weaker evidence: of 1,408 students who had used regular retrieval practice, 72% said it made them less nervous before tests. That is what students reported, not a controlled measurement, but it matches the review.

3. Why it may work: fewer unknowns

The authors of the 2023 review suggest two reasons. One is simply that you learn more. The other is less uncertainty: about the format, the difficulty and what the real exam will ask of you. They offer this as an explanation, not something they proved. But it fits what candidates describe. Much of exam-day nerves is not knowing: how long the reading text is, what the room feels like when the clock is nearly out, whether you'll go blank in the oral.

A mock answers those questions in advance. On the day, the format is no longer new. Only the Danish is.

4. What you've tested is more stable under stress

A 2016 study in Science found that people who learned material through practice tests remembered it just as well after a stressful task (an unprepared speech in front of judges) as people who weren't stressed. People who had only re-studied showed the usual drop under stress. It was one lab study, with word and picture lists rather than Danish, and the authors were careful not to oversell it. Still, it points the same way as everything above: what you have retrieved before, you retrieve more reliably under pressure.

5. Keep it low-stakes, or it can backfire

Here's the part that usually gets left out. In one study, students who took high-stakes quizzes did worse on the final test than students whose quizzes didn't count. And in the 2023 review, easier practice tests reduced anxiety more than hard ones. The researchers recommend practice that doesn't count and can be repeated.

So treat your mock as a rehearsal, not a verdict. It isn't the exam. A weak part on the report isn't a prediction; it's a map of where to spend the days you have left. And don't sit it the night before, when a bad result has no time to be useful.

6. How to sit one mock in the last week

Pick a day 5–7 days before the written exam. Close enough to feel real, far enough to act on what you learn.
Use a practice set you haven't done. You want to meet the text for the first time, as on the day.
Run the exam's clocks and don't stop them. No looking things up inside a section. That habit is exactly what the mock is there to break.
Write down where the time ran out. That note is often worth more than the score.
Leave the last minutes of writing for checking verb endings, word order and der/som. That's where easy marks are lost.
Review the weakest part, then go back to single tasks. Spend the remaining days on that part only.
Then stop. One mock tells you what the day feels like. Five mocks in a week mostly tell you that you're tired.

What the research doesn't show

Being honest about the limits is part of using research well:

None of these studies tested a full, timed mock exam. They tested quizzes, recall tests and classroom practice. A mock exam is a sensible way to apply what they found, not a proven method in itself.
None of it is about Prøve i Dansk or Danish. Studies of second-language learners find that anxiety and results are linked, but that is a correlation, not proof that practice tests reduce anxiety for language exams in particular.
Practice doesn't remove nerves. The average effect is medium, and it varies a lot between people. Some nerves on the day are normal and don't mean you'll do badly.
If anxiety stops you from functioning, that is something to get help with, not push through. A review of 44 trials found that structured programmes, behavioural ones in particular, reduced test anxiety in students. Your sprogcenter or your doctor is the place to start.

Common mistakes

Spending the last week re-reading. It feels like revision. Testing yourself does more.
Sitting the mock too late. The night before, a bad result only adds worry.
Treating the result as a prediction. It's a rehearsal. It shows you where to look.
Pausing the clock. Then you've practised the tasks, not the exam.
Doing five mocks instead of one. After the first, single tasks on your weakest part are a better use of time.

Danish phrase bank: words for nerves and exam day

Talking about nerves

Jeg er nervøs for prøven. (I'm nervous about the exam.)
eksamensangst / præstationsangst (exam anxiety / performance anxiety)
Jeg gik helt i stå. (I completely froze.)

The clock

Tiden er gået. (Time is up.)
Der er ti minutter tilbage. (There are ten minutes left.)
Jeg løb tør for tid. (I ran out of time.)

Buying a moment in the oral

Må jeg lige tænke et øjeblik? (Can I just think for a moment?)
Kan du gentage spørgsmålet? (Could you repeat the question?)
Undskyld, jeg mener … (Sorry, I mean …)
Lad mig starte forfra. (Let me start again.)

Sources

Roediger & Karpicke (2006). Test-enhanced learning. Psychological Science, 17(3). doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
Yang, Luo, Vadillo, Yu & Shanks (2021). Testing (quizzing) boosts classroom learning: a systematic and meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 147(4). doi:10.1037/bul0000309
Yang, Li, Zhao, Luo & Shanks (2023). Do practice tests (quizzes) reduce or provoke test anxiety? A meta-analytic review. Educational Psychology Review, 35. doi:10.1007/s10648-023-09801-w
Agarwal, D'Antonio, Roediger, McDermott & McDaniel (2014). Classroom-based programs of retrieval practice reduce middle school and high school students' test anxiety. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 3(3). doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2014.07.002
Smith, Floerke & Thomas (2016). Retrieval practice protects memory against acute stress. Science, 354(6315). doi:10.1126/science.aah5067
Hinze & Rapp (2014). Retrieval (sometimes) enhances learning: performance pressure reduces the benefits of retrieval practice. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(4). doi:10.1002/acp.3032
Huntley, Young, Temple, Longworth, Smith, Jha et al. (2019). The efficacy of interventions for test-anxious university students: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 63. doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2019.01.007
Teimouri, Goetze & Plonsky (2019). Second language anxiety and achievement: a meta-analysis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 41(2). doi:10.1017/S0272263118000311

Related guides

PD3 Reading Timing: 25 + 65 Is Two Exams, Not 90 Minutes: the clock you'll be rehearsing.
The 4-Month Study Plan for Prøve i Dansk: where a mock fits in the final month.
How to Pass Prøve i Dansk 3: the whole exam, all four skills.
How to Pass Prøve i Dansk 2: the same for PD2.

Sit a full mock in Bestå

Bestå's Mock Exam runs a full PD2 or PD3 in the exam's format: reading and writing on the exam's own clocks, then the oral on a separate day with an AI examiner who asks follow-up questions. At the end you get an indication for each part, so you know where to spend your last days. The Mock Exam is part of Bestå Tutor; the Gym's PD2- and PD3-format practice sets are there for the single-task work that comes after.

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