See 11 tips on how to study for Enem 2023

The National Secondary Education Examination (Enem) was initially created to assess the performance of students graduating from high school, but today it is the main form of admission to higher education in Brazil.

To take the test – which this year will be applied on November 5th and 12th –, it is recommended that the student prepare in advance, since the list of contents that fall into the exam is extensive.

If you are studying on your own, planning is even more important to ensure that nothing important is left out of your studies.

To help you organize your studies, we will give 11 tips on how to study for the exam .

How to study for the exam? See 11 practical tips

1. Plan yourself

The most important step to study alone for the Enem is planning. You need to organize what to study in the time you have available.

First, you need to define how much time you have to study until the test date and how many hours will be dedicated to studying per day.

The Enem edict brings all the contents that will be included in the exam in each of the areas, and below we will also list which are the main ones.

2. Create a schedule

List all the subjects that will need to be studied and distribute this content over the days and periods that you have available. Remember that you need to set aside time to learn the theory and also to train with exercises.

The coordinator of the Poliedro pre-university course, Pedro Oscar Lorencini Junior, explained that the time to be spent on theory and practice depends a lot on the student’s relationship with each content.

“If his theoretical basis for that content is good, it is important that he dedicates more time to solving exercises. Now, if the student has difficulty or lacks knowledge of the content, it is important that he has access to the theory part to be able to carry out the exercises.”

He advocated an average of 60% of time devoted to theory, and 40% devoted to practice.

3. Set priorities for matters

Knowing which course and which universities you are interested in applying to also helps you define which subjects should be your priority. Each institution adopts a different system of “weights” to enter a given course.

For example: a university may consider, to enter medicine, the weight 3 for the natural sciences test and the weight 2 for the other tests. That is, your grade in natural sciences will be multiplied by three, while the other grades will be multiplied by two.

Therefore, it is important that the candidate reads the public notice for the course he wants in the faculties he is most interested in. This way, you will know which subjects to prioritize.

4. Establish a good study location

Studying in the same place every time can help you stick to your schedule and establish a routine.

If possible, give preference to a quiet, silent and calm place, without disturbances or distractions.

5. Write down the mistakes and successes of the questions

It is important to correct all the exercises you do, identifying which were the successes and errors in each one.

Redoing the exercises until you get them right helps you to fix the contents in the right way and also to understand which contents you have more difficulty and need to study more.

6. Do simulations and old tests

Lorencini highlighted that the main tip for the Enem is to be familiar with the test before the day of taking it.

“It is a very tiring test, with a lot of reading, which takes a lot of time for the student who has not had practice. It is necessary for the student to take Enem tests from previous years and practice, feel there as if he were actually going to take the test, ”he said.

Taking entire tests, such as simulations or previous editions of the Enem, the candidate can understand how much time he takes in each area and which subjects will be more difficult. In addition to the best order to take the exam.

You can choose different ways of testing to find out which works best. Either in the order they come, answering the easiest ones first and the most difficult ones later, leaving the essay for the end or starting with it.

Solving the entire test at once is exhausting, and it’s important to learn to deal with it before the day.

7. Control the time

During the test, it is important to keep an eye on the clock, so that it is possible to solve the questions, write the essay and fill in the feedback before the maximum time runs out.

Practicing writing essays while studying helps you know how much time to set aside to write the text.

8. Write at least one essay a week

In addition to becoming familiar with the test as a whole, it is important that the candidate is familiar with the essay.

Enem demands a specific text model, the argumentative dissertation. The student must defend a thesis related to the theme exposed by the supporting texts and, obligatorily, present an intervention proposal at the end.

The coordinator of Colégio Poliedro, Vivian Cintra, explained that, rather than writing a “great” text, it is better to deliver an entire text, with everything charged by the evaluators.

“You keep pushing yourself to write the best text in the world, then you can’t finish the text in the right time.”

She said that the main tip for writing the Enem is the same as for other entrance exams: training, whether using themes from previous years, or proposals found on the internet. “You have to practice writing to gain speed.”

9. Keep up to date

Consuming news about what is happening in Brazil and in the world is also part of preparing for the Enem, and especially for the newsroom.

The exam aims to test not only the contents learned during high school, but also the ability to relate these contents to the world in which we live.

Therefore, it is important to stay informed about current events and try to understand how the subjects studied (mainly history and geography) can help to understand today’s events. This relationship can be used as an argument during writing.

10. Rest

Rest is essential to keep your mental health up to date, which can greatly influence your performance during the test.

Vivian Cintra even said that leisure time can also be used to build references.

“Any reference they can use in the essay is valid, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Disney movie, if it’s a book that falls on the mandatory list of an entrance exam contest”, she said.

According to Cintra, it is possible to use this free time to “connect what they watch, what they read, what music they hear, to events in the world and in Brazil”.

11. Go over the main contents

Set aside a week before the exam just to review the contents of the test that will be taken that weekend.

That way, you remember what was studied the longest, what may have been forgotten and what you had the most difficulty with.

How does the ENEM test work?

Currently, the Enem tests are applied on two consecutive Sundays. On the first day of the test, the student has 5 and a half hours to solve 45 language and code questions, 45 humanities questions and write an essay.

On the second day, there are 5 hours to do 45 math questions and another 45 of natural sciences. Keeping an eye on the time, including so that it is possible to fill in the template correctly and pass the wording clean, is essential.

From 2024, however, the test model should change, as it will have to adapt to the new high school program.

What are the subjects that fall the most in the Enem?

We separate a list of the contents that fall most in Enem in each subject, according to a survey carried out by the Polyhedron Teaching System based on the tests from 2019 to 2021.

Sociology

• State, democracy and political participation
• 21st century challenges
• sociology of culture
• contemporary sociology
• Brazilian sociology
• Inequality, poverty and social conflict
• social institutions

Philosophy

• modern philosophy
• contemporary philosophy
• classical ancient philosophy
• Introduction to philosophy
• medieval philosophy

Geography

• agrarian geography
• Urbanization
• Cartography
• Demography
• Geomorphology
• Environmental issues
• Industrialization
• Geographic space
• World order and conflicts
• globalization

History

• From the sugar crisis to the heyday of the colonial system in Brazil
• Religion and monarchy in the modern age
• second reign
• World War II and the contemporary world
• First Republic in Brazil (1889-1930)
• Classic antiquity
• democratic republic
• Other Middle Ages
• Middle Ages in Western Europe and the beginning of the first Modernity
• 19th century
• was Vargas
• History and prehistory

Chemical

• Electrochemistry
• Physical states, systems and mixtures
• chemical kinetics
• redox
• Atomic models and electronic distribution
• inorganic reactions
• Physical properties of substances
• Solutions
• inorganic functions
• Ponderal Laws and Stoichiometry

Physical

• heat propagation
• Physical state changes
• Calorimetry
• Work, power and energy
• fluid statics
• electrical resistors

Biology

• Ecological succession and anthropogenic environmental changes
• Energy and matter in ecosystems
• Biological evolution
• Bioenergetics (respiration, fermentation, photosynthesis and chemosynthesis)
• Plants: classification, anatomy, histology, morphology and reproductive cycles
• Nucleic acids, genetic code and protein synthesis
• Animal physiology: immunity
• invertebrate zoology

Mathematics

• ratio and proportion
• Analysis of proportional quantities
• Mathematical sentences and algebraic modeling
• Notions of statistics: basic concepts
• relationship and function
• Flat figures area
• Numerical sequences, arithmetic progression (AP) and geometric progression (PG)
• Combinatorial analysis
• Probability

Languages

• Language, linguistic variation and multimodality
• Basic precepts of literary studies
• Punctuation
• Romanticism in Brazil: poetry
• Modernism in Brazil: 2nd generation (poetry)
• Modernism in Brazil: 2nd generation (prose)
• Textual typology and discursive genres
• reading relationships
• Textuality, cohesion and coherence
• Relationship between languages ​​and meaning effects
• Intertextuality and interdiscursivity
• language functions
• implied meanings

Summary

To be well prepared for the Enem, you need to study all the contents of the high school program, and also become familiar with the test model.

Creating a schedule is essential to make sure that no content is left out of the studies. It is important that you remember to distribute your study time between theory and practice.

The student needs to be prepared to manage the test time, especially on the day the essay will be handed in. For this, the best way to practice is by taking tests from previous editions or simulations, keeping an eye on time and trying to understand which contents will be faster or longer.

Resting is essential to keep your mental health up to date, which can influence your performance. Even so, leisure time can also be used to acquire referrals. A movie or song can relate to different contents learned during high school and be used as a reference in the Enem essay.