Some advice needed 1ZO-808 exam

[BlackCat]

Hi there I am new to this forum.

I need some advice / encouragement! I have several years developer experience but never really used Java before. I did a couple of beginner tutorials on Pluralsight at end of 2019, then I decided i would like to study for the 1ZO-808 exam. I know there are now Java 11 exams but I decided to do Java 8 as it seemed there were a lot more study guides available.

I bought an online tutorial from Udemy called "Oracle Java Certification - Pass the Associate 1ZO-808 exam". I also bought from Udemy their "OCA (1ZO-808) Exam Simulation 2020" - there are 4 practice exams in this.

I have worked through all of the online tutorial (using IntelliJ to run for myself the code for they examples they give), I thought it was pretty thorough and i understood most of it. Each section has Question examples at the end and i found i was getting around 50% of those right, and I understand the explains for the 50% i was getting wrong.

I've now done 2 of the 4 practice exams, but I have scored 51% and 48% which is quite dispiriting. I hoped i might get nearer to 60% at least on the first couple of attempts.

What should I focus on next? Should I just continue to do as many practice exams as I can do and hope that my scores start improving? I know I can get more from Enthuware or from Whizlabs. Or should I go through the Udemy online tutorial again? Or should I think about buying a book such as "OCA Java SE 8 Programmer I Certification Guide" by Mala Gupta and start working through that instead? Has anyone else started off with practice exams and found they are scoring around 50% initially? At what point did their scores start improving?

I have some time off work so I was really hoping i could study full time and pass this exam in 1-2 months before I have to return to work - right now I'm just over 3 weeks into studying.

Thanks

[admin]

Your scores suggest that you are not strong enough on fundamentals and so, my humble suggestion to you would be to go through OCAJP Fundamentals book (costs 99 cents only) first. Do the coding exercises given at the end of each chapter using notepad and command line (instead of any IDE).

After you do the above, use our mock exams one by one. After each mock exam, go through the explanation of all the questions.

If you follow this, you should see your score increase after each mock test.

HTH,
Paul.

[BlackCat]

Ok many thanks Paul. I’ve downloaded the fundamentals book and will follow your suggestions
Much appreciated