There is no single right number of questions per day, but there is a framework that holds up: on school days, 40 to 80 questions spread across subjects; at the weekend, 100 to 150 in total plus one mock exam. Treat those figures as a sustainable suggestion, not a research finding. The real measure is not the count but whether you find out why each wrong answer was wrong.
If the Turkish system is new to you, a quick orientation. The LGS (short for Liselere Geçiş Sistemi, the high school entrance system) is the national exam that students in Turkey sit at the end of 8th grade, usually at 13 or 14; its score decides which high schools they can be placed in. It is held in June. The school year began in September; the first weeks of the term are behind you and close to eight months remain, enough to build a routine and too little to postpone one.
What is the LGS and how is it structured?
The LGS has 90 multiple-choice questions, each with four options, split into two sessions on the same day. The verbal session gives 75 minutes for 50 questions: Turkish 20, History of the Turkish Revolution and Atatürk's Principles 10, Religious Culture and Ethics 10, English 10. The numerical session gives 80 minutes for 40 questions: Mathematics 20, Science 20. Three wrong answers cancel one correct answer; a blank costs nothing.
| Subject | Questions | Session |
|---|---|---|
| Turkish | 20 | Verbal, 75 min |
| History of the Turkish Revolution and Atatürk's Principles | 10 | Verbal, 75 min |
| Religious Culture and Ethics | 10 | Verbal, 75 min |
| English | 10 | Verbal, 75 min |
| Mathematics | 20 | Numerical, 80 min |
| Science | 20 | Numerical, 80 min |
Look at the timing. The verbal session allows about a minute and a half per question, the numerical session two minutes. Fewer questions with more time is no accident: most maths and science questions have to be read, thought through and sometimes worked out in several steps. That split is the first clue to dividing your study time.
Which subjects carry the most weight?
Turkish, mathematics and science. Three reasons: together they make up 60 of the 90 questions, they carry a higher coefficient in the scoring than the other three subjects, and their questions take longest to solve. A mistake in Turkish costs more than the same mistake in English. More than half of your weekly study time belongs to these three.
Weighting is not the same as dropping the rest. History, religious culture and English add up to 30 questions, their syllabus is narrow and regular review makes them stick. Every question you lose there has to be won back with a hard maths question. One or two short blocks a week for each of them is far cheaper than trying to rescue all three in May.
Then there is your own balance. If reading passages slow you down or basic arithmetic trips you up, the weight shifts there. The exam's structure plus your personal map of mistakes sets the weighting, and mocks and topic tests draw that map.
How many questions a day should you solve?
On school days 40 to 80, at the weekend 100 to 150 in total plus a mock; think of it as a frame you can keep up until June, not a prescription. The lower limit keeps a day from going empty; the upper limit leaves time to examine the mistakes. A student who solves 80 questions and never looks at a wrong answer learns less than one who solves 40 and writes down the reason for each mistake. When practice questions teach and when they merely produce a number is explained in the piece on the benefits of practice tests.
Spread the number across subjects. A school day might be 15 Turkish, 15 maths, 10 science and 10 from whichever of the other subjects is due that day. Piling everything onto one subject leaves another unseen for weeks, and it will still be waiting in June. Start low, too: stay under 40 a day for the first two weeks and raise the number once the routine holds; memory rewards spacing, not piles.
Then set yourself an honest yardstick. At the end of the week, instead of "how many questions did I solve", ask "how many of my mistakes can I explain". Was it a reading slip, a gap in knowledge, an arithmetic error or a shortage of time? Those four causes need four different fixes, and you only find out which one it was by going back to the question.
How do you prepare for long, text-heavy questions?
By reading every day. LGS questions often describe a situation, hand you a table or a graph, and ask a single thing at the end of two paragraphs. Knowing the topic is not enough; you have to read fast and accurately, pick the one number you need out of a table and ignore the rest. That skill does not come from listening to explanations. It comes from reading.
A practical rule: read at least one page of something that is not a textbook every day, novel, magazine or news. In Turkish reading questions, read the question stem before the passage; knowing what you are looking for shortens the search. In maths and science, read the text once and jot the given values in the margin. Going back to the start of the question for a second read is one of the biggest time sinks in the exam.
What matters here is not meeting a long question for the first time in June. Short, direct questions in topic tests are good for learning the topic. But every week should also include some long, scenario-based questions, or you will know the material and still get lost in the text.
What does a sustainable weekly plan look like?
Same time every day, every subject touched at least twice a week. How long the daily slot is matters less than keeping it fixed. The table is a sample for the autumn:
| Day | Subjects | Questions |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Maths, Turkish, History | 40–60 |
| Tuesday | Science, Turkish, English | 40–60 |
| Wednesday | Maths, Science, Religious Culture | 40–60 |
| Thursday | Turkish, Maths, History | 40–60 |
| Friday | The week's mistakes, light review | 30–40 |
| Saturday | Mock (one session) and its analysis | 40–50 + mock |
| Sunday | Weak topics, mistake notebook | 60–100 |
Shift the subjects to fit your timetable and your weak spots, but keep two rules: Turkish and maths appear on at least three days, and no subject goes more than a week untouched. Order inside the slot matters as well: maths and Turkish first, while attention is fresh; the memory-heavy history and religious culture at the end. Friday evening is deliberately light. Revisiting the week's mistakes teaches more than fresh questions, and you start the weekend rested.
Early in the year one session is enough for the mock: verbal one week, numerical the next. As the year goes on you put both sessions on the same day, in the exam's order and with the exam's timings.
How often should you take a mock exam, and how do you analyse it?
For now, one session every week or a full mock every two weeks; in the second term, a full mock every week; in the last six weeks, one or two a week. A full mock every week this early in the year, with most topics still untaught, only collects wrong answers from material you have not seen and drains morale. Frequency is not what makes the difference; analysing every mock to the end is.
The analysis has three questions. Why did I get this one wrong? Why did I leave this one blank? Which of my correct answers were guesses? The third is the one most students skip, and a guessed correct answer will not repeat itself in June. Sort the wrong answers into four groups: knowledge gap, reading slip, arithmetic error, ran out of time. Each needs its own fix: back to the topic, slower reading with underlining, writing out the intermediate steps, or a different order of attack. How to read a mock result subject by subject is laid out in the practice-test analysis guide.
The mistake notebook is the permanent form of that analysis. Four lines per mistake: a short summary of the question, the type of error, the critical step of the correct solution, and a date one week later for a retry. On that date, solve it again without looking at the solution. As the notebook grows you will see the same error coming back, and that repetition is the clearest sign of which topic to revisit.
The Turkish-language test section of this site has 35 eighth-grade tests, four of them LGS mocks split into two verbal and two numerical sessions, the rest topic tests; they are in Turkish only, as the exam is. Whatever source you use, read the solution only after you have thought about why you chose your own answer.
Should you guess or leave it blank?
If you cannot rule out a single option, leave it blank; if you can rule out at least one for certain, mark an answer. The arithmetic is simple. Three wrong answers cancel one right one. Guess blindly on four-option questions and, on average, one in four comes out right and three come out wrong; those three wipe out the one, and you are left with zero. A blind guess neither gains nor loses on average; it only eats time. Eliminate one option and the odds tip in your favour; with two gone, marking is clearly worth it.
In the exam itself, this rule becomes time management. Rather than spending a second minute on a question you are stuck on, mark it and move on, then come back at the end of the session. How to split the session time and which questions to start with is covered in the piece on time management in exams.
Knowing the timings is not enough; they have to be rehearsed. From the second term, take at least one mock a month under full exam conditions: in the morning, verbal session 75 minutes, a short break, numerical session 80 minutes, phone in another room, pen down when time is up. When the panic sets in and which subject eats too much time only shows up in that rehearsal; do not leave it as a surprise for June.
How do you handle exam nerves, and what can parents do?
The remedy for anxiety is less uncertainty. Asking "will I be ready" for eight months makes it grow; looking at the weekly table and saying "this week I closed these three topics" makes it shrink. Regular mocks help for the same reason: the more familiar the format, the less frightening it is. If anxiety is keeping you from sitting down, spoiling your sleep or making you miss questions you know in a mock, try the methods in the article on exam anxiety, and if it persists, talk to the school counsellor.
A short note for parents. Track the routine, not the count. Instead of "how many questions did you do today", ask "which mistake did you figure out today". Instead of debating the mock score, look at the mistake notebook together. Police bedtime, not the number of questions: questions solved late at night produce a student who sleeps through school the next morning. And do not make the exam the only topic in the house; a reminder that life exists outside the LGS is the cheapest anxiety treatment there is.
The routine in short: weight on Turkish, maths and science, the other three kept warm with a short block each. On school days 40 to 80 questions, at the weekend 100 to 150 plus a mock, all recorded in the mistake notebook. Mocks get more frequent towards June; the analysis never stops. Set this up at the start of the year and May becomes revision rather than a chase.
Frequently asked questions
Is it better to guess or leave a question blank in the LGS?
Because three wrong answers cancel one right one, a blind guess averages out to zero while a blank costs nothing. Leave it blank if you cannot eliminate any option; mark an answer if you can rule out one or two with certainty.
How often should you take a mock exam?
In the first term, one session a week or a full mock every two weeks is enough. In the second term move to one full mock a week, and to one or two in the final weeks. Analysing each mock matters more than how often you take them.
Which subject should get the most attention?
Turkish, mathematics and science: they have the most questions and a higher coefficient than the other subjects. History, religious culture and English are 30 questions you cannot afford to ignore, but a short block each per week keeps them in shape.