Combating Test Anxiety

Imagine being able to sit down for a test without feeling anxious. When you suffer from test anxiety, a simple exam can cause you to experience physical discomfort and overwhelming nervousness. Although it is normal to feel slightly nervous before a test, a physical and anxious reaction to taking an exam is not normal.

To address this phenomenon, researchers have proposed different theories of test anxiety to account for the effects of test anxiety on the deficits of academic performance. According to scholars such as Schmidt and Riniolo (1999), the cognitive aspects of test anxiety - worry and task-relevant thinking - are also present in social anxiety. Therefore, students who experience test anxiety may also suffer from other types of psychological and cognitive problems such as self-esteem, cognitive development, social skills and memory. Essentially, the students who suffer from test anxiety are individuals who are unable to cope with any types of stress. Considering the stressful nature of

test anxiety, which is triggered by the strenuous conditions of the tests. Tight muscles, trembling,

- Exercise can be another great way to beat test anxiety. Getting your heartbeat up and sweating can be good for helping you to focus.

Anxiety is a very common disorder when it comes to students in school. There are various types of anxiety, one common example is test taking anxiety. Test taking anxiety is a nervous feeling that students have while taking a test, and sometimes before or after taking the exam. This makes it impossible for students to do their best and to show their knowledge. When students are under stress it causes them to have physical symptoms, such as sweating or rapid breathing. Students who aren't prepared for tests, but care about doing well are also likely to have test anxiety before taking any type of test. Supporters argue standardized tests effectively measure student achievement, and opponents argue that tests are good for measuring students’ performances.

My test anxiety is strong. In certain situations, I feel like I cannot think, like my mind goes blank. The concept of taking a test is more challenging than actually taking the test. My test anxiety causes me to feel like I'm going to fail and that there is no chance that I will get a good grade no matter how hard I try. I tend to feel it the most when I meet big tests such as the SAT and AP exams. At times, some of the material that I’ve learned sticks and I could focus on that, however, most of time I forget what I learned and studied and it all goes blank. I also feel the butterflies in my stomach, my body beginning to shake, and worst of all, I feel like throwing up. Test anxiety caused me to doubt myself in general. To make matters worse, my school at times categorize tests as a big part of your grade and sometimes with that, my grades tend to drop. This has affected me as a student since it causes me to always doubt myself and have poor thoughts to what will happen and I envision bad

Throughout my high school career, a huge education barrier I had to overcome was test anxiety. Every time I was about to take any kind of test, I always felt agitated. However, as I progressed in to higher grade levels, tests became tougher and weighed more. Test anxiety was a very frustrating obstacle because I always aimed for high grades and high test scores. I was always a perfectionist on the assigned work but when it came to the tests, I struggled, and my nervousness grew. After a few tests, I realized I had to come up with an answer to my problem.

Like many freshmen, when I started college I was not sure what I wanted to major in. Due to this uncertainty, I decided to take different types of classes to see what would interest me. The different classes taught me that, the more important the tests the more pressure I put on myself. This made test taking difficult. I realized that my test taking anxiety stems from a deep fear of failure. Through my years in college I have been trying to work on my test taking fears. In my first year of experimenting with classes, I received my first C because I did not work as hard as I should have. That is a mistake that I have never repeated since.  After this poor grade I decided it was time to select a field which I would enjoy. After researching different fields, I realized that Public health is an emerging field. I decided to take a few classes to see if I would enjoy it, and the rest is history. The field caught my attention because it is broad and it would give me the freedom to select any career I desire. Public health caught my attention is because it deals with prevention. I believe that public health professionals are about empowering individuals. If they lay out all the facts in front of individuals, they will be able to make the right decisions.

Zack is still putting forth a good effort in class - he always checks in with me to see if he is missing anything and he retests on quizzes and tests that he needs to without me bugging him about it. When he does retest, I always see a dramatic improvement - I don't know if he just has test anxiety the first time around, but I am glad he is comfortable enough to come in and go over things with me.

Goh, Grace. (2015). School based intervention for test anxiety. Child and youth care forum, 45(1), 1-17. doi:10.1007/510566-015-9314-1.

Addressing the issue of test anxiety with school students is crucial. Test anxiety is defined as feelings of tension and anxiety that interfere with the ability to communicate what one knows in a test situation. It can lead to school failure, poor self-esteem, and stress related physical ailments. Although it is natural to experience some degree of distress while being evaluated, some students ' previous negative experiences greatly effect their reaction to a testing experience. With the increase of testing in our schools, school counselors need to recognize the role test anxiety plays in student performance and help to implement effective strategies to assist students. It seems possible to do this through cognitive and theory, which will be discussed later in this paper. There are many effective strategies that teachers can implement to assist test anxious students. Teachers can employ formative factors, habitual prudence, purposeful learning experiences, and test-wise guidelines. Ascertaining test anxiety involves becoming more aware of the types of students with test anxiety so that they can develop, modify, and implement new repertoires in their assessment procedures. Using more formative factors in their assessment procedures lessens anxiety levels and enhances the instructional process. Finally, when teachers provide purposeful learning experiences and test-wise guidelines students are able to obtain maximum performance. Relaxation techniques and systematic

While most people feel a bit nervous before a test, some students find test anxiety debilitating. Racing thoughts, inability to concentrate, or feelings of dread can combine with physical symptoms like a fast heartbeat, headache, or nausea. No matter what kind of exam or test it is, text anxiety has the power to derail weeks and months of hard work.

Numerous studies have been conducted in regards to test anxiety and performance that indicate a relationship between anxiety, preparation and test performance. One of the first indications to be successful when considering performance is to be equipped with knowledge. What is Test Anxiety? According to a DSM-5 review by Bo¨gels, Alden, Beidel, Clark Pine, Stein, and Voncken test anxiety is defined as an excessive degree of fear, worry, and apprehension before, during, and/or after test situations, with symptoms of physiological reactivity and concern regarding (the consequences of) poor performance. Is it a mental disorder? During the rewrite of the DSM-IV, test anxiety was taken for inclusion as a form of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). Nevertheless, the decision was made not to include test anxiety alone inasmuch as it was hard to define and appeared to get too large a range of the population (up to 40%). Bogel et al. Granting to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th Ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2014) test anxiety is not identified as a disorder. However, it is identified as a sub category of social phobia in Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).

Tet anxiety is a very common thing among American students, especially for those whore are in higher education. This type of anxiety causes psychological tension that students experience before taking test. In the moment of test anxiety students have a strong feelings of failure that is followed by panic and stress pressure. Apparently many studies have showed that test anxiety often causes students to perform worse on the exam. "Test anxiety: Why it is increasing and 3 ways to curb it" by Valerie Strauss and " Anxiety, Self-Efficacy, and College Exam Grades" by Jennifer Barrows, Samantha Dunn, Carrie A. Lloyd are popular and scholarly articles that discuss test anxiety in US higher education and how it disadvantages students.

Tests cause anxiety, however, I've never met a person that has not felt their heart race from the anticipation. If it severely impedes a student from taking a test;, many schools and colleges have policies that enable students to obtain a letter from a specialist informing professors and teachers of their need for extra time on tests.So on to my first point. Professors and teachers make tests only on important information taught in the class. So students that don’t do well may recognize the information, but not yet completely understand it. For example, In my Anatomy class, we don’t take multiple question tests, instead, we must know the information completely, which requires a complete understanding of the information. As a result, on my first quiz, I recognized the information but had no understanding of why things did things or the specific names of things. It helped me that I changed the way I studied.